Kitchen Manager

About this opportunity

Company Description

Since launching in Kuwait in 2004, talabat, the leading on-demand food and Q-commerce app for everyday deliveries, has been offering convenience and reliability to its customers. talabat’s local roots run deep, offering a real understanding of the needs of the communities we serve in eight countries across the region.

We harness innovative technology and knowledge to simplify everyday life for our customers, optimize operations for our restaurants and local shops, and provide our riders with reliable earning opportunities daily. Here at talabat, we are building a high performance culture through engaged workforce and growing talent density. We’re all about keeping it real and making a difference. Our 6,000+ strong talabaty are on an awesome mission to spread positive vibes. We are proud to be a multi great place to work award winner.

Job Description

As a Kitchens Manager, you will be responsible for leading and overseeing a cluster of cloud kitchens, optimizing their financial performance, managing high-intensity day-to-day operations, and maintaining excellent relationship metrics with restaurant partners. Your main objective is to lead a dedicated frontline operational team to ensure seamless service delivery while maintaining rigorous food safety and operational standards.

Core Responsibilities:

• Cluster Management & Day-to-Day Operations: Overlook and manage all aspects of daily operations across multiple kitchen sites to ensure consistency, speed, and quality of service delivery.
• P&L & Financial Management: Take full accountability for the cluster’s profit and loss (P&L) statements, actively identify and implement measures to optimize operational costs (including wastage controls, utility usage, and resource deployment) while  aggressively seeking innovative avenues to maximize revenue, boost kitchen utilization, to ultimately achieve allocated targets 
• Team Leadership & Development: Directly lead, mentor, and inspire a dedicated team of supervisors and dispatchers. Ensure efficient shift management, resource planning, and accountability to key operational KPIs across all locations to guarantee that delivery services run smoothly.
• Partner Relationship Management: Serve as the primary point of contact for restaurant brands operating within the cluster. Build and maintain strong, collaborative relationship scores by proactively troubleshooting day-to-day difficulties, resolving conflicts, and securing long-term partner happiness.
• Food Safety & Regulatory Compliance: Enforce strict compliance with municipal health codes, global food safety benchmarks, and corporate health, safety, and environmental (HSE) standard requirements across all locations. Maintain zero tolerance for safety infractions through continuous monitoring and routine internal audits. Manage relationship with talabat in-house food safety team, and local authorities in areas of operations
• Performance Tracking & Governance: Establish, evaluate, and monitor operational performance metrics (e.g., order prep time,vendor delay, fail rate, contact rate, ratings ). Drive corrective action plans in alignment with cross-functional stakeholders when discrepancies are spotted.

Qualifications

We are looking for an agile, results-oriented operational leader who thrives under pressure and possesses a deep commercial and culinary understanding of multi-unit food networks, quick service restaurants, or cloud kitchen operational setups

Qualifications and Requirements:

• Industry Experience: A solid and deep-rooted background in managing Quick Service Restaurant (or restaurant clusters), or advanced familiarity with cloud kitchens operations management
• Operational Track Record: A proven record of accomplishment in managing 
• high-volume kitchen operations, inventory optimization, wastage mitigation, and productivity enhancement techniques.
• Team Leadership: Highly familiar and adept at leading, organizing, and developing frontline teams (such as supervisors and dispatchers) operating in rotating shift configurations.
• High-Intensity Competency: Demonstrated capability to navigate stress, solve sudden bottlenecks, and successfully drive common performance goals within high-intensity environments.
• Financial Acumen: Proficient understanding of restaurant P&L and means of optimizing costs and revenue
• Stakeholder & Communication Skills: Exceptional interpersonal and negotiation skills, enabling clear and constructive communication with brand partners, suppliers, and internal cross-functional stakeholders.
• Experience using Excel, AI tools or Looker, Tableau strongly preferred

Source: Delivery Hero / Foodpanda / Talabat — United Arab Emirates