Operations Manager
£70,000 + Quarterly Bonus Scheme + Private Medical
As Operations Manager, you’ll be the brand in motion; the person who turns strategy decks and brand ambitions into living, breathing, nightly reality. You’ll lead a portfolio of live‑music and entertainment‑led venues, championing operational performance, culture, and guest experience while also shaping how our brands evolve in the real world.
You’ll be a key architect in Nightcap’s growth story: brand flips, new site rollouts, investment projects, programming formats, and concept evolutions will all sit inside your orbit. You’ll collaborate with Brand Marketing on development work, not to own brand direction, but to ensure ideas are operationally executable, commercially intelligent, scalable, and thrilling to guests. You’ll become a custodian of brand standards, seeing them as a living document rather than a rulebook, and adapting them in partnership with central teams as we learn, grow, and try new things.
You’ll create the conditions for brave leadership: boldness without recklessness, experimentation with accountability, a willingness to try new things and a commitment to learning what worked (or didn’t). With you in the mix, our venues won’t just operate well… they’ll feel alive.
Key Responsibilities
Brand & Concept Execution
- Translate brand propositions into operational reality; ensure teams know not just what to do, but why it matters
- Partner with Brand Marketing to test, refine and operationalise brand evolutions, campaigns, menus, identity pieces and in‑venue activations
- Own and evolve the Brand Standards Playbook, ensuring operational feasibility, consistent execution, and continual refresh as the brand matures
- Act as an early voice of real‑world feedback into brand decisions: what works in venues, what needs refinement, what could be next
- Be a first mover on new brand formats and activations, piloting concepts, reviewing success, documenting learnings and scaling wins
Growth & New Openings
- Lead operations delivery for brand flips, refurbishments and new openings: systems live, brand training, standards adoption and commercial readiness on day one
- Input operational architecture into design, layout, tech setup, programme flow and service models to ensure launch success
- Build opening teams with confidence, capability and pride in the brand; support GMs to sustain momentum beyond the first 60 days
Guest & Experience
- Curate guest experiences that feel energetic, seamless and unmistakably “us”; protect the feel of the brand, not just the mechanics
- Champion live music programming/creative formats that elevate audience connection and commercial return
- Drive experience consistency while empowering local teams to explore calibrated creativity that fits their city and crowd
Leadership & Culture
- Lead General Managers with clarity, direction and inspiration; make bold expectations feel exciting, not daunting
- Foster a culture where innovation is celebrated, failures are debriefed not punished, and learning is the currency
- Create confident leaders who can deliver the night without constant escalation
Commercial & Operational
- Discover trading opportunities by reading data like a compass: labour deployment, programming ROI, guest patterns, and audience segmentation
- Align operational decisions to commercial outcomes; help teams understand how magic on the floor translates to the P&L
- Work cross‑functionally with Sales, Marketing, People, Compliance, Finance and Technical to remove barriers, not add process
This role is for someone who:
- Builds not just runs; you want to shape brands, not just protect them
- Thinks like a creative operator: imaginative but grounded in reality
- Sees the venue as a stage, a business, and a heartbeat - all at once
- Enjoys trying before perfecting, iterating with purpose and courage
- Knows when to take a swing and when to anchor in fundamentals
- Values diversity of crowds, ideas, music and leadership styles
- Is energised by culture, nightlife and the alchemy of great teams
- Previous multi‑site management experience in a late‑night, live music, or entertainment‑led bar/venue environment (essential)
- Demonstrable experience delivering commercial growth across multiple P&L
- Experience supporting or leading venue openings, rebrands or investment projects (preferred)
- Strong remote leadership of General Managers and senior site leaders
- Comfortable with data, reporting and KPI‑driven performance management
- Confident in licensing law, compliance, venue security frameworks and safe‑guarding best practice
- Commercially curious with a creative streak; spots opportunities others miss
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