Bupa UK
General Catering Manager
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Job Description
General Catering Manager
Cromwell Hospital, London SW5 0TU
Full Time – Permanent (40 hours per week)
Monday to Friday with flexibility to support evenings and weekends as required
Competitive Salary + excellent benefits
We Make Health Happen
At Cromwell Hospital, our purpose is simple: delivering world-class care expertly tailored to every patient. Food and hospitality play a pivotal role in that experience, from patient dining and retail services to consultant hospitality and VIP experiences.
As our General Catering Manager, you'll provide strategic leadership across all catering and hospitality services within the hospital. You'll be responsible for delivering exceptional patient dining experiences, driving operational excellence, leading high-performing teams, and ensuring the highest standards of compliance, governance, and financial performance. This is an exciting opportunity to shape and enhance a premium hospitality service within one of the UK's leading private hospitals.
How You'll Help Us Make Health Happen
- Lead all catering and hospitality operations across patient dining, retail outlets, restaurant services, hospitality, and VIP catering.
- Drive the delivery of a five-star patient dining experience, ensuring exceptional quality, service, and presentation standards.
- Develop and embed service standards, performance measures, and operational KPIs across all catering functions.
- Work closely with clinical, operational, and senior leadership teams to ensure food services support patient outcomes and experience.
- Lead service improvement initiatives using patient, visitor, and colleague feedback to drive continuous enhancement.
- Oversee compliance with food safety legislation, HACCP procedures, allergen management, infection prevention standards, and health & safety requirements.
- Provide leadership and governance across staffing, workforce planning, recruitment, training, engagement, and performance management.
- Manage budgets, labour costs, supplier performance, stock control, and revenue opportunities to deliver strong commercial outcomes.
- Support menu innovation and service development alongside catering, clinical, and dietetic stakeholders.
- Lead audit readiness activities, ensuring robust processes, accurate record keeping, and compliance with all regulatory requirements.
- Build strong relationships with senior stakeholders, consultants, clinical teams, suppliers, and hospital leadership.
- Champion a culture of accountability, service excellence, innovation, and continuous improvement across all catering services.
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Key Skills / Qualifications
- Proven leadership experience managing multi-outlet catering and hospitality services within private healthcare or a similarly premium, highly regulated environment.
- Strong understanding of patient dining services, hospitality operations, retail catering, and VIP food service delivery.
- Demonstrable experience managing budgets, labour costs, financial performance, and operational KPIs.
- Level 3 Food Safety qualification (or equivalent) with strong knowledge of HACCP, allergen management, and food safety legislation.
- Experience leading audits, compliance programmes, and implementing corrective actions.
- Strong people leadership skills with experience developing, coaching, and managing large operational teams.
- Excellent stakeholder management skills, with the ability to build effective relationships across clinical and non-clinical functions.
- Strong commercial awareness combined with a commitment to delivering exceptional customer and patient experiences.
- Excellent communication, organizational, and problem-solving skills.
- Flexible approach to working hours to support operational requirements within a seven-day hospital environment.
Desirable
- Previous experience working within a private hospital or acute healthcare environment.
- Formal qualification in Hospitality, Catering Management, Business Management, or a related discipline.
- Experience managing large-scale or multi-site catering operations.
- Knowledge of CQC expectations and healthcare-specific food service governance requirements.
- Experience leading service redesign, patient experience initiatives, or commercial growth projects.
- Experience delivering consultant, VIP, or corporate hospitality within a premium environment.
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Benefits
Our benefits are designed to make health happen for our people. Viva is our global wellbeing programme and includes all aspects of our health – from mental and physical, to financial, social, and environmental wellbeing.
We support flexible working and have a range of family-friendly benefits.
Joining Bupa in this role you will receive the following benefits and more:
- Equivalent to 25 days holiday per year, increasing through length of service, with option to buy or sell.
- Bupa health insurance as a benefit in kind.
- An enhanced pension plan and life insurance.
- Support with travel costs via a season ticket loan or Cycle to Work scheme.
- Discounted access to online gym sessions through Gympass.
- Various family-friendly benefits.
- Free onsite massages as recognition for your hard work.
- Opportunity to participate in our annual awards ceremony.
Why Bupa?
We're a health insurer and provider. With no shareholders, our customers are our focus. Our people are all driven by the same purpose – helping people live longer, healthier, happier lives and making a better world. We make health happen by being brave, caring, and responsible in everything we do.
We encourage all our people to "Be you at Bupa". We champion diversity and understand the importance of our people representing the communities and customers we serve. That's why we especially encourage applications from people with diverse backgrounds and experiences.
Bupa is a Level 2 Disability Confident Employer. This means we aim to offer an interview/assessment to every disabled applicant who meets the minimum criteria for the role. We'll make sure you are treated fairly and offer reasonable adjustments as part of our recruitment process to anyone that needs them.
Time Type
Full time
Job Area
Property & Facilities
Locations:
Cromwell Hospital London
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