Building a Brilliant Team

You'll recruit, develop and retain a strong restaurant team.

You'll:

• Help recruit people with genuine personality and hospitality instinct.
• Deliver excellent induction and training.
• Coach people continuously rather than waiting for formal reviews.
• Develop product knowledge, confidence and service skills.
• Identify talented team members and help them progress.
• Create clear expectations and hold people accountable.
• Recognise great performance.
• Address poor performance quickly, fairly and constructively.
• Create an inclusive, respectful and enjoyable place to work.
• Lead by example in the way you communicate and behave.

The measure of a great Restaurant Manager isn't simply how well the restaurant operates when you're there. It's how well you've developed the team to operate when you're not.

Food & Menu Knowledge

You'll work closely with the Head Chef and kitchen team to ensure the front and back of house operate as one team.

You'll:

• Develop excellent knowledge of every dish on the menu.
• Ensure the restaurant team understands ingredients, provenance, preparation and allergens.
• Organise regular tastings and menu briefings.
• Encourage the team to talk about food naturally rather than reciting descriptions.
• Share meaningful guest feedback with the kitchen.
• Ensure changes and specials are communicated properly before service.
• Build a strong, respectful relationship between the kitchen and restaurant teams.

Drinks

You'll help create a confident drinks culture within the restaurant.

This includes:

• Developing the team's knowledge of wine, cocktails, beer, spirits and non-alcoholic drinks.
• Helping team members make thoughtful recommendations.
• Encouraging appropriate upselling through genuine product knowledge rather than scripted sales techniques.
• Ensuring drinks are served correctly and consistently.
• Working with the wider management team on drinks performance and opportunities.

You don't need to be a sommelier, but you should be interested in what we're pouring and excited to learn.

Reservations & The Guest Journey

Understand the reservations book and expected business before every service.

Work with the management team to maximise covers intelligently without compromising the guest experience.

Manage table plans, turn times and walk-ins effectively.

Ensure special occasions, dietary requirements and important guest information are communicated properly.

Make sure guest preferences and useful information are captured appropriately so we can provide increasingly personal hospitality.

Commercial Performance

You'll understand that brilliant hospitality and a successful business go hand in hand.

You'll take responsibility for:

• Restaurant revenue and sales performance.
• Labour productivity and rota management.
• Average spend and appropriate upselling.
• Minimising unnecessary waste and cost.
• Supporting stock control.
• Understanding the restaurant's key financial measures.
• Working with the General Manager to identify opportunities to improve performance.

You'll help your team understand that commercial awareness isn't about squeezing guests for another sale. It's about running a healthy business that can continue investing in its people, food and hospitality.

Standards & Compliance

Maintain excellent standards of cleanliness and presentation.

Ensure food safety and allergen procedures are followed consistently.

Maintain licensing and responsible alcohol-service standards.

Ensure health and safety procedures are understood and followed.

Make sure required checks and records are completed accurately.

Ensure the team understands why these standards matter rather than simply treating them as paperwork.

What We're Looking For

You'll have strong restaurant or hospitality management experience, ideally within a quality-led pub, restaurant, hotel or similar independent hospitality business.

You may already be a Restaurant Manager, or you might be an exceptional Assistant Restaurant Manager ready to take the next step.

You'll have:

• Strong restaurant-floor experience.
• Excellent guest instincts.
• Experience leading and developing teams.
• Good food and drink knowledge.
• Strong operational organisation.
• Commercial awareness.
• Experience managing busy services.
• Confidence handling guest complaints and difficult situations.
• A good understanding of food safety, allergens and licensing requirements.

But we're equally interested in how you make people feel.

You'll Be

• A natural host.
• Warm, confident and engaging.
• Obsessed with the details that guests notice.
• Calm when the restaurant is busy.
• Genuinely interested in food and drink.
• Someone who remembers people.
• A strong and supportive leader.
• Organised without becoming bureaucratic.
• Commercially aware.
• Comfortable making decisions.
• Someone who enjoys developing younger team members.
• Happy being on the restaurant floor rather than hiding in the office.
• Someone who believes hospitality should have personality.

What Success Looks Like

Within your first year, we would expect:

• A confident, happy and well-trained restaurant team.
• Consistently excellent service.
• Guests who feel recognised and genuinely looked after.
• Strong relationships between the restaurant, bar and kitchen.
• Improved guest feedback and increasing numbers of returning guests.
• Clear restaurant standards that the whole team understands.
• Stronger food and drink knowledge across the team.
• Healthy labour and commercial performance.
• A visible pipeline of people developing into future supervisors and managers.
• A restaurant that runs beautifully whether you're standing in it or not.

Why Country Creatures?

Country Creatures isn't interested in creating identical pubs or scripted hospitality.

Each of our places has its own character, and so do the people who work in them.

At The Wild Duck, you'll have the opportunity to lead a restaurant with real personality, develop a brilliant team and help create the kind of country pub experience that guests want to return to again and again.

We're looking for someone who doesn't simply want to manage a restaurant. We're looking for someone who wants to make people love it.

For Country Creatures’ privacy notice, click here. For Harri’s privacy notice click here.