Papa Johns
Senior Director – Operations & Franchising, UK
How your CV stacks up
Upload your CV to see how well it fits this job role
?%
What’s Unique About You Is What Makes Us Better! Diversity is our strength and competitive advantage. Bring your flavor to the Papa John's team today!
Role Purpose
The Senior Director – Operations & Franchising is a senior leadership role responsible for the operational performance, franchise strategy, franchisee performance, and customer experience leadership of the UK business.
As a member of the UK Leadership Team, the role contributes to the overall business strategy, commercial priorities, and long-term growth agenda, ensuring strategy is translated into effective execution across the restaurant network.
The role leads the UK Franchise Ownership Strategy, working closely with Development to connect franchise capability and ownership with new restaurant openings, network growth, and non-traditional opportunities.
The Senior Director also provides leadership for the end-to-end customer experience, ensuring the voice of the customer is represented across the business. Digital elements of the journey, including App, Web, and aggregator experiences, are jointly led with the relevant functional partners. The role is ultimately focused on creating a high-performing franchise system that delivers sustainable sales and profit growth, strong franchisee economics, outstanding customer experiences, and consistently high brand standards.
Key Accountabilities
Leadership & Business Strategy
- Serve as a core member of the UK Leadership Team, contributing to the strategy, commercial direction, and long-term priorities of the UK business.
- Act as a strategic partner to the Managing Director and wider Leadership Team.
- Represent Operations, Franchising, franchise partners, and the voice of the customer in key business decisions.
- Translate business strategy into clear operational priorities and measurable execution plans.
- Lead and sponsor major cross-functional initiatives impacting restaurants, franchisees, and customers.
- Ensure decisions appropriately balance customer outcomes, commercial performance, franchisee economics, and long-term brand growth.
Operations & Performance
- Own the operational strategy and performance of the UK restaurant estate.
- Drive improvement across sales, transactions, profitability, service, product quality, customer experience, and brand standards.
- Establish clear KPIs, scorecards, and performance routines, using data and insight to identify opportunities and drive action.
- Simplify restaurant operations and ensure effective implementation of new products, technology, channels, and operating models.
- Drive consistent execution of strategic initiatives while identifying and scaling operational best practice.
- Champion a culture of operational excellence, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Franchising & Franchisee Performance
- Lead the UK franchising strategy and franchise operating model.
- Build strong, commercially productive relationships with franchise partners.
- Establish clear expectations and accountability for franchisee and restaurant performance.
- Support franchisees in improving sales, profitability, customer experience, and operational capability.
- Lead strategic and performance reviews with key franchise organizations and ensure appropriate action where performance falls below expectations.
- Develop franchise organizational capability to support sustainable multi-site growth.
- Strengthen franchisee engagement while ensuring the long-term interests and standards of the brand are protected.
Reasons to use Rodeo
Start with a chat, not a search bar
Grad scheme, placement, apprenticeship? Not sure what you want yet — that's fine. Your agent talks it through with you and turns "I have no idea" into a shortlist.
It searches the market for you
Every day your agent scans the market matching roles against what actually matters to you, not just keywords on a CV.
Only hits
No noise. No "maybe this fits." Just roles with a clear explanation of why they're right — and where to focus when applying.
Franchise Ownership, Development & Growth
- Lead the UK Franchise Ownership Strategy, ensuring the franchise network has the capability, capacity, and ambition to support sustainable growth.
- Work hand in hand with Development to connect Ownership Strategy with the new-store pipeline, ensuring the right franchise partners are aligned to future growth opportunities.
- Shape the future ownership structure of the network, including consolidation, succession, and Change of Hands.
- Identify franchise partners with the operational, financial, and organizational capability to grow.
- Work jointly with Development to support successful new restaurant openings, from franchise partner alignment and operational readiness through to post-opening performance.
- Support the development of new formats, routes to market, and non-traditional channels and partnerships.
- Ensure new growth opportunities are operationally viable, scalable, and capable of delivering sustainable economics.
- Provide the Leadership Team with a clear view of network health, ownership capability, development pipeline, and future growth potential.
Customer Experience & Brand Leadership
- Provide leadership for the end-to-end customer experience across the UK business.
- Champion the voice of the customer at Leadership Team level and ensure customer outcomes influence strategic and commercial decision-making.
- Own operational delivery of the customer experience across product quality, service, delivery, order accuracy, and issue resolution.
- Jointly lead App, Web, and aggregator customer experience with Digital, Marketing, and relevant commercial partners.
- Establish clear customer KPIs and lead improvements in satisfaction, complaints, resolution, and service performance.
- Use customer insight and feedback to identify systemic issues and mobilize cross-functional action.
- Ensure franchisees maintain a strong customer-first culture and consistently deliver the brand promise.
Commercial & Financial Leadership
- Maintain a strong focus on restaurant economics, franchisee profitability, and sustainable system growth.
- Partner with Finance to understand performance, restaurant P&Ls, and return on investment.
- Identify opportunities to increase sales and transactions while improving productivity and profitability.
- Ensure operational and franchise initiatives have clear commercial outcomes and measurable returns.
- Ensure franchise economics and operational realities are represented in major business decisions.
Get help with your application
Your very own career expert that helps elevate your application to the next level.
People & Organisational Leadership
- Lead, develop, and inspire the Operations and Franchising leadership teams.
- Build a high-performance culture based on accountability, collaboration, and ownership.
- Develop organizational capability and succession across the function.
- Coach senior leaders and develop future leadership talent.
- Lead through influence across franchisees, cross-functional teams, and external partners.
- Build capability within franchise organizations to support sustainable growth and performance.
Governance & Risk
- Ensure restaurants operate in accordance with brand standards, franchise agreements, and regulatory requirements.
- Maintain strong governance around food safety, health & safety, and operational compliance.
- Partner with Legal, Finance, and other functions on significant franchise and operational matters.
- Ensure appropriate intervention where brand, commercial, customer, or operational standards are at risk.
- Protect the reputation and long-term value of the brand.
Key Relationships
Internal
- Managing Director
- UK Leadership Team
- Development
- Finance
- Marketing
- Digital & Technology
- Supply Chain
- People
- Legal
- International/Global Leadership
External
- Franchisees and franchise organizations
- Strategic commercial and operating partners
- Aggregator and delivery partners
- Non-traditional and development partners
- Industry bodies and relevant external stakeholders
Experience & Capability
The successful candidate will be an established senior operational and franchise leader with significant experience in a large-scale, multi-site, franchised, or consumer-facing organization, demonstrating:
- Senior leadership experience across Operations and/or Franchising and experience operating as part of a senior Leadership Team.
- Strong understanding of franchise business models, franchise relationships, and franchise economics.
- Proven experience leading large, geographically dispersed multi-site operations.
- Experience shaping franchise ownership, network development, and growth strategies.
- Strong commercial and financial acumen with a track record of improving sales, profitability, customer experience, and operational performance.
- Strong strategic thinking combined with the ability to translate strategy into execution.
- Ability to influence senior stakeholders, franchise partners, and independent business owners.
- Experience leading significant change and developing high-performing senior teams.
Everybody loves pizza, which means they also love the people who are behind the scenes working to deliver it. This is complex and challenging work – but let’s face it – it’s also pizza! If you want a fulfilling career with a company that’s always moving forward, we’re the right place.
“It took my CV and asked me questions relevant to understanding what kind of jobs to suggest for me. Suggestions were almost perfect. Jobs were exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
Jessica, London
Skills