AddressFounded by brothers Jonathan and Alex Petrides in 2017, allplants makes plant-based living exciting and easy, delivering mouthwatering, healthier food to busy homes UK-wide. The science is irrefutable. Eating more plants is the #1 way to help yourself and our planet thrive. That’s why, at allplants we’ve started by making eating more plants a supremely positive and exciting choice: a fiesta of flavour, not a fast.
We are the leading specialist plant-based kitchen in the UK making exclusively vegan sauces (including italian ragus / bechamel / carbonara, curries like tofu tikka masala, stews like beet bourguignon / tagine / chilli / ratatouille) as well as our own brand allplants of award-winning ready-made meals that celebrate plants in all their flavour (7M frozen meals served UK-wide to our +350K community of allplanters!). We make all of our own food from scratch in London at our 40,000sqft site - UK's largest specialist plant-based production kitchen - where we obsess over making quality natural delicious food to inspire the planet to eat more plants.
We are now working with a select set of top Retail and Brand partners to help them meet the rising consumer demand for premium (gourmet & natural) frozen products from our kitchen. I've also attached a mini intro deck as background for you too in case of interest.
The role:
We are looking for a Head of Production to lead and develop our existing operations team, while also being a key member of the allplants Leadership Team, who are responsible for broad business performance. Your primary role though will be to build a high performance culture within the kitchen team, delivering quality and efficiency, while ensuring a great working environment. All of this needs to be done with the customer in mind to ensure great customer experience with every part of their interaction with allplants, while meeting or exceeding all KPI expectations.
The main areas of responsibility for this role include:
Highly Engaged Team: You will be a people manager first and foremost and will be managing a team of 50, via the Shift Managers and Team Leads, This number is likely to greatly increase over the coming years. This will involve continuing to build and improve on the strong culture, ensuring team engagement in our goals and developing every member of staff to unlock their full potential.
Quality Obsession: The quality of our food is what sets us apart and we are nothing without it. You are the key guardian of ensuring our team and processes are set up to deliver consistently delicious meals to our customers.
Continuous Improvement mindset, you will be responsible for the end to end operation of our kitchen. Managing the Shift Managers and Maintenance team to ensure delivery of our targeted operational goals and continuously improving margin. This will be done via embedding continuous improvement into the team and identifying then delivering process/equipment improvements.
Innovation, be a key input and enabler of innovation. Both in improving current processes but also in bringing in new customers or expanding into new categories. You will be able to help your colleagues to understand our operation capabilities and also how they could be expanded.
Engineering, manage our maintenance to ensure PPM’s are completed on time to maintain machinery up time.
While being very hands on it's also a strategic role and we need someone who knows how to and is excited by the challenge of scaling and levelling up a function from the perspective of people, process and technology.
You will report into James Enever (our Operations Director), with 3 direct reports including the shift managers and our maintenance partner.
What you'll be doing
- Working daily with your kitchen team, coaching and developing to get the best out of everyone and ensure an environment of high engagement and motivation.
- Be an active member of the leadership team at allplants, working with your peers to make allplants a high performing team and driving effectiveness and efficiency.
- Build strong relationships with all other functions within allplants along with our suppliers and partners.
- Focus on margin and efficiency - use a strong entrepreneurial spirit to drive gains as the key custodian of COGS and LogOps costs
- Assess all of our processes and upgrade where required to set the solid foundations for growth.
- Lead the way with the implementation of our kitchen extension and upgrade, both identifying machinery but also engaging your team to prepare them for the move.
- Ensure consistency of supply via a 99.5% OTIF service level for inbound raw materials and packaging and outgoing deliveries.
- Promote a continuous improvement philosophy and culture of quality, encouraging team participation in improvement initiatives
- Owning our maintenance budget and developing our PPM schedule to increase machinery up time and OEE.
What you'll need
You’ll be a great fit for this role if..
- You are comfortable in a start-up founder-led business, which means you will find comfort in an ever changing environment. No day will be the same, you’ll need to be agile and adaptable, with the ability to flex between your strategic and operational muscles
- You are an experienced operator with around substantial experience in production/operational management roles in the food industry, ideally ones that included cooking and freezing processes.
- You're a leader, you enjoy building and developing teams.
- You have a proven track record of delivering savings and improvements via a continuous improvement led approach and building high performing teams.
- You bring high energy to the role and use that to galvanize your team to hit goals.
- You are self aware, personable and have high emotional intelligence - you work well within a team and you know how to handle difficult situations and conversations
- You have a sharp attention to detail when it comes to performance and KPI’s, you know what good looks like and know how to get there.
- You can influence others and get things done, even when you don’t have the reins
- You have solid personal organisation, planning and scheduling skills
- A curious mindset; always seeking improvement, whether that's to do with optimising processes, or fuelling own or others’ personal growth You bring humility and a sense of humour to even the toughest of moments.
There's quite a bit on this list. If you feel you have some of the experience but not all of it, please do still apply. We love developing our team
What we offer
Be part of a certified B-Corp, dedicated to using commercial growth to better serve people & planet
24 days holiday (plus 8 bank holidays)
plus an additional day off for your birthday
️ Health & Well-being cover with Medicash
Yearly learning allowance
Flexible working hours
Gym discounts
Cycle to work scheme
Maternity/Paternity/Adoption Leave: 16 weeks paid leave for primary caregiver & 8 weeks for secondary caregiver
Pregnancy loss support leave
Real opportunities to accelerate your learning & growth (we see 1 year with us being equivalent to 2 year elsewhere)
Competitive salary and stock options from day one
50% discount on allplants products
Free healthy lunches, breakfast and snacks, and lots of allplants tastings
Chance to join one of Escape The City’s Top 100 companies to work for & #7 in Startups' Top 100 most disruptive and innovative startups️
Chance to join one of Escape The City’s best companies to work for & Startups' #7 in most disruptive and innovative startup️
At allplants diversity is about embracing differences, creating possibilities and growing together, in terms of our business but also our culture. We fully embrace diversity by giving full and fair consideration to all applicants, and proactively support the growth and development of our team members, regardless of age, disability, gender, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy, maternity or family structure.
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