Head of Operations – Hospitality (Cafes, Hostel, Boutique Stays, Bars)

Firgun Experiences LLP

Location: Himachal Pradesh | On-ground Multi-Property Role

Job Type: Full time | Senior Leadership – Operations

Experience: 5–7+ years in Hospitality Operations, including 2–3+ years leading managers/HODs; multi-property, cluster, resort or hotel-opening experience strongly preferred

Education: Bachelor’s degree in Hotel/Hospitality Management, Operations Management, Business Administration, or a related field | MBA/PGDM in Operations Management, Hospitality or Business Management preferred

Reports To: CEO

Salary: ₹50,000–₹75,000/month

Joining: Immediate / Early joining preferred

Build the Operating System Behind a Hospitality Company in the Mountains Of Himachal Pradesh

Firgun Experiences is looking for a hands-on Head of Operations to lead, stabilise, standardise and scale our hospitality Operations function.

Today, Firgun operates across 3 stay properties, 2 cafés, 2 bars, kitchens, guest experiences and community-led hospitality, supported by an operating team of approximately 40+ people.

We are growing.

Our ambition is to build more properties, more experiences and soon an operating organisation of 50–100+ people.

We therefore don't just need somebody who can manage today's Operations.

We need somebody who can build the Operations organisation required for tomorrow.

This is an opportunity for a hospitality leader who genuinely enjoys building consistent systems consistently, developing managers, solving root causes, creating structure and watching strategy turn into reality on the ground.

Your Mission

Build a Firgun Operations function that becomes:

Stable | Standardised | Guest & Community Focused | Commercially strong | Manager-led | Scalable| Strategic in Execution

You will help move the organisation from:

Firefighting → Foresight

Individual dependency → Strong and Consistent Systems

Recurring problems → Root-cause solutions

Informal working → Clear Documented Processes and accountability

Good employees → Strong Managers and Leaders

Running properties → Building a standardised and scalable hospitality organisation in Firgun style and signature

What You Will Own

Multi-Property Hospitality Operations

Take end-to-end leadership of:

- Stays and rooms
- Front office and reservations
- Guest experience in Firgun’s personalised style
- Housekeeping
- Cafés and restaurants
- Kitchens
- Bars
- Maintenance and property readiness
- Inventory and procurement
- Manpower deployment
- Training and operational performance
- Events and experiences oversight
- Operational projects
- New-property openings

You will be the senior operating leader responsible for ensuring that Firgun's hospitality businesses operate consistently, efficiently and commercially.

Build Systems & Standardise Operations

One of your most important responsibilities will be building the Firgun Operating System.

You will create and institutionalise practical:

- SOPs, checklists, and blueprints
- Operating standards Audit systems
- Dashboards and reporting
- Inventory controls
- Procurement systems
- Maintenance systems
- Guest-service standards
- Training systems
- Escalation systems
- Handover systems
- Performance and accountability structures
- Backup and succession systems
- Efficiency and Resource Tracking and Management

We are not interested in SOPs that simply sit inside folders.

Systems must work on the ground and continue working consistently without constant follow-up.

Build for Scale

Every important system should answer one question:

“Will this still work when Firgun has 5, 10 or more properties?”

You will help build repeatable:

- Property operating models
- New-property opening playbooks
- Management structures
- Training frameworks
- Audit systems
- Reporting architecture
- SOP libraries
- Procurement and inventory standards
- Guest-experience standards
- Performance systems

The goal is to create an operating model that can travel with Firgun into future properties and geographies.

Foresee Problems & Build Long-Term Solutions and Strategies

We want somebody who thinks ahead rather than waiting for Operations to break.

You should naturally ask:

Why does this problem keep happening?

What is the real root cause?

What system is missing?

Where are we dependent on one person?

What could break next season?

What happens when occupancy doubles?

What happens when we add another property?

How do we solve this permanently?

You will build operational forecasts, manpower plans, seasonal readiness plans, preventive-maintenance systems, capacity plans, risk controls and contingency structures.

Repeated firefighting should progressively disappear.

Build Managers & Future Leaders

You will initially help lead an operating organisation of approximately 40+ people, with the potential to help design an organisation of 50–100+ people as Firgun grows.

Your job is not to personally manage everybody.

Your job is to build:

- Strong Property Managers
- Strong F&B;/Outlet
- Managers Capable and highly efficient supervisors
- Second-line leadership
- Explicit development of KRAs and KPIs and their tracking systems
- Delegation and decision rights
- Performance accountability
- Coaching and training
- Cross-training and backup ownership
- Succession for critical roles

Your success will be measured partly by how independently your managers can operate because of the organisation you have built.

Own Guest Experience

Firgun is being built around connection, kindness, belonging, and community.

Operations is where those ideas become real.

You will help create consistent standards across the complete guest journey—from booking and arrival to rooms, food, drinks, experiences, complaint resolution and departure.

The challenge is to create consistency without making hospitality robotic, on the contrary make it more personalised and community centric.

Think Commercially

Great hospitality must also make strong business sense.

The Head of Operations is expected to understand how everyday operational decisions directly affect revenue, cost, efficiency, cash flow and operating margins.

You will work closely with the CEO, Finance, HR, Sales,



Marketing and other functions to ensure that every property and outlet is not only operationally strong, but also commercially healthy and resource-efficient.

You Will Be Expected to Track and Improve

Revenue & Capacity Utilisation

- Room availability, sellable inventory and revenue lost due to rooms being unnecessarily blocked or unavailable.
- Occupancy, average room realisation and utilisation of available room capacity.
- Café, bar, events, workshops and experience revenue.Average guest spend across rooms, F&B; and additional experiences.
- Upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
- Revenue leakage caused by missed billing, incorrect pricing, unrecorded consumption, complimentary usage or process gaps.
- Underutilised spaces, facilities, equipment or operating hours that can generate additional revenue.
- Operational readiness during high-demand periods so that revenue is not lost because of staffing, inventory or maintenance failures.

Manpower Productivity

- Whether staffing levels are appropriate to actual business demand.
- Labour cost against revenue and property performance.
- Productivity of teams, managers and departments.
- Shift planning, rostering and deployment across properties.
- Overtime, idle manpower and unnecessary duplication of roles.
- Whether every employee has a clear scope, measurable responsibility and sufficient productive work.
- Opportunities to cross-train or redeploy people instead of continuously adding manpower.
- Whether managerial positions are genuinely adding output, accountability and operational value.

The objective is not simply to reduce headcount. It is to ensure that every salary being paid creates meaningful operational value.

Inventory, Consumption & Wastage

- Food and beverage consumption.
- Food cost and beverage cost.
- Kitchen wastage, spoilage and overproduction.Portion control and recipe adherence.
- Housekeeping consumables.
- Guest amenities.
- Cleaning supplies.
- Maintenance consumables.
- Operating supplies and small equipment.Breakage, damage, theft and unexplained stock variance.
- Dead stock, excess purchasing and slow-moving inventory.
- Minimum and maximum stock levels.
- Stock rotation and expiry management.

Operations should build controls that make abnormal consumption or wastage visible quickly, rather than discovering it after month-end.

Procurement & Vendor Control

- Vendor pricing and commercial competitiveness.
- Quality versus cost.
- Purchase frequency and quantities.
- Unnecessary emergency purchases.
- Price variations between vendors or periods.
- Delivery accuracy and reliability.
- Repeated quality failures.
- Credit terms and payment terms, together with Finance.
- Vendor dependency and alternative vendor availability.
- Whether goods received match quantity, quality and approved specifications.
- Whether purchasing decisions are being consolidated where possible to obtain better commercial terms.

No vendor should remain unquestioned simply because “we have always bought from them.”

Maintenance & Asset Efficiency

- Preventive maintenance versus emergency repairs.
- Equipment downtime and its revenue impact.
- Recurring maintenance expenses.
- Repair-versus-replacement decisions.
- Utility consumption and avoidable wastage.
- Water, electricity, gas, fuel and heating costs.
- Proper use and life of organisational assets.
- Losses created by poor maintenance planning.
- Rooms or outlets being taken out of service because issues were not addressed in time.

A strong Operations Head should understand that poor maintenance is often more expensive than preventive maintenance.

Property & Outlet Profitability

Each property, café, bar, event space or operating unit should be understood commercially.

You should be able to review:

- Revenue generated
- Direct operating costs
- Labour cost
- F&B; cost
- Inventory consumption
- Utility costs
- Maintenance cost
- Vendor costs
- Wastage and losses
- Contribution margin
- Operating margin
- Major cost variances
- Revenue opportunities being missed

Where performance is below expectation, Operations should be able to explain why, recommend corrective action and drive improvement.

Build Systems That Protect Margin

Commercial discipline should not depend on one person manually checking everything.

You will be expected to create repeatable systems for:

- Daily and weekly operating dashboards
- Revenue and leakage checks
- Consumption monitoring
- Inventory controls
- Purchase approvals
- Vendor reviews
- Labour productivity
- Budget versus actual tracking
- Maintenance planning
- Cost variance reporting
- Resource utilisation
- Property-wise performance reviews
- Corrective action and accountability

The aim is to identify inefficiencies before they become large financial losses.

Think in Terms of Return on Resources

Every major operational resource has a cost:

People. Rooms. Kitchens. Equipment. Inventory. Vehicles. Vendors. Utilities. Time. Management bandwidth. Physical space.

The Head of Operations should continuously ask:

- Is this resource being fully and intelligently utilised?
- Is the organisation paying for capacity it does not need?
- Can the same result be achieved more efficiently?
- Is this cost creating measurable value?
- Is there avoidable wastage?
- Is a recurring problem increasing our operating cost?
- Can a process or system permanently eliminate this leakage?
- Is an operational decision improving or damaging profitability?

Commercial Ownership Does Not Mean Cost Cutting at Any Cost

The objective is healthy and sustainable operating margins, not indiscriminate cost reduction.

Operations must protect the right balance between:

Guest Experience × Revenue × Cost × Capacity × Productivity × Profitability

The strongest Head of Operations understands that these factors are interconnected.

A cheaper decision that damages guest experience may reduce revenue.

Excess staffing may improve convenience but destroy productivity.





Understaffing may reduce payroll but create service failures and lost business.

Poor inventory controls create wastage.

Poor maintenance creates downtime and expensive emergencies.

Weak systems create recurring leakage.

The role therefore requires someone who can constantly fine-tune the operation so that Firgun delivers an excellent guest experience while using its people, assets, inventory and capital with discipline and intelligence.

Who We Are Looking For

Must Have

- 5–7+ years in Hospitality Operations, including 2–3+ years leading managers/HODs; multi-property, cluster, resort or hotel-opening experience strongly preferred
- Meaningful experience across BOTH Stays, F&B; including cafes and bars.
- Experience in hotels, resorts, hostels, boutique stays or similar hospitality businesses
- Leadership Skills and Experience in managing teams and managers
- Strong understanding of guest experience, community building, and service operations
- Experience building or implementing SOPs, processes, tracking systems, and operating controls
- Good understanding of revenue, budgets, forecasting, inventory and costs controls
- Strong planning, problem-solving and execution capability
- Comfortable being highly hands-on and working across properties in Himachal Pradesh
- Excellent Communication Skills in both English and Hindi

Strongly Preferred:

- MBA/PGDM in Operations Management
- Multi-property / cluster operations experienceExperience building systems in a growing hospitality company
- Experience scaling teams or operating structures
- Pre-opening / new-property launch experience
- Experience developing managers
- Strong root-cause and analytical thinking.

Who Will Love This Role?

You will probably enjoy this opportunity if you get genuine satisfaction from:

Building. Organising. Standardising. Improving. Planning. Teaching. Solving. Leading.

You enjoy intellectual conversations about business, people, hospitality, leadership and strategy—but you equally enjoy walking into a kitchen, café, room or property and figuring out what is actually happening.

You want enough responsibility to see your ideas manifest themselves in the real world.

You want to build something rather than merely inherit somebody else's operating system.

And the idea of doing that while building a hospitality organisation in the mountains genuinely excites you.

Why Firgun?

Most Operations jobs ask you to inherit an operating system.

This role gives you the opportunity to help build one.

You will join Firgun at a stage where the business is already complex enough for your work to matter—but still early enough for your thinking to materially influence how the organisation is built.

You will have the opportunity to shape:

- How Firgun operates
- How managers lead
- How teams are trained
- How properties are standardised
- How guest experiences are delivered
- How problems are solved
- How new properties are opened
- How Operations scales

If Firgun grows into a significantly larger hospitality organisation, the right person should eventually be able to look at it and say:

“I helped build the operating system behind this.”

If building hospitality organisations is your craft, rather than simply your job, we'd like to hear from you.

Who This Role Is Not For

This role is not for someone who:

- Needs the CEO to repeatedly set operational priorities, solve routine issues, or drive follow-ups.
- Escalates problems without clear recommendations, ownership, and closure plans.
- Is strong at firefighting but weak at building systems and strategies that prevent repeat problems.
- Cannot think long-term and convert strategy into repeatable, consistent operating systems.
- Does not enjoy problem-solving or gets easily overwhelmed by complexity, ambiguity, pressure, or multiple moving parts.
- Is not an excellent communicator in both English and Hindi, verbally and in writing.
- Struggles with difficult conversations, cross-functional coordination, or holding people accountable. Needs constant supervision, validation, or direction to move work forward.
- Sees KPIs, SOPs, reporting, audits, training managers and staff, backups, and manager development as someone else’s responsibility.
- Prefers personally controlling everything instead of building capable managers and an independent team.

This is a demanding leadership role. We are looking for someone who understands that a Head of Operations is expected to solve, structure, simplify, build, lead, and continuously improve the operating system — not merely manage the day-to-day.

Pay: ₹50,000.00 - ₹75,000.00 per month

Benefits:

- Health insurance
- Paid sick time
- Provident Fund

Ability to commute/relocate:

- Himachal Pradesh: Reliably commute or planning to relocate before starting work (Preferred)

Application Question(s):

- Do you have at least 5–8 years of hands-on hospitality operations experience, including responsibility for multiple departments, properties, outlets, or HODs?

Yes/No

- Are you willing to be based on-ground in Himachal Pradesh and work across multiple Firgun properties, including remote mountain locations?

Yes/No

- Have you directly managed managers/HODs and been accountable for their performance, discipline, training and operational outcomes?

Yes / No

- Have you personally built or implemented operational systems such as SOPs, audits, KPIs, reporting structures, inventory controls, manpower systems or preventive-maintenance systems?

Yes / No

- Are you comfortable owning operational problems independently—investigating root causes, recommending solutions and driving closure rather than routinely escalating issues to the CEO?

Yes / No

- Are you professionally fluent in both English and Hindi and comfortable communicating with senior management, managers, vendors and frontline teams?

Yes / No

- Are you comfortable being accountable not only for guest experience and operations, but also for commercial metrics such as labour productivity, wastage, inventory variance, vendor costs, revenue leakage and operating margins?

Yes / No

Education:

- Bachelor's (Preferred)

Experience:

- Hospitality Operations: 5 years (Preferred)

Language:

- English (Preferred)
- Hindi (Preferred)

Location:

- Himachal Pradesh (Preferred)

Willingness to travel:

- 100% (Preferred)

Work Location: In person

📌 Head of Operations - Hospitality (Cafes, Hostel, Boutique Stays, Bars ) (Himachal Pradesh)
🏢 Firgun Experiences
📍 Himachal Pradesh