We are looking for a seasoned Chief Operating Officer (COO) to lead the next phase of business growth, operational strengthening and retail transformation.

Retail Operations | Restaurants | Sweets & Indian Foods

Location: Chennai, Tamil Nadu

Industry: Sweets, Restaurants, Chaat & Snacks | Indian Food Retail

Reporting To: Promoters / Managing Director

ABOUT THE ROLE A well-established food and retail business serving a wide range of North Indian cuisine, chaat, snacks, traditional Indian sweets and restaurant offerings.

The ideal candidate will be a proven business and operations leader from the sweets, restaurant, QSR, food retail or multi-unit food-service industry, with a demonstrated track record of building profitable operations, driving sales growth, improving customer experience and creating scalable systems across multiple outlets.

This is a hands-on leadership role requiring strong commercial acumen, operational discipline and the ability to work closely with the Promoters to translate the business vision into measurable execution.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES

1. Business Growth & Expansion

- Develop and execute the operational strategy to support business growth, outlet expansion and revenue enhancement.
- Identify opportunities to improve sales, customer footfall, average ticket size, repeat business and market penetration.
- Support the Promoters in evaluating new locations, formats, products and business opportunities.
- Establish scalable operating models for future expansion.

2. Retail & Outlet Operations

- Provide overall leadership to all retail outlets, restaurants, sweets and food-service operations.
- Drive consistency in customer experience, service standards, product availability, presentation and outlet discipline.
- Establish clear outlet-wise targets, KRAs, KPIs and review mechanisms.
- Strengthen daily operating systems covering opening/closing, cash handling, inventory, hygiene, service and customer management.
- Ensure effective coordination between outlets and central functions.

3. Revenue & Profitability

- Own the overall operational performance and profitability of the business.
- Drive outlet-wise revenue and contribution improvement.
- Monitor key commercial metrics including:

- Sales and growth

- Gross margins

- Food cost

- Wastage

- Labour cost

- Inventory turnover

- Average bill value

- Outlet profitability




- Identify leakages and implement corrective measures to improve margins and operational efficiency.

4. Sweets, Food & Restaurant Operations

- Ensure robust coordination between production, kitchen, quality, purchase, supply chain and retail operations.
- Improve product planning, availability and production-to-sales alignment.
- Establish controls for freshness, quality, wastage and product consistency.
- Work with the culinary and production teams on menu/product innovation and commercial viability.
- Ensure consistent standards across sweets, chaat, snacks and restaurant offerings.

5. Customer Experience & Brand Standards

- Build a strong customer-centric culture across the organisation.
- Establish and monitor service standards for restaurants and retail outlets.
- Create mechanisms for capturing and acting upon customer feedback, online reviews and outlet-level complaints.
- Drive improvement in customer satisfaction, repeat visits and brand experience.
- Ensure consistent brand presentation across locations.

6. People & Leadership

- Build a strong second line of leadership across operations.
- Lead, coach and develop Unit Managers, Restaurant Managers, Outlet Managers and functional heads.
- Establish clear accountability, performance expectations and review systems.
- Improve manpower productivity, retention and succession readiness.
- Create a performance-driven yet people-oriented operating culture.

7. Systems, Processes & Controls

- Strengthen SOPs and operating systems across the organisation.

- Standardise processes for

- Outlet operations

- Inventory management

- Procurement

- Production planning
- Quality & hygiene

- Cash management

- Customer service

- Manpower deployment
- Reporting & MIS
- Introduce appropriate technology and dashboards to improve visibility and decision-making.
- Build a culture of data-driven operational reviews and accountability.

8. Supply Chain & Cost Management

- Work closely with Purchase, Production and SCM teams to ensure availability at optimum cost.
- Improve vendor management,



procurement discipline and inventory planning.
- Reduce stock-outs, excess inventory, wastage and avoidable operational costs.
- Strengthen coordination between central production and retail outlets.

9. Governance & Business Reviews

- Establish a structured daily, weekly and monthly operating review mechanism.
- Present business performance, challenges, opportunities and action plans to the Promoters.
- Ensure timely implementation of agreed business priorities.
- Maintain strong control over operational compliance, food safety, hygiene and statutory requirements.

CANDIDATE PROFILE

Essential Experience

- 15+ years of overall experience, preferably with significant leadership experience in:

- Sweets & Mithai chains - Restaurant chains

- QSR / food retail

- Indian food brands

- Multi-unit F&B; businesses

- Should have proven experience managing multiple outlets / locations.
- Candidates must demonstrate a track record of business growth and retail operations improvement, rather than only functional restaurant management experience.
- Experience in a promoter-led, family-managed or professionally managed growing food business will be valuable.

We Are Looking For Someone Who Has Demonstrated:

- Successful retail/outlet expansion

- Revenue and profitability growth

- Improvement in outlet productivity
- Strong cost and wastage control
- Development of operating systems and SOPs
- Building and managing strong operational teams

- Improvement in customer experience
- Successful implementation of operational transformation
- Ability to create scalable systems for future growth

EDUCATION Graduate / Postgraduate qualification in Business Management, Hospitality, Food Service, Retail Management or a related discipline.

An MBA / PGDM or equivalent management qualification will be an advantage.

IDEAL CANDIDATE The ideal candidate is not simply an experienced restaurant manager.

We are looking for a business leader who has already demonstrated the ability to grow and professionalise a multi-unit sweets, restaurant or food-retail business and can now take ownership of the next stage of growth.

Candidates with a strong track record of scaling outlets, improving profitability, building systems and developing high-performing teams will be preferred.

Compensation: Commensurate with experience, leadership capability and demonstrated business impact.

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