Find your place in the field of good food

Our goal is to connect good people with good food. We advertise sustainable food jobs and training opportunities to help jobseekers and employers find each other.

Roots to Work is a project of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming.

Restaurant Manager

Inver Restaurant
Argyll, Scotland

Posted: 11 Nov 2024

Deadline: 15 Dec 2024

Compensation: £32-£34,000 pro rata base rate, with £2k-£4k tips on top

Paid Full-time Permanent Fixed term / contract

Job description

Restaurant Manager

• A Restaurant Manager at Inver is a role as broad as it is essential!  For this role, you will have demonstrable relevant experience in similar-sized business that broadly shares our ethos and style.
• You will run the day-to-day of a busy craft restaurant, with its six rooms.
• A Restaurant Manager will undertake admin like rotas, orders, and cleaning and work schedules.
• You’ll be responsible for the systematisation of the restaurant routines.
• A genuine love of food, drink and gracious service is of course essential!
• You’ll also be responsible for presenting wines and serving food, and helping to train other staff in the finer details of great service.
• Some knowledge of wine is essential, particularly an understanding of ‘natural’, low-intervention wine and its production. Demonstrable knowledge of craft beer, coffee, tea and cocktails is also important.
• An open, friendly manner and ability to communicate with and motivate a diverse range of individuals is going to be a serious advantage.
• Mental health first-aider training with Kelly’s Cause is available to enable you to develop the emotional support skills needed for this essential role.

Senior front-of-house management working hours are typically 40-45 hours per week. You will always have at least two days off in a week.

You would start full time in late February/early March 2025. Most of the restaurant (and housekeeping) staff will start around 14th March for an opening date of Thursday 20th March 2025. We close again after evening service on Sunday 14th December, meaning you have Christmas and New Years’ off.

What sort of people are we looking for?

Inver is a personal project by owners Pam and Rob - we share the same rota with you daily. We are a small, close team and we recruit for whole people, not just job titles. We'll give you what you need to flourish.

In return we need some rock-solid hospitality skills. From our senior managers especially, we need people who share our values: community, compassion, craft, and climate. We want people ready to contribute to - and lead- a proper Team; to put the wellbeing of everyone else on a par with their own personal needs. Compassionate, self-motivated and creative individuals do well at Inver. It’s worth remembering that we are a restaurant: service is often fast-paced, and always requires juggling constantly competing deadlines and dealing with people with competing demands. Working days are energetic. If you thrive in this kind of environment, we can offer you so much more besides.

We are located 1.5 hours drive from the nearest city (Glasgow) so some appreciation for countryside activities and an ability to enjoy your own company are helpful! (That said we are good at entertaining each other too.) A car and driver's license is useful but not essential.

Permission to work in the UK is essential. 

About Inver

Inver is located right on the shore of Loch Fyne on Scotland’s beautiful west coast. (The water is closer than some kitchens' dry stores!) The quality of the produce we use is unparalleled; shellfish and mackerel are straight from the waters outside; two local gardeners produce herbs, flowers soft fruit and vegetables for us; wild game is shot on the surrounding estates and wild berries and herbs picked from the hedge- rows. Rare breed pork, lamb and Highland beef come from nearby farms. We make our own soft cheeses and yoghurt; kojis and misos; charcuterie and ferments.

Our craft skills ethos extends to the bar and restaurant, which makes its own tonic syrup, shrubs and bitters. There’s a short creative cocktail menu. Produce from the gardens and hedgerows informs the drinks menu. We brew innovative beers in collaboration with a nearby brewery, and previously staff have led on their production. The wine list is almost 100% from low-intervention production with a focus on small producers. Talented friends make the stoneware plates, weave the wool cushions, carve the wooden spoons, and design the pictures and prints. We have six luxury cabins providing sleeping accommodation for guests adjacent to the restaurant.

Most importantly we value our people as highly as the produce. We take great pleasure in investing in our people- staff, small suppliers and guests- and watching them and our relationship grow. We have three qualified mental health first aiders on staff and do mental health awareness training for all staff with Kelly's Cause. Other skills training we’ve invested in includes chocolate-making with former Inver employee Chloe at her own business Chocolatia, whose chocolates we now serve in the restaurant.  Previously we've made butter and soft cheeses with Robert at micro-creamery Wee Dalry Dairy; plus food growing, wine tastings, coffee training and more. Former employee-turned-herbalist, Ciara, is now supplying us with kombuchas and collaborating on cosmetics for the rooms. We've had team trips out to remote islands with the seaweed diver; to fish for mackerel with our neighbours; to the local coffee roastery; to picnic on beaches accessible only by boat; and to the pub! You'll meet most of the suppliers and enjoy being part of a small friendly community who know each others' names and families, blurring the lines between life and work. We provide healthy and tasty staff meals, daily coffee and beers at the weekend!  In a response to our Countertalk Culture workplace review (which we undertook voluntarily), one member of staff stated: “For the first time in my working life, I feel like nothing needs improving. We’re valued, the philosophy is bang on, the pay is good, the people are nice, meals, snacks and heaps of support are available”.

Application information

Please send a CV and covering letter to pam@inverrestaurant.co.uk

There isn’t a closing date for applications: we’ll commit when we have found the right person. However we do close for Christmas (and this year’s winter break) from Sunday 15th December, and we would expect that prospective senior staff would want to visit us while the restaurant is open. You would start for real in late February/early March 2025.

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