VP of Retail Operations

Love great bakeries and running a business end to end? Lead the Retail Division of a 110-year-old New York City institution as a standalone business: its P&L, its people, its product, and its growth.

Orwashers

Orwashers Bakery (Orwashers.com) is a New York City institution, founded in 1916 in a small storefront on the Upper East Side. Today, Orwashers continues to be known for its New York classics including rye bread, pumpernickel, bagels, rugelach, black and white cookies and so much more.



In addition to selling bread to many of New York’s top restaurants and gourmet grocery stores, Orwashers currently operates three retail bakeries in Manhattan and Long Island. We also deliver our breads and baked goods throughout Manhattan and distribute to carefully selected partners nationwide. While the company has grown since its humble beginnings over a century ago, the same values remain baked in: handmade classic breads and baked goods made fresh, locally, and with love each day.

What You Will Do

We are seeking an entrepreneurial, hands-on VP of Retail Operations to run the Retail Division of Orwashers as a standalone business. Reporting directly to the CEO, you will have full accountability for retail revenue, margin, and EBITDA, and you will shape everything a customer sees and tastes, from the counter to the ovens. This is the leader who makes someone walk past two other bakeries to get to ours, and who sets the culture and the standard for how people are treated here.

Responsibilities:

• Own the retail P&L: build the annual budget with the COO/CFO, deliver it, and own the monthly close narrative (what happened, why, and what you are doing about it)


• Lead recipe costing, menu engineering, and pricing architecture across locations with different rents and different customers, including transfer pricing and service levels with the wholesale bakery


• Set front of house standards for service, speed, cleanliness, and merchandising, and manage labor scheduling, productivity, shrink, waste, and cash control


• Oversee back of house production planning, bake schedules, yield, food safety, health department readiness, and the craft standards that define the product


• Grow comp store sales, transactions, and average check through catering, special orders, holiday programs, e-commerce, and delivery, and assess new units when the time is right


• Direct the Retail Marketing Manager on brand, loyalty, digital, PR, and seasonal campaigns, owning the connection between marketing spend and sales results


• Direct the Retail HR Manager on hiring, training, performance management, and retention, and build a bench of GMs who can run a store without you in it


• Maintain compliance with NYC and NY State labor law, health code, and ADA


• Ensure POS, scheduling, inventory, and reporting systems produce numbers that are right, timely, and used, and direct maintenance so equipment and facilities are well kept

Who You Are

The ideal candidate is a true entrepreneur with deep roots in retail and hospitality. You are a positive, solution-oriented team player with excellent communication and execution, an unrelenting commitment to quality, and the attention to detail to catch what others miss. You do not need to be a baker, but you know what you are looking at when you walk into a production area. Most of all, you are excited to elevate a historic NYC bakery and lead it into its next chapter.

Qualifications:

• 10+ years in multi-unit retail food leadership, with at least 5 years running multiple locations


• Direct P&L ownership of a business or division of comparable or greater scale


• Genuine command of both front of house and production or back of house


• Fluency in unit economics: recipe costing, labor modeling, price architecture, and contribution margin


• Demonstrated ability to develop general managers and build a management bench


• Working knowledge of New York labor and health regulations, or the ability to get there fast


• Comfortable spending your days in the stores, alongside your teams


• Bakery, café, or fresh-production experience where the product is made on site preferred


• Exposure to a wholesale or manufacturing operation alongside retail a plus

Benefits

• $180 - $200k


• Performance-based bonus


• Health insurance


• Paid time off


• 401(k)

We are an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.