Front of house and kitchen, growing into management
For someone with real hospitality behind them who wants to learn the whole operation rather than one half of it — the floor, the pass, and eventually the room.
Full time · Crystal Palace
We are looking for someone with a real hand in hospitality already, who wants to learn the whole operation rather than one half of it. You will work across the floor and the kitchen, and move into management as you become the person the room already turns to.
This is deliberately not a fixed post. You cannot run a restaurant from the outside, so you start by learning both sides of the pass properly.
Most of our food is unfamiliar to the people who order it. A guest who has never had khachapuri or khinkali will ask you what to choose — and the answer they get is most of what they remember about the evening.
What the job is
Front of house
- Welcome, seat and look after guests — advising people, not processing them
- Take guests through an unfamiliar menu with enough knowledge to genuinely help them choose
- Run the book: reservations, the floor plan, walk-ins, and a table ready before anyone sits at it
- Serve wine, cocktails and coffee to a standard you can talk about
- Keep the place running, so the wash-up never becomes somebody’s crisis at 9pm
Kitchen
- Keep the kitchen moving: garnish, prep boxes, sauce pots, wash-up
- Learn our dishes on the job, starting with khachapuri — the dish the restaurant is built on
- Cook to the recipe and method, from the written record rather than from memory
- Move into prep: guided at first, then working from the method on your own
- Keep food safety records accurately — temperatures, checklists, and the allergen detail behind every dish
As you move into management
- Run a service: the pass, the room, and the calls between them
- Look after the rota and the people — who is on, who is being trained, and who needs a word
- Hold standards that outlast a shift, and the written record that proves them
- Watch the commercial side: covers, what is selling, what is running out and what that costs us
What you need
- Real hospitality experience — you know what a good service feels like, and you spot a bad one early enough to fix it
- Genuine warmth with people, and the same manner with colleagues as with guests
- The confidence to answer properly rather than guess, and to find out when you do not know
- Care with the detail that matters: allergens, temperatures, and the records behind them
- Willingness to say when something has gone wrong, early — told early, it is a small problem
- Comfortable working from a phone: your shift, your tasks and every recipe live in our staff portal
Useful, not essential
- Wine, cocktail or barista knowledge
- Kitchen experience, or a genuine appetite to get it
- Any supervisory experience — a section, a shift, or training somebody new
What we will teach you
Nobody arrives knowing Georgian food, and we do not expect you to. You do need to want to learn it well enough to sell it, and then to teach it.
What you get from us
We will support you, and make sure you have the knowledge — and the confidence — to do the best you can for a guest. You are not expected to work it out on your own.
There is a written guide for every part of the job: the room, the book, wine, cocktails, coffee and the kitchen, all kept current, with every recipe’s method available to study before you make something and to keep open while you do. The portal keeps a record of what you have learned, so your progress is something you can see rather than something you are told about at a review.
We would rather grow a manager who has plated the food and cleared the tables than hire one who has done neither.
Who this suits
Someone who wants to end up running a room, and understands that the way to get there is to be able to do every job in it.
It will not suit someone who wants a fixed, narrow role, or who wants the title before the shifts.
Get in touch
Send us your CV and a couple of lines about where you have worked and what you want to learn next. We read everything, and we will come back to you.
hello@khachapuri.co.ukKhachapuri, 33 Westow Hill, Crystal Palace, London SE19 1TQ