F&B Manager

Join us at EIT:

At the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), we’re on a mission to translate scientific discovery into real world impact. We bring together visionary scientists, technologists, engineers, researchers, educators and innovators to tackle humanity’s greatest challenges in four transformative areas:

• Health, Medical Science & Generative Biology
• Food Security & Sustainable Agriculture
• Climate Change & Managing CO₂
• Artificial Intelligence & Robotics

This is ambitious work - work that demands curiosity, courage, and a relentless drive to make a difference. At EIT, you’ll join a community built on excellence, innovation, tenacity, trust, and collaboration, where bold ideas become real-world breakthroughs. Together, we push boundaries, embrace complexity, and create solutions to scale ideas from lab to society. Explore more at www.eit.org.

Your Role:

At EIT we are seeking an experienced Food & Beverage Manager who will be responsible for developing and delivering the Institute's food and beverage strategy across a growing portfolio of hospitality venues and workplace services. The role will create exceptional hospitality experiences that support employee wellbeing, collaboration and community while ensuring commercially sustainable, operationally excellent and scalable services as the campus expands.

Working closely with senior leadership, operations, and external partners, the Food & Beverage Manager will oversee the strategy, planning and operation of multiple venues across the campus. These will include input into a public facing pub & café, premium workplace food and beverage concepts, salad bars, hospitality spaces, and large-scale event catering.

As the Institute expands from its current footprint to a campus supporting thousands of employees, researchers, visitors, and partners, the successful candidate will play a pivotal role in creating vibrant hospitality environments that reflect EIT's ambition, culture, and commitment to excellence.

The Food & Beverage Manager will combine strategic vision with operational expertise, building and leading a high-performing team while ensuring all hospitality offerings deliver exceptional service, operational excellence, and commercial sustainability.

Your Responsibilities:

Hospitality Strategy & Development

• Develop and implement a comprehensive food and beverage strategy aligned with EIT's long-term growth plans and organisational objectives.
• Define the hospitality vision for each venue and location, identifying the most appropriate concepts, service models, and dining experiences to meet the needs of employees, researchers, visitors, and external guests.
• Create and maintain a strategic roadmap for hospitality development across all sites, including key milestones, timelines, resource requirements, and critical path activities.
• Identify opportunities to introduce innovative food and beverage concepts that enhance the campus experience and promote collaboration, wellbeing, and community engagement.
• Provide strategic oversight of the Institute's public hospitality venues, working in partnership with venue operators to ensure concepts, service standards and customer experience align with the Institute's hospitality strategy.
• Work closely with the Events team to create innovative hospitality experiences that enhance the Institute's reputation and support community engagement.
• Develop scalable food and beverage solutions to support a range of events, from small executive gatherings to large-scale conferences and public events with audiences of 500+ attendees.

Venue Operations & Service Excellence

• Oversee food and beverage operations across multiple sites, ensuring consistency in service standards, quality, presentation, and customer experience.
• Establish and maintain operational procedures, service standards, and quality assurance processes across all venues.
• Monitor operational performance and customer feedback, implementing continuous improvement initiatives to enhance the overall dining and hospitality experience.
• Ensure compliance with all food safety, health and safety, licensing, and regulatory requirements.
• Develop and monitor key performance indicators to measure service quality, operational effectiveness, and customer satisfaction.

Commercial & Supplier Management

• Develop and manage food and beverage budgets, forecasts, and operational expenditure.
• Lead supplier and contract management activities, establishing performance measures, service level agreements and regular review processes to ensure consistently high standards.
• Lead procurement activities for food, beverage, equipment, and hospitality services, negotiating commercial agreements where appropriate.
• Use customer and staff insight to identify opportunities to improve operational efficiency, optimise costs, and reduce waste while maintaining exceptional service standards.
• Support the development of sustainable sourcing practices and environmentally responsible food and beverage operations.

Team Leadership

• Build, develop, and lead a high-performing food and beverage team capable of supporting the Institute's rapid growth.
• Develop workforce plans and organisational structures to support the expansion of hospitality operations across multiple sites.
• Provide leadership, coaching, and development opportunities to team members, fostering a culture of excellence, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Stakeholder Management

• Build strong relationships with internal stakeholders across Facilities, Operations, Events, Workplace Experience, Estates, and Executive Leadership teams.
• Act as the primary point of contact for all food and beverage matters across the Institute.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure hospitality services contribute positively to the wider employee, visitor, and community experience.
• Represent EIT's hospitality vision with external partners, suppliers, and industry stakeholders.

Requirements

Essential Skills, Qualifications & Experience:

• Significant experience managing food and beverage operations within a hospitality, corporate, workplace, destination venue, private members' club, or multi-site environment.
• Demonstrable experience developing and launching new hospitality concepts, venues, or food and beverage services.
• Proven experience managing multi-site operations and maintaining consistent service standards across diverse locations.
• Strong commercial acumen with experience managing budgets, forecasting, procurement, and supplier relationships.
• Experience leading and developing high-performing teams within a fast-paced environment.
• Strong project management skills with the ability to oversee multiple initiatives simultaneously.
• Strong understanding of food safety legislation, health and safety requirements, and hospitality compliance standards.
• Exceptional organisational skills and attention to detail.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Ability to balance strategic planning with hands-on operational delivery.

Desirable Knowledge, Skills and Experience:

• Experience within a research institute, university, innovation campus, cultural destination, or similarly complex environment.
• Experience overseeing public-facing hospitality venues including restaurants, cafés, bakeries, or specialty food concepts.
• Experience supporting large-scale conferences, events, and VIP hospitality programmes.
• Knowledge of workplace experience, community-building initiatives, and employee engagement through hospitality.
• Professional hospitality, catering, business management, or related qualifications.

Benefits

We offer the following benefits:

• Competitive salary (dependent on experience) + travel allowance + bonus
• Enhanced holiday. Our annual leave allowance is 25 days plus 8 bank holidays and an additional 3 days between Christmas and New Year. You will also have the opportunity to purchase an additional 5 days annual leave in January and July.
• Pension - Employer contribution 7.5%, minimum employee contribution 5%
• Life Assurance.
• Income Protection
• Private Medical Insurance as standard for you, your partner and any dependents. Including hospital Cash Plan
• Employee discounts
• Electric car scheme
• Nursery Salary Sacrifice scheme
• Cycle to Work Scheme
• Family Planning
• Neurodiversity support including advise and assessments
• Coaching & Therapy services

Working Together - What It Involves:

• You must have the right to work permanently in the UK with a willingness to travel as necessary. We cannot offer sponsorship for this role.
• You will live in, or within easy commuting distance of, Oxford (or be willing to relocate) and can commit to being site based.