Lead Food Manager

Our Lead Food Manager role is a brilliant step if you’re ready to stretch your leadership skills to fully lead and inspire a management team and department. You will have clear accountability, realistic expectations and structured support. It’s a win:win – we give you the time and space to coach your team and strengthen your leadership skills, and you help us to create even better in-store service for our customers and colleagues.

Your leadership experience could be in any customer focussed industry, not necessarily Food Retail. In fact, we’re keen to nurture the broadest mindsets in order to grow a management team that operates effectively across the store, so don’t worry if you don’t have the technical knowledge, we’re looking primarily for the desire to achieve success through your people and a love for connecting with customers. 

What you’ll be doing

Our purpose is that driven by our passion for food, together we serve and help every customer.

You’ll be working in one of our busiest and most complex stores, reporting directly to the Store Manager and leading a team of managers. It’s fast-paced. Every day will bring unexpected challenges. You won’t always have the answers – that’s fine – but by solving short-term problems and making medium-term changes, you’ll support your team to keep delivering.

Food sets the standard for the rest of the store – getting it right means our customers choose to return again and again so it’s critical that grocery, fresh and produce are always available and looking their best. Your leadership will deliver throughout the day, every day.

Specifically, your role is to set the direction of travel in your area for the next 1-3 months. 

What success looks like

There’s a lot to learn. Every day you‘ll be strengthening your existing leadership skills and adding new ones, here’s how:

• You’ll be coaching, motivating and guiding your managers to work as a productive team, building their capabilities and leading them through change.
• You’ve mastered helping your team put themselves in the customers’ shoes, taking genuine pride in how we deliver a better service and spot opportunities
• You’ll be leading through communication; clearly articulating how we’re performing and inspiring improvements for now, and the next quarter
• You will be developing yourself as the operational expert and acting as a role model for your team
• You’re confident making decisions at pace and feel empowered and accountable to run your area of the store – and to deputise for the Store Manager

About you

You might currently be managing a smaller supermarket or convenience store or already in a team leadership role. Maybe you’re looking for a new challenge after a career break or transferring from another big store retail environment or another sector. Wherever you’re working now, you’ve demonstrated you can make a difference and love being part of a team.

What matters most is you – that you’re motivated to develop, dedicated to bringing out the best in others and, like all of us, passionate about customer service. After all, that’s what our stores are all about.

Where next?

Join Sainsbury’s instore management teams and you’ll enjoy the support and the opportunity to deliver excellence. When joining us you will receive a clear induction and orientation alongside a training plan specific to your needs that you’ll build alongside your manager. They will support and coach you to deliver great performance, whilst having plenty of time to develop.

As one of our Lead Managers you could move into a Deputy Store Manager or Store Manager role with us. You’ll also be well placed for a leadership challenge in head office or across the Sainsbury’s family: Habitat, Tu, Argos, Sainsbury’s Bank and Nectar 360. Trust us – we know how to make the most of your potential.

Added benefits

Salary will be dependent upon your experience as well as the store size, complexity and location. Alongside this, we also offer a great range of benefits for our managers, including: 

• Discount card – 10% discount off on your shopping at Sainsbury’s, Argos, Tu and Habitat after four weeks. This increases to 15% discount off at Sainsbury’s every Friday and Saturday and 15% off at Argos every pay day.
• Free food and hot drinks provided for Colleagues in all our stores.
• Generous holiday entitlement, maternity and paternity leave. 
• Pension – we’ll match 4-7% of your pension contributions.
• Sainsbury’s share scheme – build up an investment at discounted rates
• Wellbeing support – access to emotional support, counselling, legal and financial advice
• Colleague networks – link with like-minded people to help fulfil your potential.
• Our Cycle to Work scheme gives you the opportunity to hire a new bike and cycling equipment, whilst saving on tax and NI. 
• Special offers on gym memberships, restaurants, holidays, retail vouchers and more.

Click ‘apply’ to start your Sainsbury’s journey

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