General Manager - Cholapink

Peruvian Fast-Casual Flagship — New York City

Opening: Aug/Sept 2026

Start date: Approximately 6 weeks pre-opening

Location: New York City

Salary: Competitive, dependent on experience

Progression: Opportunity to grow into a broader multi-site, launch, or operations leadership role as we scale

About the opportunity

One of the world’s leading Peruvian chefs is bringing a new fast-casual Peruvian restaurant concept to New York City.

This is the first site, but it is not intended to be the only site. We are building the flagship: the guest experience, service standards, team culture, operating systems, training model, and commercial rhythm that future locations will learn from.

We are looking for an exceptional General Manager to lead the launch, stabilisation, and optimisation of our first New York location.

This is not a role for someone who simply wants to inherit a finished restaurant. It is a role for someone who knows how to open properly, lead from the floor, build systems, develop people, drive sales, control costs, and create a site that can become the benchmark for future growth.

The role

You will take ownership of the restaurant from approximately six weeks before opening.

Working closely with the founding team, Head Chef, chef partner, and wider project team, you will lead the final pre-opening phase, recruit and train the front-of-house team, embed service standards, prepare the restaurant for launch, and then drive performance through the critical first months of trading.

The right person will combine three things:

Impeccable GM fundamentals

You are a proper restaurant General Manager. You understand hospitality, pace, labour, sales, cleanliness, team culture, guest recovery, cash control, scheduling, training, compliance, and daily standards. You know how a restaurant should feel, sound, move, and perform.

Proven opening experience

You have opened restaurants before and understand the pressure, detail, urgency, and discipline required. You know how to prepare a team before launch, fix problems quickly, keep standards high under pressure, and turn early chaos into a stable operating rhythm.

Fast-casual and scale mindset

You understand the difference between a good single restaurant and a repeatable operating model. You are used to high-volume, fast-paced service where consistency, speed, hospitality, labour control, and systems matter every day. You build processes that other people can follow.

What you will achieve in your first 12 months

Launch the flagship successfully

Lead the final six-week pre-opening period for the front-of-house and site operation. Ensure the team, training, service standards, guest journey, systems, equipment, opening procedures, and daily management routines are ready before launch.

Build and lead the team

Recruit, onboard, train, and motivate the opening team. Create a culture of warmth, pace, accountability, pride, and high standards. Build a team that can handle the pressure of launch and then mature into a confident, stable restaurant operation.

Deliver the guest experience

Own the guest journey from arrival to exit. Ensure every guest experiences fast, warm, informed, consistent hospitality. You will make the restaurant feel energetic, generous, sharp, and well run — not transactional or chaotic.

Stabilise the restaurant after opening

Lead the site through its first weeks and months of trading. Identify what is working, what is breaking, and what needs to change. Create rhythm around daily briefings, shift leadership, sales targets, labour, guest feedback, stock, cleanliness, maintenance, and team performance.

Optimise commercial performance

Own site-level performance across sales, labour, controllable costs, guest satisfaction, team retention, speed of service, average transaction value, and operational efficiency. You should be comfortable with numbers and know how to turn performance data into practical action.

Create operating systems

Build and improve the systems that allow the restaurant to run consistently: opening and closing checklists, shift plans, training materials, service standards, cash procedures, cleaning routines, guest recovery processes, reporting rhythms, and manager handover notes.

Partner closely with the Head Chef

Work in true partnership with the Head Chef. The kitchen and floor need to operate as one team, with shared standards around pace, quality, communication, cleanliness, guest experience, and commercial performance.

Build for future growth

Treat site one as the prototype for future restaurants. The systems, training, standards, and learnings you create should help the business open future sites faster, better, and more consistently.

Over time, there may be an opportunity for the right person to grow into a broader role across new openings, multi-site management, training, or operations leadership.

Who you are

You are a high-calibre General Manager with strong restaurant instincts and excellent operating discipline.

You may come from premium fast-casual, high-volume casual dining, chef-led counter service, hospitality groups, or scalable restaurant brands — but wherever you come from, you have evidence of excellence.

You are hands-on, organised, calm under pressure, and highly standards-driven. You can lead a busy shift, coach a team member, manage a guest issue, challenge a labour plan, read a P&L, run a pre-shift briefing, and spot a dirty corner before anyone else does.

You love hospitality, but you are not vague about it. You know that great guest experience comes from training, standards, pace, cleanliness, product knowledge, team energy, and thousands of small details done well every day.

You are low-ego and collaborative. You know how to work with chefs, founders, investors, project teams, and hourly team members. You can be warm and human while still holding a very high bar.

You are excited by building something from the beginning. You understand that the first site matters because it will define the culture, operating model, and standard for everything that follows.

What we are looking for

Strong candidates will likely have:

• Proven experience as a General Manager, Opening General Manager, Senior Assistant General Manager, Multi-Site Manager, or Operations Manager in a high-quality restaurant environment

• Clear evidence of strong GM fundamentals across people, product, service, sales, labour, systems, standards, and compliance

• Experience opening at least one restaurant or major new hospitality operation

• Experience in fast-casual, premium casual, high-volume, or scalable restaurant environments

• A track record of recruiting, training, and retaining strong hourly teams

• Strong understanding of labour management, scheduling, sales growth, controllable costs, cash control, and site-level profitability

• Ability to create and maintain service standards, training materials, checklists, shift plans, and operating routines

• Strong floor presence and the ability to lead from the front during busy service

• Comfort using restaurant technology, reporting tools, POS systems, scheduling platforms, and guest feedback systems

• Strong knowledge of New York City hospitality standards, health and safety expectations, and compliance requirements

• Spanish language skills would be helpful but are not essential

• Experience with Latin American, Peruvian, or culturally specific food concepts would be a plus, but is not required if the operational calibre is high

You may not be right for this role if

• You are looking for a fully built restaurant with established systems

• You are a strong host but weak on numbers, labour, systems, or standards

• You enjoy openings but do not enjoy stabilising and optimising the business afterwards

• You are uncomfortable with fast-paced, high-volume service

• You prefer personality-led management over structured training and accountability

• You have not personally led teams through pressure, change, or operational ambiguity

• You are not excited by checklists, routines, reporting, and repeatable systems

• You see this as a short-term opening project rather than a flagship GM role with growth potential

Why join us

This is a rare opportunity to help launch the first New York site of an ambitious Peruvian fast-casual restaurant concept backed by serious culinary talent and growth ambitions.

You will have the chance to shape the DNA of the business: the team culture, guest experience, service standards, training systems, operating routines, and commercial discipline.

For the right person, this is not just a General Manager role. It is the opportunity to become a founding operational leader in a restaurant group with significant growth potential.

General Manager - Cholapink

Peruvian Fast-Casual Flagship — New York City

Opening: Aug/Sept 2026

Start date: Approximately 6 weeks pre-opening

Location: New York City

Salary: Competitive, dependent on experience

Progression: Opportunity to grow into a broader multi-site, launch, or operations leadership role as we scale

About the opportunity

One of the world’s leading Peruvian chefs is bringing a new fast-casual Peruvian restaurant concept to New York City.

This is the first site, but it is not intended to be the only site. We are building the flagship: the guest experience, service standards, team culture, operating systems, training model, and commercial rhythm that future locations will learn from.

We are looking for an exceptional General Manager to lead the launch, stabilisation, and optimisation of our first New York location.

This is not a role for someone who simply wants to inherit a finished restaurant. It is a role for someone who knows how to open properly, lead from the floor, build systems, develop people, drive sales, control costs, and create a site that can become the benchmark for future growth.

The role

You will take ownership of the restaurant from approximately six weeks before opening.

Working closely with the founding team, Head Chef, chef partner, and wider project team, you will lead the final pre-opening phase, recruit and train the front-of-house team, embed service standards, prepare the restaurant for launch, and then drive performance through the critical first months of trading.

The right person will combine three things:

Impeccable GM fundamentals

You are a proper restaurant General Manager. You understand hospitality, pace, labour, sales, cleanliness, team culture, guest recovery, cash control, scheduling, training, compliance, and daily standards. You know how a restaurant should feel, sound, move, and perform.

Proven opening experience

You have opened restaurants before and understand the pressure, detail, urgency, and discipline required. You know how to prepare a team before launch, fix problems quickly, keep standards high under pressure, and turn early chaos into a stable operating rhythm.

Fast-casual and scale mindset

You understand the difference between a good single restaurant and a repeatable operating model. You are used to high-volume, fast-paced service where consistency, speed, hospitality, labour control, and systems matter every day. You build processes that other people can follow.

What you will achieve in your first 12 months

Launch the flagship successfully

Lead the final six-week pre-opening period for the front-of-house and site operation. Ensure the team, training, service standards, guest journey, systems, equipment, opening procedures, and daily management routines are ready before launch.

Build and lead the team

Recruit, onboard, train, and motivate the opening team. Create a culture of warmth, pace, accountability, pride, and high standards. Build a team that can handle the pressure of launch and then mature into a confident, stable restaurant operation.

Deliver the guest experience

Own the guest journey from arrival to exit. Ensure every guest experiences fast, warm, informed, consistent hospitality. You will make the restaurant feel energetic, generous, sharp, and well run — not transactional or chaotic.

Stabilise the restaurant after opening

Lead the site through its first weeks and months of trading. Identify what is working, what is breaking, and what needs to change. Create rhythm around daily briefings, shift leadership, sales targets, labour, guest feedback, stock, cleanliness, maintenance, and team performance.

Optimise commercial performance

Own site-level performance across sales, labour, controllable costs, guest satisfaction, team retention, speed of service, average transaction value, and operational efficiency. You should be comfortable with numbers and know how to turn performance data into practical action.

Create operating systems

Build and improve the systems that allow the restaurant to run consistently: opening and closing checklists, shift plans, training materials, service standards, cash procedures, cleaning routines, guest recovery processes, reporting rhythms, and manager handover notes.

Partner closely with the Head Chef

Work in true partnership with the Head Chef. The kitchen and floor need to operate as one team, with shared standards around pace, quality, communication, cleanliness, guest experience, and commercial performance.

Build for future growth

Treat site one as the prototype for future restaurants. The systems, training, standards, and learnings you create should help the business open future sites faster, better, and more consistently.

Over time, there may be an opportunity for the right person to grow into a broader role across new openings, multi-site management, training, or operations leadership.

Who you are

You are a high-calibre General Manager with strong restaurant instincts and excellent operating discipline.

You may come from premium fast-casual, high-volume casual dining, chef-led counter service, hospitality groups, or scalable restaurant brands — but wherever you come from, you have evidence of excellence.

You are hands-on, organised, calm under pressure, and highly standards-driven. You can lead a busy shift, coach a team member, manage a guest issue, challenge a labour plan, read a P&L, run a pre-shift briefing, and spot a dirty corner before anyone else does.

You love hospitality, but you are not vague about it. You know that great guest experience comes from training, standards, pace, cleanliness, product knowledge, team energy, and thousands of small details done well every day.

You are low-ego and collaborative. You know how to work with chefs, founders, investors, project teams, and hourly team members. You can be warm and human while still holding a very high bar.

You are excited by building something from the beginning. You understand that the first site matters because it will define the culture, operating model, and standard for everything that follows.

What we are looking for

Strong candidates will likely have:

• Proven experience as a General Manager, Opening General Manager, Senior Assistant General Manager, Multi-Site Manager, or Operations Manager in a high-quality restaurant environment

• Clear evidence of strong GM fundamentals across people, product, service, sales, labour, systems, standards, and compliance

• Experience opening at least one restaurant or major new hospitality operation

• Experience in fast-casual, premium casual, high-volume, or scalable restaurant environments

• A track record of recruiting, training, and retaining strong hourly teams

• Strong understanding of labour management, scheduling, sales growth, controllable costs, cash control, and site-level profitability

• Ability to create and maintain service standards, training materials, checklists, shift plans, and operating routines

• Strong floor presence and the ability to lead from the front during busy service

• Comfort using restaurant technology, reporting tools, POS systems, scheduling platforms, and guest feedback systems

• Strong knowledge of New York City hospitality standards, health and safety expectations, and compliance requirements

• Spanish language skills would be helpful but are not essential

• Experience with Latin American, Peruvian, or culturally specific food concepts would be a plus, but is not required if the operational calibre is high

You may not be right for this role if

• You are looking for a fully built restaurant with established systems

• You are a strong host but weak on numbers, labour, systems, or standards

• You enjoy openings but do not enjoy stabilising and optimising the business afterwards

• You are uncomfortable with fast-paced, high-volume service

• You prefer personality-led management over structured training and accountability

• You have not personally led teams through pressure, change, or operational ambiguity

• You are not excited by checklists, routines, reporting, and repeatable systems

• You see this as a short-term opening project rather than a flagship GM role with growth potential

Why join us

This is a rare opportunity to help launch the first New York site of an ambitious Peruvian fast-casual restaurant concept backed by serious culinary talent and growth ambitions.

You will have the chance to shape the DNA of the business: the team culture, guest experience, service standards, training systems, operating routines, and commercial discipline.

For the right person, this is not just a General Manager role. It is the opportunity to become a founding operational leader in a restaurant group with significant growth potential.