New Restaurant Opening Leader

Café Zupas is growing, and we’re looking for an exceptional restaurant operations leader to help us open what’s next.

The New Restaurant Opening Leader will lead the successful opening and stabilization of new Café Zupas restaurants across our growing footprint. This is not just an opening-week role. You’ll own the journey from pre-opening preparation through building the team, establishing our operating rhythms, delivering strong results, and ultimately transitioning a healthy restaurant to its long-term field leadership.

We’re looking for someone who has experience opening restaurants, loves building teams from the ground up, and knows how to turn a brand-new building and a group of newly hired people into a high-performing restaurant.

About Café Zupas

Café Zupas is a fast-growing fast-casual restaurant company known for scratch-made soups, salads, and sandwiches, expanding into new markets across the country. As we accelerate new restaurant development, we’re investing in the leaders and systems that will allow us to grow the right way — and this role sits at the center of that growth.

What You’ll Own

Lead New Restaurant Openings

• Lead multiple new restaurant openings throughout the year.
• Own operational readiness leading into each opening.
• Coordinate with Operations, Training, Recruiting, Facilities, Culinary, Marketing, and other partners to ensure every restaurant is ready to win.
• Create consistency and repeatability across every opening.

Build Great Teams

• Partner with Recruiting and field leadership to build strong leadership and hourly teams before opening.
• Develop new restaurant leaders through hands-on coaching and clear expectations.
• Establish Café Zupas culture, standards, and leadership behaviors from Day 1.
• Build a restaurant that can continue performing after the opening team leaves.

Drive the Business

• Own the early operational performance of new restaurants.
• Quickly identify the behaviors behind the results and coach teams to improve them.
• Establish strong execution around revenue, food, labor, hospitality, speed, accuracy, and overall restaurant operations.
• Build sustainable routines — not temporary opening-week results.

Stabilize & Transition

• Stay engaged beyond opening day to help each restaurant reach consistent operational performance.
• Partner closely with the local District Mentor throughout the opening and stabilization period.
• Develop the restaurant leadership team so they are prepared to lead independently.
• Transition strong, stable restaurants to their long-term field leadership.

Build a World-Class Opening System

• Continuously improve how Café Zupas opens restaurants.
• Capture lessons from every opening and turn them into better systems, tools, training, and routines.
• Help us build an opening model capable of supporting significant future growth.

Who We’re Looking For

• 2 +years of multi-unit restaurant operations leadership, including personally leading 10+ new restaurant openings.
• A clear understanding of what separates a great opening from an average one.
• Experience opening restaurants across multiple markets or states.
• Exceptional ability to build and develop restaurant leaders.
• Ability to diagnose operational results and translate them into specific behaviors and actions.
• Ability to create structure and clarity in a fast-moving environment.
• Comfort working alongside restaurant teams and partnering with senior company leadership.
• High standards paired with strong relationship-building skills.
• A track record of thriving in growth, change, and environments where you’re expected to figure things out and make them better.
• Willingness to travel approximately 75% of the time, in blocks tied to each restaurant’s opening and stabilization schedule.

What Success Looks Like

A successful opening isn’t simply getting the doors open.

Success means we leave behind a restaurant with a great team, strong leaders, Café Zupas culture, great operating habits, and healthy business results — a team capable of winning without us.

That’s the standard this role will help us build across every new Café Zupas restaurant.

Why Café Zupas?

Café Zupas has an ambitious future. As we enter new markets and accelerate new restaurant development, we’re investing in the leaders and systems that will allow us to grow the right way.

This role has the opportunity to shape more than individual restaurant openings. You’ll help build the One Best Way Café Zupas opens restaurants as we grow.