About the Role: Responsibilities, Skills, and Requirements
Ever imagined being the driving force behind Abu Dhabi’s next standout café concept? Here’s your chance to bring a vision to life from the ground up. We’re searching for an experienced manager to launch and lead our brand-new Japanese-style matcha project—starting with catering and pop-up experiences, and culminating in a full-fledged café by the end of the year. If you get energized by blank slates and have a love for specialty coffee culture, this could be the opportunity you’ve been waiting for.
About the Company
We’re a small, ambitious hospitality venture with big ideas and a serious respect for craft. Right now, we’re just at the starting line, but our goals are anything but small: think curated pop-up moments, collaborations with local creatives, and a café experience that does things a little differently. Our founders are inspired by Tokyo’s meticulous approach to coffee and tea—details matter here, and so does kindness. There's room to set the tone, build a culture, and create something meaningful from day one. Team quirks? We believe brainstorming over a great cup of matcha beats a boardroom every time.
What You’ll Be Doing
- Taking the reins on the entire project—concept development, launch strategy, and daily operations
- Building our brand identity with a stylish, authentic Japanese matcha vibe
- Recruiting, training, and leading a small but passionate team (think baristas, pop-up staff, and collaborators)
- Managing supplier relationships, sourcing specialty ingredients and equipment
- Planning and executing catering activations and eye-catching pop-up events around Abu Dhabi
- Developing (and fine-tuning) SOPs to ensure top-notch guest experiences, every single time
- Keeping a close handle on budgets, P&L, and all the nuts-and-bolts of a hospitality start-up
- Collaborating directly with founders on future storefront expansion—your ideas matter here!
- Staying relentlessly curious about trends and innovations in coffee, tea, and café culture
What You’ll Bring
Must-Haves:
- Proven management experience with reputable coffee shop or café concepts (bonus if you’ve led a launch or turnaround)
- A genuine passion for specialty coffee, matcha, or Japanese café culture
- Startup spirit—a can-do attitude and resilience when things get unpredictable
- Operational know-how: from staffing and inventory to finances and guest experience
- Strong communicator, able to hire, train, and inspire a tight-knit crew
- Creative eye for brand-building, events, and customer engagement
Nice-to-Haves:
- Experience with F&B pop-ups, catering projects, or multi-channel launches
- UAE market knowledge
- Design or marketing flair (even if it’s just a killer Instagram game)
- Barista skills or Japanese language basics
Not sure you tick every box? We’d still love to hear from you.
Why You’ll Love Working Here
- Shape a concept from the earliest blueprints—your fingerprints will be everywhere
- Fast-track your growth: play a leading role as we expand from project to flagship café
- Flexible, founder-collaborative environment—big on trust, low on ego
- Competitive salary, with opportunity for a performance-based bonus
- In Abu Dhabi’s evolving F&B scene, you’ll get to work where energy, ideas, and ambition are truly valued
New ideas, new beginnings, and (hopefully) plenty of matcha—if that sounds like your cup of tea, we can’t wait to meet you.
Common Interview Questions and Tips
To help you prepare and feel confident, here are some questions you might encounter during the interview process for this role.
- Can you share a specific example of how you’ve successfully launched or turned around a coffee shop or café, and what steps you took to ensure its success?
- How would you go about building a unique Japanese matcha-centric brand identity for our café in a way that feels authentic and appealing to Abu Dhabi’s audience?
- What are the key operational priorities you focus on when setting up the daily workflows, SOPs, and guest experience for a new café concept?
- Walk us through your process for curating and managing supplier relationships—how do you ensure ingredient quality and reliability, especially for specialty products like matcha?
- How do you approach recruiting and training a small team for start-up hospitality environments, especially when aiming for a high standard of service and brand alignment?
- Have you managed pop-up events or catering projects before? What challenges did you encounter, and how did you make sure each event stood out?
- Tell us about a time when something didn’t go according to plan at work—how did you adapt, and what did you learn from that experience?
- When facing an unpredictable or high-pressure situation (like a busy pop-up activation), how do you keep your team motivated and focused?
- Describe a situation where you had to balance creativity and financial discipline when making an operational decision. What factors guided your choice?
- How do you stay up-to-date with trends and innovations in specialty coffee, tea, or café culture, and how would you bring that knowledge into our early-stage projects?
- What excites you most about shaping a hospitality concept from scratch, especially one inspired by Japanese café culture?
- Our team values collaboration and creativity over hierarchy. Can you give an example of how you’ve thrived in a founder-led, low-ego environment?
- How do you approach building a positive, inclusive team culture from the ground up?
- If the founders asked you to pitch new ideas for an eye-catching, community-driven café pop-up, what would your process be for developing and