Director of Restaurants jobs

Position Title: Vice President, Operations

Location: Edmonton / Sherwood Park region, AB

About Pasta Pantry

For more than 30 years, Pasta Pantry has made fresh Italian food from scratch. We produce fresh pasta and sauces at volume, every day, for our Sherwood Park restaurant, our catering business, and our location at the Bountiful Farmers Market. We're a family-owned business and a place where people build careers, not just jobs. Our culture runs on accountability, teamwork, continuous improvement, and leading by example. The next chapter is about tightening operations and growing across the Edmonton region.

About the Role

We're hiring a Vice President, Operations to run Pasta Pantry day to day and help grow it. You'll report directly to ownership and carry full responsibility for operations, people, and financial results.

This is not a desk job. You'll be on the floor and in the kitchen. You'll know what's on the line during a Friday rush, how production is tracking against catering orders, and what last week's prime cost was without looking it up.

This is an impactful leadership role. You’ll have strategic input and real autonomy to lead. In return, ownership gets a structured weekly report on the numbers, the priorities, and what you're doing about both. The VP, Operations plays a strategic role in Pasta Pantry’s continued growth, and will share in the success they help to shape.

What You'll Do

Operations

• Day-to-day performance across the restaurant, catering, the market, and fresh pasta and sauce production.
• Clear operating standards, systems, and structure that hold up on a busy night and scale as we grow.
• Consistency in quality and guest experience, whether it's a plate on the floor or a 200-person catering order.

The Numbers

• Budgeting, forecasting, and responsibility for the full P&L.
• Revenue, labour, food cost, prime cost, and margins, managed weekly, not reviewed quarterly.
• Financial controls and reporting that tell ownership the truth fast.
• Honest evaluation of new opportunities, with a recommendation and the math behind it.

People

• Lead, coach, and develop the management team, and hold them accountable.
• Strong collaboration between Front of House, Back of House, production, catering, and admin.
• Hiring, onboarding, training, and succession planning.
• Change that respects our long-tenured people while raising the standard.

Growth

• Build and execute the growth plan with ownership: new locations, expanded catering, and other revenue opportunities across the Edmonton region.
• Make sure the systems, people, and production capacity are in place before we grow, not after.

Who You Are

You're a strategic operator, not an administrator. You're running a business right now, not advising one from the side. When you walk into a room, people know who's in charge, and they respect you for how you work, not for your title.

• You think and act like an owner. You take the hard calls, and the credit or the blame, that comes with them.
• You lead with humility, integrity, and follow-through. Your team trusts you because you're consistent.
• You build people up. Managers get better working for you.
• You turn ideas into plans and plans into numbers you can measure.
• You're comfortable with real autonomy and you keep ownership informed without being asked.
• You respect what makes an established business work and you still push it forward.
• You work well in a diverse, multicultural team.
• Most importantly, you can be trusted to run this business as though it were your own.

What You Bring

• Senior operational leadership in restaurants, hospitality, or food service, with a track record you can show.
• You've personally owned the P&L of a multimillion-dollar operation and can walk us through its numbers from memory.
• Hands-on experience in a scratch or production-heavy kitchen. You understand what it takes to make fresh pasta and sauces at volume, not just plate food that arrives ready.
• Deep knowledge of both Front and Back of House.
• Strength in budgeting, forecasting, cost control, and financial analysis.
• A history of building management teams and the systems that let them run without you in the room.
• Experience leading change and delivering results under pressure.
• Strong Assets: multi-location operations, new-location openings, catering at scale, or food production and wholesale.

Compensation

A competitive base salary plus meaningful performance-based upside for the right leader.

If you grow the business, you share in it.

How to Apply

Submit your resume and cover letter for review.

Please include within your cover letter an example of a relevant role you have held, briefly summarizing what your prime cost was and how you impacted it’s movement.

All applications will be reviewed, but only candidates selected for interview will be contacted.

Pasta Pantry is an equal opportunity employer and encourages applications from individuals representing diverse backgrounds and experiences. We are committed to providing an inclusive and accessible candidate experience. If you require accommodation during the recruitment and selection process, please let us know and we’ll work with you.