District Manager wanted for The Chinese Merchant

Do you want to help drive and develop a retail chain in growth?

The Chinese Grocer is seeking a strong and proactive District Manager who will have overall operational responsibility for our stores and become the central leader for our store managers.

As district manager you will be responsible for operations and results across our stores and report directly to the management.

The position is newly created. This means you will not take over a fully established operating model, but will be tasked with building on it: standards, follow-up structures, KPIs and management routines. You will have great influence on how the retail organization should look, and corresponding responsibility to ensure it works in practice.

Your area of responsibility

• Full P&L responsibility for all stores
• Ensuring high standard of food safety and self-check procedures across retail
• Overall responsibility for operations and financial performance across the stores
• Leadership, coaching and follow-up with regard to store managers
• Follow-up on turnover, payroll percentage, productivity, shrinkage and earnings
• Development of procedures, operating routines and performance monitoring across the chain
• Staffing and resource planning
• Regular store visits with concrete follow-up on operations and management
• Recruitment, onboarding and development of store managers and key staff
• Implementation of campaigns, price and assortment changes in collaboration with procurement, logistics and marketing
• Budgeting and ongoing financial follow-up per store
• Working to improve customer experience, store standards and commercial performance.

You will also be involved in developing our retail business

The Chinese Grocer is growing, and therefore the role is not only about keeping the existing operations running.

You will also be involved in

• Development and standardization of our way of running stores.
• Preparation and improvement of procedures and operating routines.
• Development of KPIs and performance monitoring.
• Project management and opening of new stores.
• Staffing and organizational planning in connection with growth.
• Development of our store concept and customer experience.
• Identification of improvement opportunities across the chain.
• Budgeting and ongoing follow-up on stores' financial performance.
• Sparring with the management about the development of the retail business.

Therefore you must be able to drive the stores today and help build the retail organization we will need tomorrow.

The role in practice

We are not looking for a district manager who only works from an office.

You must be visible in the stores, know the store managers, understand the operations and be able to see when something isn’t working.

At the same time you should be able to lift your head from the individual store and identify patterns and improvements across the entire chain.

Who are you?

We imagine you have experience in retail and preferably experience managing multiple stores.

However, the most important thing is that you have a strong understanding of operations, people and economics.

We expect you to

• Have documented experience in management in retail.
• Have a strong understanding of store operations.
• Can lead and develop middle managers.
• Are used to working with KPIs and financial metrics.
• Understand the relationship between revenue, payroll costs, productivity and profitability.
• Are structured, disciplined and follow up consistently.
• Dare to set expectations and have the necessary conversations.
• Have high execution power.
• Are analytical, yet very practically oriented.
• Can create structure in a company where things are moving quickly.
• Thrive with responsibility and short decision-making paths.
• Can work independently and make decisions without needing approval of every detail.

It is advantageous if you have previously worked as district manager, store manager, retail manager, regional manager or in a similar multi-site retail role.

Apply for the position by sending your CV, application etc. to [email protected] and indicate subject: District Manager for DKK

About us

Since 1990 our vision has been to bridge East and West. We believe that culture is best shared through food, and we select authentic Asian goods of high quality. Our mission is to inspire and create experiences – not just sell goods.

The company is today run by the second generation of the family, who bring experience from the corporate world and a strong passion for development. We are a young company with big ambitions and work in an environment that resembles a startup.

Join us on our journey, where every day we bring East and West closer together – one conversation and one experience at a time.