Club & Kitchen Manager - Pickle Athletics

Job Description

Job Description

Reports to: Owner/CEO Location: 4000 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA (Temescal), on-site Status: Full-time, exempt Schedule: Five days a week, primarily daytime and early evening

About Pickle Athletics

Pickle Athletics is Oakland's premier indoor pickleball and social club, in the heart of Temescal. Alongside our courts, we run a full cafe and bar, a gym, sauna, showers, and secure on-site parking. We host memberships, open play, leagues, private events, and corporate offsites. We opened in late 2025 and we're growing fast.

About the Role

We're hiring a Club & Kitchen Manager to run Pickle Athletics day to day and own the club's financial performance. This is the senior operator on site, accountable for the P&L, the member experience, staffing, programming, and private events. The goal of this hire is for ownership to step back from daily operations with full confidence that the club is in good hands.

Here's what makes this role different from a standard club manager job. Our courts, membership, and events programs are running well. Our food and beverage program is our single biggest untapped revenue opportunity, and it's the part of the business ownership has the least expertise in. We're looking for someone who can take genuine ownership of the kitchen and cafe: build the systems, raise the quality, expand the menu, control the costs, and grow the revenue.

If you've run a restaurant, you already know how to do the hardest parts of this job. The pickleball side is teachable. The kitchen side is not.

Why a restaurant operator should want this job

We know what restaurant hours look like. This role is built to be different:

• Five days a week, daytime-weighted hours. No 1am closes, no doubles, no clopens. Some evening and weekend presence for events and peak play, but nothing like a restaurant schedule.
• A real, predictable week. You can plan your life around this job.
• Actual ownership, not a corporate playbook. You'll build the systems yourself and see the results in the P&L within weeks.
• A direct line to the owners. No regional director, no franchise mandates, no committee. You bring us a good idea, we decide on it that week.
• Membership, gym, sauna, and court access included , plus shift meals.
• Comp that reflects the responsibility , with a performance bonus on top of base.
• Room to grow. We're building toward more than one location. The person who proves they can run this club well is the person we'd want leading that expansion.

What You'll OwnFood & Beverage (the priority of this role)

• Own the entire F&B program: cafe, bar support, catering, and private event food
• Build and maintain a real inventory system: par levels, ordering, receiving, counts, and waste tracking
• Own vendor relationships, pricing, and sourcing; negotiate and renegotiate as volume grows
• Evolve the menu for quality, consistency, speed, and margin across cafe, catering, and events
• Hit and hold a food cost target in the 28 to 32% range
• Build repeatable prep systems, recipe cards, and station standards so quality doesn't depend on who's working
• Hire, train, schedule, and develop kitchen and cafe staff
• Own health code compliance, kitchen cleanliness, and food safety standards
• Grow F&B revenue: drive cafe volume, expand catering, and build the food attach rate on private events
• Track F&B revenue, food cost, and labor cost weekly and report on them

Business & Financial Management

• Own the club's P&L: revenue, expenses, and profitability against budget
• Build and manage the annual operating budget in partnership with ownership
• Review financial reports (GoTab, CourtReserve, QuickBooks) regularly and course-correct
• Audit unpaid account fees and ensure dues are collected
• Optimize court utilization to maximize revenue
• Deliver a weekly written report to ownership covering revenue, costs, staffing, and anything needing a decision

Membership Experience & Growth

• Own the member experience end to end, from first inquiry through renewal
• Drive membership growth and retention
• Manage member communications: welcome emails, pauses, cancellations
• Respond to member and customer inquiries across email, WhatsApp, and voicemail
• Run weekly audits to ensure reservations and registrations align with policy
• Approve and prorate membership punches based on policy

Staff Leadership & Development

• Hire, train, and manage all club staff (Leads, Associates, and coordination with coaches)
• Administer staff training and knowledge checks
• Maintain a 90%+ average daily checklist completion rate across the team
• Hold regular meetings with lead staff on policy changes, compliance, and rollouts
• Review shift feedback, order data, and volume to determine staffing needs
• Submit tips and timesheet review every payroll period
• Manage performance, up to and including termination when warranted

Private Events

• Own the private events pipeline from inquiry through execution
• Grow the food and beverage attach on events and offsites
• Send invoicing for private events
• Create day-of timelines for on-site staff
• Ensure proper staffing and communication of event requirements
• Collect event tips and include in payroll

Programming & Operations

• Develop operational documentation and procedures for new initiatives
• Create and edit club programming on CourtReserve; update settings to align with policy
• Be on site for the implementation of new projects and programs
• Ensure proper staffing and communication of requirements for daily operations

Marketing & Communications

• Send the bi-weekly newsletter
• Perform website (Elementor) updates
• Develop and display TV graphics for private events, specials, and promotions
• Partner with the Events & Marketing Coordinator on local outreach and campaigns

Facility & Compliance

• Maintain club cleanliness, safety, and compliance standards
• Report and coordinate resolution of facility issues with vendors
• Conduct regular operational walkthroughs and audits

What We're Looking For

Core requirement:

• 3+ years as a General Manager, Kitchen Manager, F&B Director, or equivalent, running a restaurant, cafe, hotel F&B program, or hospitality venue with real P&L accountability
• Demonstrated ownership of a food program: inventory systems, vendor management, food cost control, menu development, and kitchen staffing
• A track record of growing F&B revenue, not just maintaining it
• Strong financial acumen: comfortable owning a budget, reading reports, and explaining variances
• Proven experience hiring, training, and developing a team
• ServSafe certified, or willing to certify within 30 days

Also important:

• Highly organized and proactive, comfortable wearing many hats in a small business
• Systems thinker: you document what you build so it survives you
• Genuinely enjoys hospitality and people, not just operations
• Based in or near Oakland; this is a full-time, on-site role

Nice to have, not required:

• Multi-channel F&B experience (daily service plus catering plus events)
• Pickleball, racquet sports, or fitness club experience
• Experience opening a venue or building a program from scratch

What Success Looks Like

First 90 days: You know the club, the team, and the numbers. You've built a working inventory and ordering system, taken over vendor relationships, and identified the top three opportunities in the kitchen.

First 6 months: Food cost is in range and holding. The menu has been reworked for quality and margin. Cafe and catering revenue are climbing. The team runs their shifts to a standard you set.

First year: F&B is a meaningful and growing profit center, the club runs well without ownership on site, and you're the person we call when we want to know how the business is doing.

Compensation

$70,000 to $80,000 base, depending on experience, plus a performance bonus tied to operational targets.

Includes full club membership (courts, gym, sauna), shift meals, and PTO.

To Apply

Send two things to View email address on us.fitly.work:

1. Your resume.

2. A statement of interest. Half a page to a page is plenty. Please cover:

• What you would do first with a food program like ours, and why
• An inventory or ordering system you have built or run, and how you kept it accurate
• A time you grew food and beverage revenue: what you changed, and what happened

Please also include your compensation expectations and confirm you can work on site in Oakland five days a week.

We read every one of these. If you look at our menu and our space before you write, it will show.

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