Store Manager - Coffee Shop/Café

Store Manager – Coffee Shop/Café

Full-Time | East Bay Area Locations

Compensation & Benefits

• $34.00–$38.50 per hour, depending on directly relevant experience
• Participation in Highwire’s employee tip pool
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Paid time off
• 401(k) with company match
• Employee discount
• Paid training
• Opportunities for professional development and advancement

Tip income varies based on factors such as café location, customer traffic, staffing, and seasonality and is not guaranteed.

The Store Manager Opportunity

Highwire Coffee Roasters is looking for experienced Store Managers to lead one of our cafés.

Our Store Managers are hands-on café leaders who develop employees, create outstanding customer experiences, and oversee successful daily operations. This is not an office-based management position. The Store Manager works alongside the café team, coaches employees in real time, supports customers, and ensures every shift reflects Highwire’s standards for coffee, hospitality, safety, and quality.

As a Highwire Store Manager, you’ll have the autonomy to lead your café and management team while receiving support and resources from company leadership. This is an opportunity for an experienced Coffee Shop Manager, Café Manager, Retail Manager, or hospitality leader who wants to build a strong team and take genuine ownership of a business.

Store Manager Responsibilities

Lead and Develop Your Team

• Hire, onboard, train, coach, and develop café employees.
• Lead and support the café’s shift leaders, and other members of the management team.
• Set clear expectations and foster a positive, accountable, and supportive team culture.
• Provide consistent coaching, recognition, and performance feedback.
• Address employee performance and workplace concerns promptly and professionally.
• Identify and develop future café leaders and managers.

Create an Exceptional Guest Experience

• Ensure customers receive friendly, knowledgeable, and efficient service.
• Maintain Highwire’s standards for coffee quality, cleanliness, and hospitality.
• Build relationships with customers and the surrounding neighborhood.
• Lead by example by working alongside the café team and remaining actively engaged on the floor.

Manage Café Operations

• Oversee the café’s daily operations and ensure consistent execution throughout every shift.
• Create employee schedules that support excellent service and responsible labor management.
• Manage inventory, ordering, cash-handling procedures, and equipment needs.
• Maintain applicable health, safety, sanitation, and food-safety standards.
• Ensure company policies and operational procedures are understood and followed.
• Partner with other Store Managers and company leaders to improve consistency across Highwire cafés.

Manage Business Performance

• Monitor café sales, labor, inventory, and operating costs.
• Review business performance with company leadership and identify opportunities for improvement.
• Use café results to make thoughtful staffing and operational decisions.
• Support neighborhood marketing and local community-engagement initiatives.
• Create an environment where employees want to work and customers want to return.

Store Manager Qualifications

We’re less interested in where you’ve worked than in how you’ve led.

The strongest candidates will have:

• At least three years of management experience in specialty coffee, cafés, hospitality, restaurants, retail, or another high-volume customer-service environment.
• Experience managing, coaching, and developing teams.
• Experience hiring, onboarding, scheduling, managing inventory, and planning labor.
• Strong communication, organization, and problem-solving skills.
• The ability to balance exceptional hospitality with consistent operational execution.
• The confidence to address performance issues while maintaining a respectful and supportive workplace.
• An interest in understanding the financial and operational side of managing a successful café.
• The availability and flexibility required to support a customer-facing café operation.

Coffee experience is valuable, but strong people-management and business-management experience are equally important. Most importantly, you should enjoy building relationships, developing employees, and creating a workplace where people can succeed.

About Highwire Coffee Roasters

At Highwire Coffee Roasters, we believe great coffee creates community.

Since the 1990s, we’ve been roasting exceptional coffee and building neighborhood cafés where people genuinely enjoy gathering. We care deeply about craftsmanship, hospitality, music, continuous learning, and creating welcoming spaces for our customers and employees.

Highwire managers have the opportunity to make a meaningful impact—not only on café operations, but also on the careers of the people they lead and the experience of every customer who walks through our doors.

If you’re looking for a Store Manager opportunity where you can lead a great team, continue growing as a manager, and help shape the future of an independent Oakland coffee company, we’d love to hear from you.

Our Hiring Process

Final candidates may be asked to complete job-related reference checks and, following a conditional offer of employment, authorize a background check as permitted by applicable law.

Highwire Coffee Roasters will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in accordance with the California Fair Chance Act. Applicants are not required to disclose criminal history or participate in a criminal-background check before receiving a conditional offer of employment. Any information obtained after a conditional offer will be considered only as permitted by applicable law and in relation to the responsibilities of the position.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Highwire Coffee Roasters is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive workplace for all employees.

Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

Robert Myers and Rich Avella first met in the mid-1990s and share an approach to coffee we call \approachable excellence\.
Our shops are welcoming spaces where we connect around our enthusiasm for coffee, our communities, and our love of music. Our coffees are always the freshest green coffees available in any season and we roast them along a roast spectrum that captures the range of coffee lovers' tastes from lighter, bright Single Origins, to the deeper chocolatey body-forward coffees typical of a darker roasted coffee.