General Manager

General Manager

Chicago, Illinois, United States

General Manager (Operations Manager), New Location - Elmhurst

Full-time, Salaried · Location Operations

Reports to: Market Leader

Saltbox makes the hardest parts of running a small online business simple. Our workspaces bring together flexible warehouse suites, offices, and hands-on logistics support, all designed to help eCommerce entrepreneurs scale with confidence. Our members run businesses across Fashion & Apparel, Health & Beauty, Electronics, Household Goods, and more. When you join Saltbox, you're not just joining a company, you're helping real small business owners in your own backyard succeed.

This is our first Saltbox location in Chicago, opening in Elmhurst in fall 2026, and you're the person who makes it real. We're hiring the General Manager now, well before the doors open, so you're fully trained and ready to run the building from day one. You won't step into someone else's system: you'll build the team, the member relationships, and the operational playbook every future Chicago location gets measured against.

You'll run this location as a business, not as an operations supervisor. Occupancy, member satisfaction, revenue, and team performance are yours, built through the systems you put in place, the people you develop, and the calls you make. Your job is to run the location as a business, member retention, team performance, and operational health are yours to own.

Opening a brand-new location in a brand-new market is rare, and Chicago is a milestone for Saltbox. If you want full ownership of a P&L, a team, and a member community, and the chance to set the standard for an entire market, this is that role.

What the job looks like

Before the doors open, you're getting ready: learning the Saltbox playbook, standing up your systems, and hiring the team you'll lead. Once you're open, most days you're close to the floor and close to your members. You review the numbers that tell you how the location is really doing, walk the space, and coach your team through the situations that need someone with authority in the room. Your time goes to the decisions that move occupancy, retention, and team performance, and to building the systems that hold the standard even when you're not looking.

How this works

• Schedule: this is a fully onsite role in Elmhurst, generally Monday through Friday during business hours, with occasional weekend or after-hours needs during the launch period.
• Your team: you'll hire and lead a team of 2 to 4, typically a Lead Ops and 1 to 3 Member Specialists, and grow it as the location ramps.
• Travel: expect travel to an existing Saltbox market for training before opening. After launch, travel is minimal.

What you will own

Location business management

• Own the location's business performance: occupancy, member satisfaction, revenue targets, and budget adherence are yours.
• Review location performance weekly, know the numbers, flag what's off, and bring your Market Leader into anything that needs attention.
• Keep labor costs, supply budgets, and vendor relationships within parameters without managing every line item yourself.

People leadership

• Build and develop your team, their growth, performance, and confidence as operators are yours to own.
• Own headcount decisions: know when it's time to hire, make the final call on who, and set new team members up to land well.
• Conduct performance reviews, hold corrective action conversations, and make retention and separation decisions when it comes to it.
• Coach your team through hard situations so they get better, rather than handling everything yourself.

Member success & sales

• Own member retention, staying close enough to your members to catch a problem before it becomes a cancellation.
• Lead the tours and onboarding conversations that need a decision-maker: high-value prospects, complex scenarios, and key relationship moments.
• Resolve member escalations directly, billing disputes, contract conversations, and anything that needs real authority.

Operational planning & strategy

• Ensure the location runs at Saltbox's operational standards by building the systems and holding accountability, not by managing the day directly.
• Own recurring problems at the system level: when the same issue keeps coming back, fix the cause, not the symptom.
• Represent your location to the Market Leader and central teams, surfacing on-the-ground insight, risks, and opportunities with clear context.
• Keep SOPs current and followed, auditing regularly so you catch gaps before something breaks.

Tools & technology

• Use Saltbox's reporting tools, Pulse, scheduling, and performance dashboards, to see what your eyes can't catch.
• Set the expectation that your team uses the tools available to them, and follow through on it.
• Stay ahead of system changes so your team isn't caught off guard.

How we measure success

• The location opens on time and on standard, team hired, trained, and ready before the doors open.
• Occupancy ramps to target after opening, with a clear plan any time it dips.
• Member retention meets or exceeds target, churn risk is caught early rather than explained after the fact.
• Revenue and budget land within plan, with labor and supply spend inside parameters.
• Weekly performance reviews happen on cadence, and issues reach your Market Leader before they escalate.
• The location passes operational-standard audits, and your Lead can hold the standard without you in the room.
• Member escalations are resolved at the location without routinely traveling up.

Who thrives here

• You're energized by building something from scratch, not intimidated by a blank page.
• You think in outcomes, not activities, and would rather own the result than work a task list.
• You lead through your team, developing people instead of doing their jobs for them.
• You take ownership of the whole location, that's the ownership mentality we hire for.
• You stay calm and clear in the conversations that need authority: hard feedback, escalations, and tough calls.
• You're close to your members and genuinely care whether their businesses succeed.
• You hold a high standard and earn trust while doing it.

What you bring

• 3+ years managing a physical location or operations environment as a general manager, location manager, or similar, you know how to run a building and lead a team through it.
• Curiosity about AI and a real willingness to build it into how you manage. You don't need to be an expert today, but you'll be expected to learn fast and bring your team along.
• A business ownership mindset, you think in outcomes and hold yourself to the numbers.
• A strong people developer, you grow the people around you and know the difference between developing and doing.
• Member and customer relationship skills, you handle the conversations that take experience, empathy, and authority.
• A clear, direct communicator, your team knows where they stand and your Market Leader is never surprised.
• Operational instincts, you spot patterns, find root causes, and fix things at the system level.
• Comfort with financial basics, you understand what occupancy, labor cost, and margin mean for your location's health.
• Comfort with tools like Slack, Rippling, and operational reporting platforms, and willingness to adopt new ones as we grow.

What we offer

• Medical coverage, 100% covered for two Aetna plans, or a low premium for PPO
• Dental and vision covered at 100%
• 401K plan options
• Company-paid long-term and short-term disability and life insurance
• Paid holidays, vacation time, sick time, and paid parental leave