Chief Operating Officer

Beer52 is the world’s most popular craft beer club, curating a delicious selection of beers for its 200,000 [and growing] active members from a new country each month. Delivered along with their self-published magazine, Ferment, Beer52 have helped more than a million people to explore the exciting world of craft beer.

Established in 2013 by founders James Brown and Fraser Doherty, the business has grown to house a team of over 70, based mainly at their Edinburgh HQ, and is one of the UK’s fastest-growing and most exciting start-ups, with revenues of around £40 million, and backing from experienced scale-up founders from Skyscanner, Secret Escapes, Songkick, Funkin’ Cocktails and BooHoo.com.

As a business, it is incredibly passionate about craft beer and its mission is to build the world’s leading craft beer community. To achieve this, they have built a talented and inclusive team, a great environment to work in and is developing industry-leading technology and marketing to secure their market position as №1.

The Opportunity

In line with high-growth, the business is now looking to appoint an experienced Chief Operating Officer to help them continue that journey, ensuring that it continues to perform well as a team as it grows-without losing that entrepreneurial spirit.

An exciting and dynamic role, the COO will work closely with the founders of Beer52 and provide leadership on a day to day basis to 70+ colleagues across various teams including; Operations & planning, Customer service, Beer buying, Design, Technology and Marketing.

In this role, the COO will not only be making sure everything is running on track as well as supporting each team to achieve their goals but will execute overall strategy and act as a project leader for monthly planning cycles and drive your teams to deliver this. Organisation is key to success in this role. From people management to developing new processes and delivering robust internal reporting – the COO will play a critical leadership role, getting the best out of the team and ensuring the smooth running of Beer52.

The COO will help and coach the team to improve on their respective performance metrics through improved planning and streamlined processes – in turn helping us to mitigate delays or issues along the way.

As the business grows, they will work closely with the founders to ensure the strategy underpinning their ambitious plans are executed to make Beer52 not only the leading beer club in the UK but across Europe.

This is a critical role for the business and will assume much of the day to day responsibilities currently being carried out by the founders, which in turn will allow them to focus on strategic objectives aligned to growth.

About You

You will be a driven, dynamic, organised and entrepreneurial induvial with a passion for development. You will bring first-class organisation skills, enjoy solving problems, with a strong attention to detail and possess excellent communications skills (verbal and written) with experience of reporting into an Executive team.

Given the fast-paced nature of the business, it is essential you are someone who is not afraid of rolling up their sleeves and leading from the front when required. At times you will need to think on your feet, forming plans in an ever-changing environment.

As a start-up in a competitive market, there is huge pressure to grow quickly. The business must plan carefully to protect margins by avoiding overstock, making sure that the team is working on the most pressing and commercially lucrative tasks and that each area knows what the plan is and how their tasks fit within it, so it is essential you have strong planning skills.

As a business, Beer52 have high ambitions for growth, you will thrive in this type of environment and be adept at developing processes and coaching team members to help them achieve their individual goals.

Key Requirements:

• 3 years + experience in a similar Senior Operations role within an online e-commerce business, preferably with an understanding of consumer subscription models
• Educated to degree level or holds relevant professional qualification in Business Management, Project Management or Operations (or relevant field)
• You must have prior experience of managing a large team in a fast-paced commercial environment and be skilled at thinking independently to solve process, operational and other problems as they arise
• A strong degree of commercial acumen with the ability to make sound commercial decisions with imperfect information
• A general understanding of management accounting / internal reporting would be advantageous
• Strong project management skills are essential with the ability to manage multiple plans with many moving parts
• Experience of working in an entrepreneurial, high growth or start-up type environment would be highly advantageous
• Proven people management and leadership skills with a track record of developing people and building teams
• Excellent planning, communication and presentation skills and experience of reporting into or sitting on an Executive leadership team
• Experience of leading and motivating teams to deliver high performance

Personal Characteristics:

• Self-motivated with a proactive approach to leadership and improvement
• Flexible and adaptable
• A drive to deliver and achieve on time

For further details please download the full candidate brochure.

To apply, please send your CV to Jamie Brown at FWB Park Brown at fwb@fwbparkbrown.com.