Director of Operations & Leadership Development

The Spice & Tea Exchange•Arlington, VA

21h•Onsite

About The Position

The Spice & Tea Exchange is seeking an experienced multi-unit operator to lead its next stage of growth. This role focuses on strengthening three established stores, developing their leaders, reducing founder dependence on routine operations, and building leadership capacity for future expansion. The position requires a candidate who is commercially strong, operationally disciplined, excellent with people, and energized by developing leaders. The core strategy is leadership development, with the outcome being stronger business performance. The Director will act as a field-based player-coach, developing leaders rather than performing their tasks, but will step in to model standards and restore performance when necessary. As store leadership capability grows, the Director will achieve results through these leaders.

Requirements

Experienced multi-unit operator
Commercially strong
Operationally disciplined
Excellent with people
Energized by building leaders
Ability to move comfortably between a P&L, a scorecard, a store walk, a difficult coaching conversation, and a busy sales floor
Comfortable with hiring and selection, onboarding, performance expectations, feedback and recognition, employee development, attendance and reliability, difficult conversations, corrective action and documentation, conflict resolution, retention of strong performers, and difficult personnel decisions
Willingness and ability to work substantially in the field
Demonstrated operating pattern recognition
Meaningful multi-unit leadership experience in a customer-facing operating environment
Direct accountability for location performance
Strong financial and KPI literacy
Experience managing labor and productivity
Experience hiring, developing, and managing leaders
Evidence of developing managers who subsequently carried greater responsibility
Experience addressing underperformance and difficult employee issues
Experience implementing consistent operating standards across locations
Strong coaching and communication capability
High agency and sound judgment
Emotional steadiness under pressure
Experience leading roughly 3–10 locations
Direct labor and margin accountability
Meaningful team scale
Development of store leaders
SOP implementation
Exposure to underperforming or inconsistent units

Nice To Haves

Experience in hospitality, experiential or specialty retail, specialty food or beverage, restaurant/fast-casual operations, franchise organizations, seasonal or destination-market businesses, inventory- or production-intensive environments, founder-led entrepreneurial businesses, and military leadership followed by meaningful commercial operating responsibility.
Ability to enter an evolving organization without either resisting change or trying to replace everything.
Ability to build capability that remains after you leave the room.

Responsibilities

Accountable for the operating health and consistency of a three-store portfolio, including sales growth, average ticket, customer behavior, labor productivity, scheduling discipline, margin and expense awareness, inventory and product availability, store readiness, guest experience, team capability, and store-level KPI performance.
Identify operating drift early, diagnose causes, establish corrective actions, and hold leaders accountable for results.
Build the leadership bench by assessing current leaders and talent, identifying capability gaps, coaching managers to think and solve problems independently, strengthening delegation and accountability, addressing underperformance, building succession coverage, developing internal Store Manager candidates, and recruiting externally when needed.
Ensure teams consistently welcome, engage, and guide guests; create personalized discovery; use product knowledge and culinary storytelling; execute SalesRX behaviors; sample and educate appropriately; maintain strong selling standards; and create memorable experiences.
Manage hiring and selection, onboarding, performance expectations, feedback and recognition, employee development, attendance and reliability, difficult conversations, corrective action and documentation, conflict resolution, retention of strong performers, and personnel decisions.
Standardize predictable operations (e.g., opening/closing, scheduling, inventory controls, receiving, production workflows, replenishment, merchandising, store readiness, cash controls, training, onboarding, SOP execution, leadership cadence, performance follow-through) to enable personalization of the exceptional.
Understand and potentially clarify accountability in a distributed leadership structure involving Operations & Integration, Sales leadership, Inventory Control, Floor Readiness, and Keyholders/first-level managers.
Develop the strongest internal leaders and determine when broader management responsibility or external recruitment of Store Managers is warranted.
Learn the business by observing operations, understanding practices, learning from employees and ownership, identifying contradictions and gaps, preserving what works, questioning what no longer serves the business, and testing improvements.
Assume increasing responsibility for the accuracy, adoption, and continuous improvement of the store operating system.
Contribute operating judgment, field leadership, people development, and execution.