Catering Manager – Uganda Airlines

Report Line: Flight Operations Director

Job Summary
Manage the Food & Beverage planning, delivery, quality, and cost from selected UR global catering service providers. Accountable for designing and implementing innovative and pleasing menus that contribute towards UR being the leader in innovative inflight and premium class lounge catering.

Key accountabilities /responsibilities:

• Proactively generating ideas by researching, planning, designing, creating, and implementing changes to constantly refresh the Inflight and lounge products and services to maintain worldwide leadership whilst ensuring this offering is in keeping with customers’ needs network-wide.
• Ensure catering orders distributed to the various sections-sub sections for their action.
• Supervises the provisioning of aircraft supplies.
• Analyze and understand customer’s perception of value through internal and external feedback, and competitor evaluation.
• Lead, plan and organize alongside other business units for periodic F&B Promotions inflight and in lounges to create an element of surprise and regularly delight our customers (e.g. special occasions, festive periods, dish/drink of the month, chef’s specials, etc.)
• Monitor equipment packing tray layup, pre-set, and pre-flight checks loading bay to ensure safety standards.
• Inspect and monitor quantity, quality, and presentation of food items received from the production whilst observing the standard operation procedures.
• Plan and develop the onboard service standards and sequences with Headquarters and Cabin Crew Product Development to ensure that crew is trained and customers receive the agreed product and service to the defined standards.
• Support day-to-day inflight catering operations, coordinating daily activities and communications between kitchen vendors and the airline operations on the ramp, including scheduled and irregular operations, charters, and other catering activities as needed.
• Support kitchen operations audits and performance evaluations as needed.
• Oversee and coordinate the Catering Supply Inventory Program (SIP) across the catering operation, internal stakeholder groups, kitchens, and supply chain vendors, including processing picklists, approving orders, creating requisitions, and monitoring timeliness of deliveries to ensure smooth operations.
• Coordinate regular reconciliation of inventory on hand and discrepancy resolution
• Calculate usage and forecast inventory requirements of all Catering supplies for the Sourcing and Procurement team
• Manage Class 1 inventory across the supply chain and kitchen network, including rebalancing activities and reordering forecasts.
• Being a guarantor of the implementation of HACCP procedures and standards, both on food and handling.
• Coordinate procurement of supplies relating to catering and store management.
• Coordinate with airline representatives, Adhoc, VIP- CIP flights for meal uplifts and equipment.
• Ensure all company properties such as vehicles, radios, thermometers, communication equipment’s and other equipment are properly maintained.
• Ensure vehicle washing, pest controls, servicing are carried out to avoid any contaminations.
• Conduct and record regular F&B quality and compliance checks by carrying out pre and post-flight audits. Analyze residual meal uptake to minimize waste, initiating corrective action where required.
• Define a minimum 3-year rolling plan for implementation of new product implementations/enhancements for inflight & lounges to ensure periodic refresh of products and service levels and keep abreast and/or lead market trends. The implementation plan will include budgets and prioritized work plans.
• Keep all departmental documentation in a meticulous format for ease of reference.

Academic Requirements and Relevant Experience

• Degree in Culinary Arts or F&B Management or equivalent.
• 8+ yrs.  In the hospitality industry specifically in an F&B-related role of which at least 3 years should have been in an airline catering environment.
• HACCP Certification
• Must have extensive knowledge of global food and trends, product and service delivery concepts
• Should be an expert in Asian, European, and African Cuisines
• Creative and lateral thinker with visionary foresight, who is self-motivated and proactive
• Ability to generate new ideas and to combine existing elements to create new sources of value
• Effectively lead cross-functional teams in developing and enhancing product and service offering
• Proven experience in food audits and hygiene
• Experience with Microsoft applications; Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and others
• Experience managing a large team and external supplier relations
• Solid knowledge of inflight services and standards
• Proficiency in documenting processes and keeping up with industry trends

Required skills

• Attention to detail
• Verbal and written communication skills
• Critical thinker and problem-solving skills
• Team player
• Good time-management skills
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
• Organization skills
• Writing skills
• Flexible
• Integrity
• safety-conscious