Job Description

The Linchpin Co. is a people operations group offering custom recruitment and consulting services. At Linchpin, we know a company's most valuable resource is its people, and we are people experts!

We will be the point of contact between you and Voyager Craft Coffee during the recruitment process, acting as your trusted advisor and coach. We look forward to your interest.

ABOUT VCC

What began as a coffee trailer in San Jose in 2016 has grown into one of the South Bay's most beloved specialty coffee brands. We have six café locations, a roastery, a commissary kitchen, and a thriving e-commerce channel. Voyager is built on a simple belief: every interaction is a gateway to build a relationship.

We source, roast, brew, and serve exceptional coffee while investing deeply in our community, our team, and the farmers who make it all possible. Now, we’re at a pivotal moment: we’re in the midst of a full rebrand — reimagining how Voyager looks, feels, and shows up in the world — while simultaneously building the operational foundation for our next chapter (including an exciting entry into the Ready to Drink beverage market). This is where you come in.

THE OPPORTUNITY

This is a builder’s role. Voyager is at an inflection point: the brand, the quality, and the community loyalty are there. We’re also in the process of a complete rebrand (reimagining our identity from the ground up) and this person will have meaningful input into how that comes to life operationally. What’s needed now is the operational architecture and leadership infrastructure to match. As Director of Operations, you will audit what exists, simplify what’s overcomplicated, fix what’s broken, and build what doesn’t yet exist.

You'll work directly with ownership and lead our management team across every business unit. This isn't a role for someone who manages by template. It's a role for someone who gets genuinely excited by a blank (or messy) whiteboard and knows how to turn complexity into clarity. This person thinks like a business owner — they’re not just executing the plan, they’re helping write it.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Audit, Simplify & Align

• Come in with fresh eyes and conduct a comprehensive operational audit across all business units : cafes, commissary, roastery, and e-commerce.
• Identify inefficiencies, redundancies, and structural gaps; build a clear roadmap to address them.
• Create and maintain systems that bring consistency and calm across a multi-unit, multi-channel business.

Develop and Elevate the Management Team

• Partner with the Retail Manager to assess the current team and co-create individual development plans for each leader — building a shared language around performance and growth.
• Design the systems, tools, and cadences for coaching and accountability, then work alongside the Retail Manager to embed them into day-to-day operations.
• Build a formal management development program that the Retail Manager can own and execute — creating a sustainable pipeline of capable, confident leaders that doesn't depend on you to run it.

Drive Operational Efficiency

• Identify and reduce waste across all channels (labor, product, process, and time).
• Build and track KPIs that give ownership real-time visibility into performance across every unit.
• Standardize operating procedures where it matters, and preserve the flexibility that keeps Voyager's culture alive.

Build for Growth

• Construct the operational foundation needed to support Voyager's expansion into the Ready to Drink beverage market.
• Ensure systems, staffing, and infrastructure are scaled to support new product lines, distribution, and channel growth without sacrificing quality.
• Identify and develop new revenue streams, whether through additional offerings, channels, or operational efficiencies, and build the implementation infrastructure to bring them to life, including equipment planning, rollout timelines, and team readiness.
• Lead the operational rollout of menu changes across cafes and the bakery — from equipment sourcing and vendor coordination to staff training and launch sequencing — ensuring new offerings are executed consistently and at the standard Voyager is known for.
• Partner with ownership on strategic planning and act as a true operational thought partner.

WHO YOU ARE

You're a people-first leader who believes trust is built before results are demanded — and then you demand results. You bring energy into the room and stay calm when things get complicated. You've worked in fast-moving, imperfect environments and you know how to make progress anyway.

You are:

• A natural people developer: patient enough to coach, firm enough to hold the standard, and genuinely excited about growing a younger workforce.
• Exceptionally organized: you bring structure to ambiguity without making everything feel bureaucratic.
• A creative problem solver: you build solutions that fit the business in front of you, not solutions you've copy-pasted from somewhere else.
• A fluid communicator: equally comfortable presenting to ownership and walking the café floor with a team member.
• Comfortable with ambiguity: you don't need everything to be perfect to make progress.
• Genuinely passionate about food, beverage, and hospitality: you care about the product and the experience, not just the numbers.
• A builder: the opportunity in front of you energizes you more than the challenge of it intimidates you.

EXPERIENCE & BACKGROUND

• 5+ years of operations leadership experience, ideally in multi-unit food & beverage, hospitality, or CPG environments.
• Demonstrated success leading and developing management teams — not just managing operations, but building leaders.
• Experience across multiple business functions (retail, production/manufacturing, or e-commerce) is a significant asset.
• Exposure to early-stage or growth-phase companies where you've had to build infrastructure without a large team or unlimited resources.
• Familiarity with RTD, CPG, or wholesale/distribution channels is a plus, not a requirement.
• Familarity with AI tools.

WHY VOYAGER

Voyager isn't a franchise. It's not a corporation. It's a company built by people who care: about coffee, about community, and about the people who work here. You'll have a direct line to ownership, real authority to make decisions, and the chance to shape what this company looks like at scale.

If you want a role where you can point to something in two years and say 'I built that' — this is it.

We are an equal opportunity employer committed to providing employment opportunities without discrimination or harassment based on race, religion, national origin, status, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital or domestic partnership status, or any other protected status under the law.

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