Hospitality Assistant

Hospitality Assistants are key in the daily running of our Partner (employee) dining room providing food to our Partners. You'll take great pride in the cleanliness of our work stations, restocking of our products and ensuring the best possible catering experience.

Duties will include kitchen and store person related tasks including manually handling physically demanding deliveries, supporting chefs with cleaning catering equipment and food preparation.

In addition to your contractual pay, any time worked between 22:00 - 06:00 will attract Night Premium at a rate of £3.50 per hour. This will also apply to existing Partners who have enrolled onto Enhanced Hours Premium arrangements.

Key Responsibilities
Working in a catering operation is fast-paced. Daily responsibilities will
include:

• Work as a team to ensure a smooth catering service.

• Follow procedures and instructions using the 'Health and Safety at Work Act' and 'Food Safety Act' when completing all relevant tasks.

• Ensure stock is stored away appropriately, accepting deliveries and being able to manually manoeuvre heavy stock.

• Reduce food wastage by ensuring care and due diligence when rotating food stock.

• Working in the pot wash, and plate wash area, handling large cooking equipment to maintain high quality hygiene standards.

• Accepting Deliveries of frozen, ambient and chilled goods and storing in the appropriate location.

• Act promptly and use your initiative to resolve any issues that arise in the operation.

• Providing prompt and high-level service when working on customer facing roles and providing a welcoming and friendly environment

Other operational areas include Functions and a wide ranging Vending remit, Candidates must have a flexible can do attitude towards all tasks

Essential skills/experience you'll need

• Basic Food Hygiene Certificate.

• Previous catering experience.

• Worked in a forward-thinking customer facing environment.

Desirable skills/experience you may have

• Food Safety level 2 & 3.

• Basic Food Hygiene Certificate.

• Previous dry store or warehouse skills

We’re the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We’re not just employees, we’re Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there’s never been a more exciting time to join us.  

We’re ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food-lovers in Waitrose.   

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect. 

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we’re free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective. 

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.  

Important points to note:  

It’s important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates). If required, you’ll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays. Any DBS checks required will be carried out by a third-party registered body and financial probity checks may also be required for some of our roles.  

We occasionally close vacancies early in the event we receive a high volume of applications, and therefore, we recommend you apply early. If you require a reasonable adjustment due to a disability which means you may need longer to complete your application please contact us as soon as possible.

We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview.