Associate Manager Of Operations Jobs in California

At Chick-fil-A Trabuco Hills Center, our vision is To Be the Heart of Our Community, and our mission is simple: We make moments magical.

We are looking for an experienced food service leader to join our team as an Associate Manager. This role is designed for someone who already knows what it means to lead in a restaurant environment and is ready to bring that experience into a high-growth, high-accountability Chick-fil-A restaurant.

This is not a role for someone simply looking for a title. We are looking for someone who wants responsibility, pressure, influence, and the opportunity to serve.

About the Role

The Associate Manager role is primarily an operations leadership position. You will spend most of your time actively leading Front of House operations, supporting shift execution, coaching team members, and helping create an excellent experience for both guests and the team.

While this role may eventually develop into a specific leadership emphasis such as Operations, Training, HR, or another area, the foundation of the role is operational leadership. You must be willing to learn our restaurant from the ground up and understand how each level of responsibility works before fully stepping into manager-level ownership.

This role includes approximately 1-2 hours per week of Climb Time, which is dedicated development time used for leadership goals, assigned projects, training, and growth conversations.

What You'll Be Stepping Into

We are a growing restaurant with a strong internal leadership pipeline. Many of our internal candidates are still developing through the trainer and shift leadership process, and we are looking to add an experienced food service leader who can help strengthen our leadership bench now while also growing into our culture, systems, and standards.

You will not be expected to know Chick-fil-A immediately. You will be expected to bring real food service leadership experience, humility, adaptability, and a willingness to be trained, coached, evaluated, and developed.

Our goal is to teach you how to lead at Chick-fil-A Trabuco Hills Center while honoring the leadership experience you already bring.

What We're Looking For

The strongest candidates will have:

• At least 5 years of food service experience
• At least 1 full year of food service leadership experience
• Experience in a high-volume restaurant environment
• QSR or fast-casual leadership experience preferred
• Sit-down restaurant leadership experience considered
• Catering, offsite sales, or high-volume event experience is a plus
• BOH or kitchen leadership experience is a plus
• Experience leading teams of 8-12 people during active operations
• Strong availability, including the ability to close at least 2 nights per week

We are specifically looking for candidates who understand the pace, pressure, and people dynamics of food service. General retail leadership experience may be helpful, but this role is best suited for someone with real restaurant leadership experience.

If your leadership experience was informal rather than title-based, we are open to that, but you should be prepared to clearly explain how you led teams, solved problems, coached others, and carried leadership responsibility.

What You'll Help Lead

As an Associate Manager, you will help drive excellence in areas such as:

• Team morale and culture
• Shift leadership and communication
• Labor and productivity
• Training execution
• Guest experience
• Speed, accuracy, cleanliness, and hospitality
• Front of House systems and standards
• BOH awareness and cross-functional understanding
• Seasonal restaurant goals and leadership priorities

Our restaurant focus may shift by season, but the foundation stays the same: we lead people well, serve guests with excellence, and steward the business responsibly.

Our Leadership Culture

At Chick-fil-A Trabuco Hills Center, leadership is not about status. Leadership is service.

We are building leaders who model Character, Hustle, Excellence, and Growth, and who understand that influence must be earned through trust, consistency, humility, and care for others.

We believe leaders should SERVE: they should take responsibility, develop others, stay coachable, and create an environment where people can grow. That means this role requires humility. Growth is not optional here. We expect leaders to learn from failure, receive feedback well, adapt quickly, and keep getting better.

An experienced leader who joins our team must be willing to learn our systems before trying to change them. We value your experience, but we also expect you to become a student of our culture, our standards, and our way of leading.

Schedule and Availability

This is an hourly, part-time role with an expected schedule of 32-40 hours per week, based on business needs and availability. Candidates should have open or flexible availability and should not have highly restrictive scheduling limitations.

Weekend and closing availability are important for this role. Sundays are always off.

Benefits and Opportunities

• Starting pay of $23.25/hour
• Sundays off
• Meal benefit
• Leadership development
• Scholarship opportunities
• Growth pathway into higher levels of leadership
• Hands-on restaurant leadership experience
• Opportunity to serve in a high-growth Chick-fil-A restaurant

This Role May Be a Great Fit If You...

• Have already led people in a restaurant environment
• Know how to stay calm under pressure
• Can coach others without talking down to them
• Care about both results and relationships
• Want to grow, not just manage
• Are willing to learn Chick-fil-A systems from the ground up
• Believe leadership means service, ownership, and responsibility
• Are energized by fast-paced, high-volume operations
• Want to help build something stronger than yourself

If you are an experienced food service leader who is ready to grow, serve, and help lead a high-performing restaurant team, we would love to meet you.

Working at a Chick-fil-A restaurant is more than a job - it's an opportunity for teamwork and leadership development in a positive, people-focused environment. Most Chick-fil-A restaurants are locally owned and operated by independent, franchised Operators who invest in the future of their Team Members and give back to their communities.