Will Partridge

A highly motivated, analytical and successful F&B/Operations Director with over 15 years experience in multi-site, high-volume operations. Skilled in cost control, menu creation, stock management, staff training, budgeting, increasing revenue and health & safety compliance. Has a proven track record of delivering growth, successful leadership and providing exceptional standards of service and customer satisfaction.

Has consistently achieved commercial success - winning industry awards, improving venue revenue & sustainability and attaining excellent consumer & press reviews - including being placed in the UK Top-50 Bars and World Top-500 Bars.

May 2017 — Oct 2022: Food & Beverage Director, JGW Group London

JGW is a London-based bar & restaurant operator

• Created a multi-site ops management strategy and oversaw 20+ direct reports (GM & AGM roles), with a further staff base of circa 100 employees
• Instrumental in new-venue acquisition, site development and successful venue launches
• Managed a 6-venue strong group with a variety of food concepts ranging from QSR style street-food to brunch and aperitivo
• Grew group revenues by 20% to over £120k/week
• Implemented new culture, processes & business strategy that achieved placing in the ‘World’s Top 500 Bars’ and ‘UK’s Top 50 Bars’
• Successfully founded the ready-to-drink (RTD) cocktail brand 'Heads + Tails Signature Drinks'. Scaled the retail commerce strategy to secure B2B contracts, wholesale partnerships and D2C e-commerce outlets
• Fully managed procurement and end-to-end supply chain including 3PL
• Drove successive YoY growth, including RTD sales growth of 1125% in 2021 against the backdrop of a national downturn in hospitality spend
• Owned business strategy, plans, finance and forecasting with meticulous attention to cost control and supplier negotiations, achieving cost reductions of over 22%
• Generated KPI analysis and visualisations, including sales ratios and trend forecasts
• Oversaw the production of monthly budgets, financial accounts and payroll
• Full P&L ownership
• Advanced Excel | Xero | Shopify | Hubspot | Lightspeed | Blink | Apicbase

Jun 2022 — Present: Head of Operations, Compass Box Whisky London

Compass Box is a Scotch Whiskymaker that has been challenging the industry for over 20 years.

• Led a team of 7 direct reports in generating best-practice and ways of working improvements
• Pivotal to recording the highest-ever sales in the companies’ history after just 3 months of strategic impact
• Transitioned the business from Just-in-Time (JIT) to Just-in-Case (JIC) strategy resulting in reducing out-of-stocks from 16 SKUs to 0 within 4 months
• Scaled-up operations, restructured 3PL processes and created new S&OP procedures
• On-boarded new warehouses, transportation and bottling partners, doubling production capacity and finished-goods storage
• Implemented complete procurement overhaul – remodelling stock-holding policies to create cost-efficiency and achieve savings of between 5% and 20%
• COGS control & analysis
• Owned the end-to-end supply chain strategy for the UK and EU, including establishment of new materials partners, logistics routes and schedules that facilitated the JIT to JIC transformation
• Initiated a continuous-improvement framework to ensure ongoing performance improvements
• Advanced Excel | Powerpoint | Unleashed | Quickbooks | SAP | Trello | G-Suite | Salesforce

Nov 2007 — Apr 2018: Food & Beverage Director, Seed Group London

Seed Group is a London-based pubs, clubs, and hospitality management agency.

• Oversaw multi-site brands, diversified operations and drove YoY improvements resulting in a 70% increase in global site revenue over 3 years
• Managed significant internal improvements in leadership, training, customer experience and menu offerings that resulted in winning multiple awards
• Achieved a 200% increase in net profitability within 4 years despite the global financial crisis
• Consistently managed 20+ strong direct reports within operations using 9 years of scaling expertise in hospitality, venue management and F&B operations to create a fiscally successful business
• Created a variety of food menus covering styles such as QSR burgers and tacos, modern European and Asian-influenced
• Full P&L ownership

Mar 2018 — Present: Co-Founder & Operations Director, Spice Island Liquors PTE Singapore

Spice Island Liquors is an Indonesia-based distillery business

• Key responsibilities in launching the distillery including sourcing startup materials, creating an operations function and managing production
• Spearheaded the creation of the first Balinese London Dry Gin
• Handled all facets of procurement, supply chain & embedding of 3PL

Consultancy/Other:

Various short & medium-term consultancy projects for clients such as Zetter Townhouse hotel (London) and Disrepute members club (London). Services included launch strategy, menu conception and staff recruitment.

Aug 2021 — Oct 2021: Mentor - Double Dutch Scolarship Programme London

Mentored the 2021 intake of scholars in the first Double Dutch drinks ‘Female Bartending Scholarship’ programme. Field of expertise: "How to manage a bar & create profitable menus"

MA: International Business Management,

University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne

• Achieved: Merit
• Advanced knowledge of how to improve management, leadership & practice quality in organisations.
• Applied skills in problem solving, decision-making, critical thinking & analysis

BSc - Economics & Computing Science,

University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne

• Achieved: 2:1
• Advanced Micro, Macroeconomics & Econometrics modules.
• Extensive and advanced experience of numerous software packages including

MS Office and the Adobe Suite.