Sky Bar Manager - 53rd Floor Piano Lounge
2 months ago
Millwall, Tower Hamlets
London's highest piano lounge | 53rd floor, Wardian, Canary Wharf E14 Full-time | Tips and service charge | Immediate start Some bars have a view. This one has all of them 🌇🍸💫 Fifty-three floors up, the windows wrap the whole way round. Canary Wharf on one side, Greenwich on the other, and the full London skyline laid out in between. On the right evening the cloud sits below the glass and the room feels genuinely untethered from the city underneath it. That is where you'd be making drinks. The Observatory is London's highest piano & cocktail lounge. Live piano, a proper cocktail list, and a food menu built to be eaten slowly with friends. We opened just over a year ago and have spent that time turning it into something people are quietly protective of. We're now looking for a Bar Manager to take charge of the bar and carry that on. 🎹 THE VENUE The Observatory sits at the top of Wardian, exclusively for the residents of the two towers below it. Around 2,000 people have access, and a good number of them are in every week. That changes the job completely. You're not turning over strangers. You're building a room of regulars who know your name and expect you to know theirs, and who will tell you honestly what they think of the new menu. It has the warmth of a members' club without any of the stiffness. The bar itself is the centerpiece of the venue and deliberately so. That means the Bar Manager here spends most of their time exactly where they should be: behind the bar, making drinks, talking to guests, with an eye across the whole venue. This is not a role that disappears into an office. Live piano is weekly and our signature 'Piano Plates' are a tapas-style sharing menu designed to be picked at across a long evening with a cocktail in the other hand. Food runs seven days. 🥃 YOUR CRAFT, VALUED If you care about what goes in the glass, you'll be somewhere it counts. We want someone with genuine opinions about dilution, about garnish, about the difference between a drink that's technically correct and one that's actually good. You'll have real input into the list, work directly with suppliers, and build seasonal serves that sit properly alongside the food and the piano. The room gives you permission to be ambitious. Guests come here for an occasion, they're not in a rush, and they'll try what you recommend. That's a rare thing and it's wasted on someone who just wants to pour. 🚀 THE ROLE You'll run the bar. Standards, stock, ordering, prep, consistency. The cocktail quality is yours to own and yours to push. You'll lead a small team. A handful of people, hands-on, side by side. You'll set the standard by working to it rather than talking about it, and train the team properly as they come through. You'll host. Learning names, remembering orders, reading the room. The best nights here are the ones where the manager is visibly enjoying themselves. You'll support events. The Observatory hosts a steady calendar of private hires, birthdays, engagements, weddings and seasonal parties. To be clear: our events team handles the planning and the logistics. Your part is the drinks, the bar and the delivery on the night, plus being the familiar face residents come to first. Events experience is a bonus, not a barrier - if you've got the bartending and the hosting, we'll bring you up to speed on the rest. You'll help shape what's next. Menus, promotions, ideas for the room. We're a year in and still building. You'd be joining early enough for your fingerprints to be on it. --- 💥 WHAT WE OFFER • Sociable hours. We open at 4pm on weekdays, midday at weekends. No breakfast shifts, no split shifts, no 3am finishes., • Tips and service charge, • Real ownership of a venue with a genuine identity, not a site on a spreadsheet, • Input that goes somewhere. Menu development, supplier tastings, seasonal launches, • Room to progress. We're a growing London group - Beringers, Lockdown, Supershakes, The Eleventh Hour - and we promote from within wherever we can, • Staff food and drinks on shift, plus discounts across every venue, • The backing of an experienced events and senior management team, • Immediate start available 🔥 WHO WE'RE LOOKING FOR • Strong bartending behind you, ideally with time in a senior or management role, • Real cocktail knowledge and the consistency to deliver it on a full Saturday, • Comfortable leading a small team by example, • A natural host. Warm, present, genuinely interested in people, • Organised enough to run the operational side without being asked twice, • Calm through a busy service and a full events diary, • Someone who notices the detail, because our regulars absolutely do You don't need years of events management. You don't need a group background. If you're an excellent bartender who wants to run a room and look after people properly, that's the person we're looking for. ⚡ ONE MORE THING We'd like this to be a long stay. Everything good about this job compounds. The regulars, the reputation of the room, the events diary, the list you build. A year in, it's a genuinely different job to the one you start. That only pays off for someone who wants to stay and build it, and we'd rather be honest about that now than six months in. If you're looking for the next step rather than the next stopgap, this is one of the best rooms in London to take it in. 👋 HOW TO APPLY Hit apply, and tell us one drink you'd put on our list. That's the whole application. One drink, one line on why. We read every one and reply to everyone. If it looks like a fit, we'll set up a quick video chat, then get you in to see the place, meet the team and take in the view - followed by a paid trial shift so you can decide for yourself. The 53rd floor is very difficult to describe and very easy to show you.
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