Business Operations Manager

🌱 Who we are

Mother Root is the fiery ginger non-alcoholic aperitif. We harness the power of apple cider vinegar to serve up a dose of good feelings. Our mission is to redefine the evening ritual of drinking well and feeling good, with drinks that are complex, delicious and rooted in nature.

We're the UK's fastest-growing drinks brand and the number one non-alcoholic spirit. We were a £7m business last year and we're on track for more than £20m this year. Next we're accelerating that growth, and becoming one of the leading non-alcoholic brands in the US as well as the UK. Small but mighty team, big category, plenty still to build.

We're building a team where ambitious people do the best work of their careers, supporting each other and making something they truly believe in. We believe work should be joyful, purposeful and full of flavour.

🚀 The Role

Growing fast is a good problem, and it's still a problem. More people, more products, more moving parts, all of it landing on a small team. Business Operations is how we handle that: the operating system of Mother Root, and how we keep moving faster than companies ten times bigger without burning ourselves out doing it.

We know what that operating system needs to become. What we don't have is the hands to build it. Our Business Operations Lead is splitting the week between designing and building, and the designing keeps losing. So we're hiring the person who makes it real.

Your job, put simply, is to find friction and get rid of it. The report someone rebuilds by hand every Monday. The update chased three times before it lands. The answer that lives in one person's head instead of a doc. You'll spot those, fix them, and increasingly use AI and automations to make sure they don't come back.

You'll be an early hire in a brand new function, working directly with the Lead.

What the job is really made of. The detail. Chasing the thing that stalled, checking the number that looks wrong, asking someone a third time so it actually lands. Small work, done properly, adding up to a business that runs better than it has any right to at our size. It's a genuinely interesting moment to join! Helping to build the systems to support our growth. If you'd rather pick up work that's already been scoped for you, it may not be the right job for you.

📋 What You’ll Do

• Keep the operating system running. This is most of your week to begin with, and it matters more than it sounds.

  • Notion is where Mother Root thinks. You'll be the first person the team asks, and you'll keep the workspace healthy: structure, permissions, templates, database hygiene, one clear source of truth. Nobody should lose twenty minutes working out which version is the real one.

  • The Ways of Working Log. Yours to own, and early. Friction comes in from every corner of the business, you triage it, get each action to the right owner and close the loop. This is how a decision we make in a room becomes a thing that actually happened.

  • The SOP library. Keep it current, retire what's gone stale. When it's good, a new starter learns the job from the docs instead of from someone's memory.

  • Our tech stack. The Lead owns how we manage it, you keep it honest: the tools database accurate, the right people with the right access, no surprises about what we pay for.

  • Data quality across the operational databases we own, so the numbers we look at hold up.

  Remove the friction. This grows as you learn where the business really loses time.

  • Go looking for repetitive admin across the functions, then get rid of it. Sometimes that's a smarter process. Often it's AI or a lightweight automation using tools like Claude, Make, Zapier or n8n.

  • Test AI use cases properly, then turn what works into prompts, playbooks and short training sessions so the whole team can use it. We want everyone here fluent in AI, not one person doing it for them.

  • Run the change. When we agree an improvement, you're the one who makes it real: the plan, the tasks, the comms, the training, the chasing. Momentum shouldn't depend on anyone's memory.

🧭 Your first year

Here's the honest shape of it, roughly in this order.

• You learn how Mother Root really works. You meet every function, sit in on their rhythms, and take on the Ways of Working Log.

• The Log becomes yours outright and the recurring rhythm of the function runs through you. You've shipped your first couple of automations and killed off some admin nobody will miss.

• You own areas, not just tasks. You've earned the right to say "this is broken and here's what I'm doing about it" without asking first.

• You're the person joining up the work that runs across Business Operations and functions, because by now you know our operating system inside out and how we work. You'll have a point of view on what we should do next, and we'll want to hear it.

🎓 What You’ll Bring

• You've built something with AI. Not used it, built with it. An agent, an automation, a prompt library, a tool that did a real job for you. It absolutely does not have to be paid work. A side project counts. A society you ran counts. A spreadsheet that got out of hand and turned into a system counts.

• A systems brain. You see how things connect, and messy information bothers you until you've brought some order to it.

• You start with people, not systems. The best fix comes from understanding how someone actually works, so you'll spend time with teams, watch what they really do, and ask why more than once before you build anything. You're after the pain point underneath the request, not the quick patch on top of it. A solution nobody asked for is just more admin.

• Follow through. You finish things. You don't need telling twice, and you'd rather flag a problem early than hope it goes away.

• You find a way. "We can't do that" isn't an answer you reach for. If the obvious route is blocked you go looking for another one, and if something genuinely can't be done you come back with what can, and with what it would take.

• You notice. The broken link, the stale doc, the number that can't be right. You spot it, and then you fix it.

• You write clearly. You can explain a system to someone who has no interest in systems, and they'll understand it.

• Curiosity that survives contact with reality. When something breaks or you've no idea how it works, you find that interesting rather than frightening.

• You can run a project. Nothing certified, just capable. You can hold a plan, chase the bits that stall and tell people where things stand before they ask.

Useful, not essential: hands-on time in Notion, and experience of a fast-moving business where you've had to build the process rather than inherit it.

💫 How we work

Four values, and we use them to make actual calls.

• Be human. Warmth first, with each other, customers and suppliers. The person stays at the heart of every decision. We're straight when it's hard, and we lean on each other.

• Bring the heat. Energy, hunger, momentum. We're ambitious and we don't settle. We back ourselves and we test and learn rather than get stuck in debate.

• Keep it simple. Fewer things, done properly. The simplest version wins. Simple is harder, that's the point.

• Stay original. We lead, we don't follow. We made the category, and staying original means never stopping there.

🌟 Why this is a brilliant job

• You'll do operations the new way. AI isn't a side experiment here, it's how we intend to run a small team against much bigger ones. You'll be experimenting with it every week, and building genuine skill in the thing everyone is currently talking about.

• You'll work directly with the Lead. No layers in between, real feedback in real time, and a genuine say in where this function goes next.

• Your work will be visible. No committees, no layers. You'll build something on Tuesday and see the team using it on Thursday.

• The function is being built around you. Where this goes next depends a lot on what you make of it.

✍️ How to apply

Send your CV but skip the cover letter. Instead, tell us about one thing you've built with AI. What it was, what it did, what broke, and what you learned. A paragraph is plenty, and we'd far rather read that.

💛 Benefits & Perks

• Salary: £40,000-50,000 (depending on skills/experience)

• Share Options Programme

• Hybrid working: 3 x a week in office (Mon, Tues, Thurs) & 2 from home

• Annual Leave: 25 days per year

• Summer Hours: Early finish Fridays (June–August)

• Work From Anywhere: Up to 2 weeks per year

• Pension: Up to 5% matched contribution

• Cycle Scheme: Bike or Lime/Forest Pass

• Personal Development: £300 annual allowance for approved training

• Wellbeing Support: Access to Spill app & Heka allowance (£40/month) + birthday/work anniversary boosts

• Annual Team Trip: Gastronomical & wellbeing-focused team away trip

• Parental Leave: Competitive maternity/paternity package

• Lots of free Mother Root