General Manager

Silence Please and Teabowl are looking for a General Manager to oversee people, operations, scheduling, training, and private events across both brands.

This role is for someone highly organized, hands-on, hospitality-minded, and comfortable managing a founder-led business with multiple moving parts: a premium Japanese tea concept, a high-end listening room, retail, private events, speaker demos, and brand collaborations.

Each Teabowl location has lead baristas who are responsible for daily drink execution, café flow, and most inventory management. The General Manager’s role is to support those leads, make sure the teams are properly staffed and trained, keep operations consistent, and ensure both brands run smoothly.

Responsibilities

Team Management

• Hire, onboard, train, and manage staff across Teabowl and Silence Please
• Create and manage weekly schedules based on business needs, events, and labor targets
• Work closely with lead baristas at each location to make sure daily operations are smooth
• Make sure staff are punctual, professional, well-trained, and aligned with brand standards
• Build a strong hospitality culture with clear expectations and accountability
• Handle staff communication, performance issues, and day-to-day team needs
• Keep training materials, checklists, and service standards up to date

Operations

• Oversee daily operations across both brands and both locations
• Support lead baristas with operational issues, staffing needs, and café standards
• Make sure each space is clean, organized, well-presented, and functioning properly
• Coordinate repairs, maintenance, vendors, deliveries, supplies, and service providers
• Create and improve operating systems, SOPs, checklists, and workflows
• Communicate clearly with ownership about issues, priorities, and improvements

Inventory + Café Support

• Lead baristas typically handle daily inventory, par levels, ordering needs, and café prep
• The General Manager should supervise the inventory system and make sure it is being followed
• Help prevent stockouts, over-ordering, waste, and disorganization
• Support ordering, vendor communication, and inventory checks when needed
• Make sure tea, milk, soft serve mix, packaging, and key ingredients are properly tracked

Training + Standards

• Train staff on hospitality, service flow, product knowledge, cleanliness, and brand standards
• Make sure team members understand the menu, tea program, soft serve, retail products, and customer experience
• Support lead baristas in training new baristas on drink preparation and café execution
• Maintain consistency across locations without micromanaging the leads
• Make sure the guest experience feels warm, refined, calm, and intentional

Private Events + Brand Activations

• Manage private event operations from planning through execution
• Coordinate staffing, setup, breakdown, rentals, deliveries, product needs, and event flow
• Work with ownership on event requirements, guest experience, pricing, and logistics
• Communicate with clients, partners, vendors, and internal team members
• Make sure events feel polished, organized, and aligned with the Silence Please and Teabowl brands
• Handle day-of operations for tastings, listening sessions, private bookings, speaker demos, and brand collaborations

Silence Please Responsibilities

• Support the listening room, speaker showroom, rentals, demos, and client visits
• Help coordinate speaker deliveries, private bookings, invoices, quotes, and customer follow-up
• Make sure the showroom and listening experience are always presentation-ready
• Assist with events, installations, partnerships, and special projects
• Coordinate with fabricators, technicians, delivery teams, contractors, and vendors when needed

Admin + Communication

• Track schedules, labor, staffing needs, events, operational issues, and vendor coordination
• Send regular updates to ownership
• Work with bookkeeping/accounting support as needed
• Help manage purchase orders, invoices, receipts, and vendor payments
• Keep shared documents, schedules, SOPs, and systems organized and up to date

Ideal Candidate

• Experience managing a café, restaurant, hospitality concept, retail store, showroom, event space, or lifestyle brand
• Strong at hiring, training, scheduling, and managing people
• Calm, organized, and good under pressure
• Hands-on, but able to delegate clearly to lead baristas and team members
• Strong taste level and attention to detail
• Comfortable working directly with a founder
• Good at creating systems without making the environment feel corporate
• Interested in hospitality, tea, music, design, sound, or culture
• Reliable, honest, proactive, and highly communicative

Requirements

• 3+ years of management or operations experience preferred
• Hospitality, café, restaurant, retail, event, or showroom experience strongly preferred
• Strong scheduling, hiring, training, and team-management skills
• Comfortable using POS systems, spreadsheets, email, and basic business tools
• Availability to work weekends, events, and occasional evenings as needed
• NYC experience preferred

Compensation

Compensation will be based on experience and scope of responsibility. This can be structured as a full-time salaried role with performance-based upside depending on the candidate.

About the Brands

Teabowl is a premium Japanese tea concept focused on exceptional matcha, hojicha, soft serve, and rare teas sourced from some of Japan’s most respected producers.

Silence Please is a high-fidelity speaker and listening-room brand creating sculptural audio systems, private listening experiences, rentals, events, and collaborations with artists, designers, and cultural brands.

This is a rare role for someone who wants to help build two detail-driven, taste-led brands from the inside while managing the people and operations that make them work every day.