General Manager

We are looking for a Los Angeles General Manager who can run a restaurant the way a seasoned operator runs a P&L — with rigor, autonomy, and judgment — while never losing sight of the fact that a guest came in for an experience, not a spreadsheet. This is the most independent operator role in our company today and has a direct partnership track.

• A complete operator. You can run service at 8pm on a Saturday and run a labor analysis at 8am on a Monday. Neither is foreign to you. Neither is what you outsource.
• A P&L owner. You know your five weekly numbers cold without looking. Labor, food cost, beverage cost, cover count, average check. You can diagnose a 200-bp food cost overage and tell me whether it’s portion, trim, mix, or theft.
• A service leader who has not gone soft. Years in management have not pulled you off the floor. You still touch tables, still read the room, still know what bread basket got missed.
• Someone who has built systems. You’ve walked into a restaurant before and built pre-shifts, training programs, floor structures, or KPI dashboards where there were none. You can show me what you built.
• Bicoastal-fluent. You understand the LA market — the rhythms, the demographics, the press cycles, what “regular” looks like here — and you don’t need it explained.
• Direct, warm, and unsentimental. Same standard as every PSH leader: radical candor, forget blame, no gossip, real ownership.

• The full P&L. Top line and bottom line. Labor, prime cost, comp dollars, controllables. You will run a weekly operating report and bring me decisions, not just numbers.
• The floor and the service standard. Pre-shifts, floor walks, table touches, recovery moments. The PSH service bar lives or dies with you.
• The full team — FOH and the FOH/BOH partnership. Hiring, training, scheduling, coaching, performance management. You will build a leadership bench (AGM, captains, leads) that can run a shift without you.
• Vendor and partner relationships. Beverage, produce, linen, AV, neighbors, local press. You are the face of Alba in LA.
• The operating cadence. Daily pre-shift. Weekly numbers and write-up. Monthly team review. Quarterly business review with me. The cadence is the job; the cadence is how we operate at distance.
• The brand on the ground. You will be entrusted with protecting the Alba name in a market where I am not in the room. Your judgment is the brand.

• Days 1–30 — Diagnose. Build a written assessment of the room, the team, the numbers, and the systems. Tell me what’s working, what’s broken, and what you would change. Show me your weekly operating dashboard.
• Days 31–60 — Stabilize. Fix the top three operational issues you’ve named. Build or refresh the service training plan. Get the labor and food cost back on target.
• Days 61–90 — Run independently. Own a full month of P&L delivery. Own a full month of service standard. Bring me one strategic recommendation that goes beyond the day-to-day — something you would do if this were your restaurant. Because functionally, it is.

• 5+ years as a GM or equivalent operating leader in a high-volume, high-standard restaurant. Multi-unit or single-unit; what matters is the depth.
• Demonstrable P&L ownership — you can walk me through a real operating report you built and the decisions you made from it.
• Track record of building leadership teams that outlast you on shift.
• LA market experience strongly preferred. Outside-LA candidates with strong ties and a credible relocation case will be considered.
• Either prior new-restaurant-opening experience or a credible operating playbook for the first 6–12 months of a market.
• References will be asked specifically about: ownership, P&L rigor, FOH presence, and how you handle being far from your principal.