Assistant Store Manager -- Sales, People & Store Operations

Full-Time | In-Store Leadership Position - Help Lead a Store Where Hospitality, Flavor and Sales Come Together

The Spice & Tea Exchange is a sensory specialty retail experience filled with spices, teas, salts, sugars, blends, gifts, recipes and discovery. Guests come to explore, taste, learn, find the right gift and discover something new. We are strengthening our Annapolis leadership team and looking for an Assistant Store Manager who can become a strong, visible point person for the team and sales floor. This is not a back-office management job. You will spend substantial time with guests and employees: setting priorities, coaching the team, creating selling energy, maintaining standards, supporting merchandising and events, solving problems and making sure the store is ready to perform.

Why This Role Exists

Our operation combines hospitality and selling, training, merchandising, scheduling, store readiness, inventory, production and daily execution. We need a leader who can connect the pieces while keeping people and customers at the center. Initially, particularly through peak fall and holiday season, this role will focus heavily on:

• leading the front of house and directing daily execution;
• developing, training and coaching employees;
• driving sales, hospitality and guest engagement;
• reinforcing accountability and culture;
• coordinating staffing and competing priorities;
• supporting merchandising, promotions and major selling events; and
• ensuring the store is consistently guest-ready.

As the role develops during 2027, the Assistant Store Manager will build deeper capability in inventory control, receiving, replenishment, production planning and other store-operating disciplines in partnership with our Inventory Control Manager and Director of Operations.

The goal is to develop a well-rounded store operator, not simply a strong shift supervisor.

What You Will Own

1) Lead the Team and the Shift - You will be one of the store's principal day-to-day leaders. You will:

• establish priorities throughout the shift;
• deploy employees based on traffic, workload and business needs;
• coordinate coverage and breaks;
• keep the team productive during busy and slower periods;
• resolve routine guest and employee issues;
• reinforce standards in real time; and
• follow through to ensure work is actually completed.

Employees should know who is leading, what matters most and what good execution looks like.

2) Coach, Train and Develop People - You will help onboard employees, teach customer-facing skills, coach performance in real time, recognize strong work and address weak execution directly and constructively. You will establish expectations, follow up after coaching, identify reliability or capability concerns, escalate performance issues appropriately and help strong employees grow into greater responsibility. We want someone who enjoys making other people better, not simply being the strongest individual performer.

3) Drive Hospitality and Sales - Hospitality and commercial performance reinforce one another here.

You will model and coach:

• proactive guest engagement;
• discovery questions;
• product education and storytelling;
• sampling and thoughtful recommendations;
• complementary and add-on selling;
• gifting solutions; and
• confident, personalized service.

You will help the team improve the behaviors behind measures such as sales, average transaction value, items per purchase, customer registration and other guest-engagement metrics.

Selling here should feel helpful, knowledgeable and enthusiastic never scripted or transactional.

4) Own Front-of-House Readiness - You will help ensure the physical store supports the experience we promise, including:

• merchandising and display execution;
• product presentation and replenishment;
• recovery, cleanliness and organization;
• signage and pricing readiness;
• seasonal and promotional transitions; and
• opening, ongoing and closing readiness.

You should notice when the store is drifting before someone else has to point it out.

5) Lead Events, Promotions and Peak Selling Periods - Annapolis is a destination market with significant seasonal and community traffic. You will help prepare the team for major events and promotions, ensure merchandising and samples are ready, assign responsibilities, create selling energy, adjust staffing as traffic changes, coach during the event and follow through afterward on recovery and results.

6) Support Scheduling and Labor Deployment - Depending on experience and demonstrated capability, you will participate in:

• building or maintaining schedules within labor expectations;
• balancing employee availability with business needs;
• identifying coverage gaps early;
• staffing around events and peak traffic; and
• managing day-of call-outs and coverage.

7) Connect Front-of-House and Back-of-House Execution - You will work closely with our Inventory Control Manager, who retains primary ownership of inventory accuracy, ordering, production planning, receiving and back-of-house inventory systems. Your responsibility is to make sure those systems support the guest and sales floor:

• Are promoted products available and replenished?
• Is the team prepared to sell them?
• Are displays ready?
• Are inventory or production concerns being surfaced early?
• Are front- and back-of-house priorities connected?

How the Role Grows - During peak season, success means becoming a credible people, sales and front-of-house leader. During 2027, development may expand into:

• inventory-control fundamentals;
• receiving, replenishment and ordering;
• production planning;
• inventory discrepancy resolution;
• labor and productivity management;
• store scorecards and performance analysis;
• operating procedures; and
• broader store-management responsibilities.

For the right person, this can become a platform for increasingly substantial store or operations leadership.

Who Will Thrive Here - You may be a strong fit if you:

• naturally take ownership rather than wait to be told what to do;
• can confidently direct and coach employees;
• are warm with people and firm with standards;
• enjoy selling and teaching others how to sell;
• can prioritize when several things need attention at once;
• delegate rather than trying to personally do everything;
• follow up reliably;
• can have difficult conversations when necessary;
• care about how the store looks and feels;
• use results and observable behavior rather than impressions alone; and
• are comfortable working in an evolving operation where systems continue to become more structured.

Experience We Are Looking For

We are looking for demonstrated frontline leadership, not simply management potential.

Strong candidates will usually bring experience in retail, hospitality, specialty food/beverage, restaurants, experiential businesses or another customer-facing environment, with responsibility for several of the following:

• leading shifts or teams;
• coaching and developing employees;
• driving sales or customer-experience results;
• merchandising and store readiness;
• scheduling or labor deployment;
• managing competing priorities during busy periods; and
• handling customer and employee issues professionally.

We are primarily seeking an experienced frontline leader with approximately 2–5+ years of progressively responsible supervisory or management experience. Strong candidates should already be comfortable leading shifts, coaching employee performance and driving commercial results. We care more about what you have actually owned and accomplished than the exact title on your rsum.

This Role May Not Be for You If You

• want a primarily administrative or back-office management job;
• dislike selling or coaching others to sell;
• prefer doing everything yourself rather than directing and developing others;
• avoid giving corrective feedback;
• need someone else to continually establish your priorities;
• are uncomfortable working weekends or peak retail periods; or
• believe being a manager means spending less time on the sales floor.

Our Culture - We create joyful, memorable experiences through the discovery of flavor.

We believe in:

• Proactive Service First Customers come before tasks.
• Enthusiasm & Energy Curiosity and excitement are contagious.
• Sales Through Education Knowledge creates customer value and business results.
• Team Accountability We support each other and own our performance.
• Continuous Growth Feedback and learning make both the employee and the store stronger.

Create joy for our customers and growth for ourselves every shift, every interaction.