The posting
ABOUT HOTPLATE
Hotplate exists to enable anyone to start and scale a local food business without a brick and mortar.
The traditional brick and mortar restaurant model is broken: it requires six figures in upfront capital https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/on-the-line/how-much-does-it-cost-to-open-a-restaurant and comes with high operating costs. Within their first year, 2/3 of all restaurants and bakeries close.
The next wave of food entrepreneurship is emerging. These chefs and bakers run businesses from home, commissary kitchens, or mobile pop-ups. They generate hype and buzz on Instagram and run almost entirely on pre-orders. The result is 50-80% profit margins, over 10x the traditional 5% margin https://www.restaurant365.com/blog/what-is-the-average-profit-margin-for-a-restaurant-2/#:~:text=Full%2Dservice%20restaurants%20(3%2D5%25)&text=With%20greater%20labor%20costs%2C%20FSR,%2C%20turnover%20rates%2C%20and%20location of a brick and mortar.
But today’s e-commerce tools weren’t built for this way of selling food. Without Hotplate, chefs and bakers hack together DMs, Google Forms, Square, and Shopify. They spend more time managing logistics than growing their business.
We support the top pop ups in the country, many of which are recognized by the New York Times, Infatuation, Eater, etc. and recently crossed 5,000 businesses and $80M paid out on the platform, but we're just getting started.
By building the foundational tool for this new model, we have the opportunity to fundamentally change the food industry for the better: increasing the diversity and accessibility of food by making it possible for anyone to start a food business.
If you want to read more to make sure Hotplate is a good fit, check out our philosophies on hiring https://www.notion.so/Hiring-Philosophy-f008f4f940e34a17b29c90b4d27b7e5a?pvs=21, fundraising https://www.notion.so/199ebe859bea446499968ee12ce7b1f7?pvs=21, and our values https://www.notion.so/Values-Mission-f3371eb51e9047238c66cd312e3660f0?pvs=21.
THE ROLE
As Hotplate’s Head of Socials, you’ll own a mission-critical part of our growth engine, and one of the most important tools we use to stay connected with chefs and bakers. Our chefs and bakers live on Instagram, and you will, too.
We are looking for someone who wants the freedom to push our strategy (collaborating with the co-founders to identify what to test first), and then own the end to end execution (filming + editing), as well as analysis of what works vs. not.
This job is part maintenance, shipping content to serve our existing community and audience, but mostly experimentation. We want our content to bring new chefs onto Hotplate, help people discover the drop model, and get more consumers excited to buy from our chefs. Much of these playbooks aren’t built out, yet.
We’ve organically grown to 7K+ active businesses selling in every state of the US and built a social audience of 25K+ followers. But we’re just getting started. We believe this is the right cultural moment to make Hotplate and the food drop model mainstream. We want to grow our audience into the hundreds of thousands and turn our best-performing content into something millions of people engage with.
In this role, you will spend a lot (!) of time with chefs and bakers in-person and async, filming with them, drawing out their stories, and helping them feel comfortable on camera. Our chefs and bakers are ultimately why we do what we do. Full stop, you should be someone who’s excited to work closely with chefs and bakers and make them feel supported, cared for, loved up, and feeling like they’ve had an amazing experience with our team.
This role is based in San Francisco, and we are 5 days a week in-person. You should be down to travel, and expect anywhere from 1-2 trips / month, sometimes last minute.
WHAT YOU WILL NEED TO BE SUCCESSFUL
- You’re already a creator. You can write the post, shoot and edit the video, and ship it yourself
- You’re obsessed with understanding why content performs. You use reach, engagement, shares, follower growth and conversions to spot patterns, form hypotheses, run experiments and decide what to scale or change. Every post is a chance to learn, and when we fail, we fail together 🤝
- A strong sense of what's working on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and whatever comes next, and why
- You can manage creators and contractors, write clear briefs, and raise the bar on what ships
- You're excited about AI tools and always exploring what's new in the social world, testing what's worth bringing into Hotplate
- A love for food and the people who make it
- 3+ years running social or content for a brand, creator, or startup
OUR PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIAL
Our chefs are the best content we have. Nothing tells the Hotplate story better than a chef selling out a drop from their own kitchen, so we'd rather spotlight real chefs and real food than polish a brand that only talks about itself. When our chefs grow, Hotplate grows.
OUR TEAM
We are a lean, mission-driven team. We exist to enable the next million chefs and bakers to scale local food businesses outside the brick & mortar model.
We operate with high ownership, laser focus on the impact we have for our chefs and bakers, and commitment to take on projects that push us out of our comfort zones.
We’re a tight knit crew. We jam with a daily shared playlist, often hang for team lunch and happy hours, and always have snacks on the table (made by the team or a Hotplate Chef). We love working in a place where we all have a connection, and think it helps us work better as a team.
THIS ROLE PROBABLY ISN'T FOR YOU IF
- You want a calendar and approvals job. You'll be making things, not just scheduling them.
- You need a full team before you can ship. You'll start by doing most of it yourself, then build out creators and contractors as we grow.
- You don’t want to innovate on your content or process. Social changes every month. You should be the first to try new formats, platforms, and AI tools.
- You're looking for close, day to day mentorship. You'll have a supportive team, but this role works best for someone with a few years of growing social who can ramp up on their own.
Those are all fine ways to work. They just aren't how Hotplate works.
BENEFITS
- Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage for you and dependents
- 401(k) retirement plan
- Unlimited PTO (that people actually take)
- Monthly budget to spend on Hotplate
Hotplate is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.
