Director Strategic Retail Development

Job description

Join a fast-growing, listed company with a purpose and kick-start a brand new business unit! Fastned owns and operates a network of over 210+ fast charging stations across Europe, allowing electric vehicle drivers to charge their car with 100% green energy in just 15 minutes. At Fastned you will actively contribute to accelerating the transition to sustainable mobility.

As our Strategic Retail Development Director you are Fastned’s strategic retail brain and lead the development, rollout and management of our retail offering across the Fastned locations in Europe. We want to create a place where we can provide EV drivers with anything that makes their charging stop more attractive, ranging from fresh coffee, to good food, clean toilets, and more. Moreover, we are looking for someone that is fully aligned with our mission to combat climate change, and eager to push the envelope with our retail offering in this respect.

In this exciting new role you will join our retail development manager who started recently and lead the creation of a completely new business unit within Fastned, working from strategy to implementation. Think of what Steve Jobs did with the Apple Store, the idea on which Starbucks was founded or why a group of hippies started Whole Foods market to sell healthy food.

To this end, you grow our retail team and work with them to get things done. We are looking for an independent and action oriented person that gets energy from building things: implementing, testing and improving. At the same time, you are a strong strategic thinker who can define strategy and a clear path forward. You enable effective communication and collaboration with both internal and external stakeholders. For this role you’ll build on your experience in the retail and/or restaurant industry, as well as with rolling out a concept to multiple locations.

The role will be based in our HQ in Amsterdam. We offer you the unique opportunity to fulfill an exciting, key role in a fast growing company, that is a pioneer in a completely new industry, offering you lots of ownership and the opportunity to create a big impact for Fastned and all EV drivers across Europe!

Your overall responsibilities include:

• Quickly get up to speed on the idea’s Fastned currently has on our retail concept(s), and create a quick path to start testing and improving these concept(s). Start the learning process.
• Liaise with relevant teams within Fastned to make sure everyone is aligned on our retail strategy and to collaborate on, for example: The brand team to build the retail brand; The finance team to build the business case; The network development team to select the right locations from our pipeline for our retail rollout; The design team to define the physical concept of our retail outlets; The country managers, to understand the market in their countries.
• Grow the team that is needed to develop, improve and roll-out the concept, and later on to scale the business, including finding and working with partners for development, testing and roll-out; Getting operations up and running, and develop/implement systems for smooth and scalable operations.

Job requirements

We are looking for someone who can both define strategy as well as organizing the company behind this strategy to put it into action. Someone who is comfortable taking ownership and leading others to make things happen. Someone who is mission driven and result oriented.

Additionally, you tick the following boxes:

• You have an entrepreneurial mindset and are comfortable jumping on this train which is gaining more and more speed within Fastned;
• You have over 5 years of experience in a retail/restaurant chain environment;
• You are capable of energetically collaborating with other team members and partners, and inspiring them to push the envelope and get things done;
• You have excellent project management, presentation and organizational skills;
• You are highly motivated to combat climate change by providing better alternatives.