Customer Support

Job description

# 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 opportunity As the second member of Hotplate's support team, you will be charged with tackling tickets and helping to build out our support systems as we grow from 5,000 to 50,000 chefs. You are the person that chefs will talk to when it matters most, and you both enjoy and are energized by turning around a chef's experience when something goes wrong. You'll proactively tackle tickets over phone, SMS, and email, while still thinking about how you scale yourself and Hotplate's support functions. That could look like building out macros and documentation, leveraging AI tools to help you move faster, or even thinking about how the product can be improved to better support our chefs. The role will start with a Sunday - Thursday schedule, with about 500 tickets / week. # What you need to be successful - 6 months of customer support experience in tech, ideally early to midstage startup - A strong customer obsession and excitement to help small business owners succeed - Comfort with technical troubleshooting, and the ability to clearly explain product behavior to both customers and internal teams - Excellent written and verbal communication across email, SMS, and phone - Experience with support tools like Intercom, Zendesk, Front, or similar - Experience using AI tools in your work, whether for drafting, summarizing, researching, or improving your own workflows - Strong judgment, ownership, and follow-through: you prioritize well, stay calm under pressure, and make customers feel taken care of *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.*