Overview Tom's Waffles is more than a waffle cart. We bring joy, creativity, and crispy caramelized Belgian waffles to festivals, schools, and private events across Denver — and we're growing fast enough that how we run those events matters as much as the waffles themselves. This is a paid Operations Internship for students who want real ownership, not a shadowing gig. You'll run live events end to end as an Event Lead, then take what you learn in the field and help us fix the systems behind them: prep sheets, packing lists, staffing ratios, service flow, event economics. We're growing fast and we build careers from the inside — we recently promoted one of our Event Leads to Operations Manager. We're looking for people who want that trajectory, not just a semester of weekend shifts. If you've ever watched a line back up and thought "there's a better way to lay this out," this is your job. What You'll Do In the field — you run it. You show up, set up, cook, serve, lead a teammate or two, break down, and get the equipment home. Every event is a small business with a four-hour lifespan and you're the one operating it. Behind the scenes — you improve it. Every event generates data and friction. You'll help us turn that into better process: where prep estimates were off, which layout moved the line fastest, what we forgot to pack (again), which events actually made money and which just made us tired. Then you'll propose the fix and we'll test it at the next one. Run events

• Load, transport, and set up Tom's Waffles equipment at event sites
• Own the full operation: cooking, serving, transactions, customer flow
• Lead or assist a small event team (usually 1-2 people)
• Deliver a great customer experience with warmth, speed, and quality
• Manage event timing, maintain cleanliness, and troubleshoot on the fly
• Represent the brand with pride and professionalism Improve operations
• Debrief after events: what broke, what dragged, what worked
• Learn our prep, inventory, packing, and scheduling systems from the inside
• Track the numbers that matter — sales per hour, prep-to-waste ratio, setup time, labor cost per event
• Audit and rewrite our checklists and playbooks so the next person runs the event better than you did
• Pitch process changes and pilot them at real events
• Help onboard and train new event staff as we scale What You'll Walk Away With
• Real P&L literacy — you'll understand what makes a single event profitable
• Hands-on experience owning operations, not just executing tasks
• A portfolio of documented process improvements you actually shipped
• Team leadership experience at a small but real scale
• A reference from a founder who watched you work, plus first look at full-time roles as we expand Where This Goes At Tom's Waffles we are constantly pushing growth, so if the internship ends up being a good fit, future opportunities are abundant. Some directions people have grown into or could grow into:
• Operations Manager — owning scheduling, logistics, and the event calendar
• Lead Trainer — building and running onboarding as our event staff grows
• Event Sales / Partnerships — booking festivals, schools, and private clients
• Systems & Process Lead — owning the inventory, prep, and event-economics playbooks end to end We'd rather invent a title for someone great than lose them because we didn't have one. If you're the kind of person who outgrows a job description, tell us in your application what you'd want to own a year from now. Who You Are
• A current student (or recent grad) in business, ops, supply chain, engineering, hospitality, or honestly anything — we care more about how you think than your major
• Ambitious and business-minded — you're thinking about building something, and you want to learn how a company actually works by helping run one
• In it for more than a semester — we invest heavily in people who stick around, and the best opportunities here go to people who've been building with us for a while
• Bought into the mission — we're trying to be the best thing at every event we show up to, and that only works if you care about it too
• Reliable and organized — you take responsibility and follow through without being chased
• People-oriented — you like customers and you're comfortable directing a couple of teammates
• A hands-on problem solver — you stay calm and capable when it's busy and something goes wrong
• Curious about systems — you notice inefficiency and it bugs you
• Physically capable — can lift up to 40 lbs and stay on your feet for several hours
• Licensed driver — you'll be traveling to event sites

Bonus:

experience in food trucks, catering, restaurants, or event operations Schedule & Logistics

• Flexible scheduling built around your classes — tell us your semester schedule and we'll work with it
• Most events fall on nights and weekends; availability there is essential
• Part-time during the school year, with the option to scale to full-time over breaks and summer
• Based in Denver (80238), traveling to event sites around the metro What We Offer
• $20/hour base + tips + event performance bonuses (good event leads consistently clear well above base)
• Flexible schedule with frequent weekend events
• Real growth opportunity with enough flexibility to create a role that fits you if the existing ones don't
• A fun, creative startup culture where great work gets noticed in weeks, not review cycles

Pay:

$20.00 - $50.00 per hour Expected hours: No more than 50.0 per week

Benefits:

Flexible schedule Application Question(s): Are you available nights and weekends? A customer tells you his order was forgotten. He seems very annoyed. How would you communicate with him? Tell us about a time you noticed something was being done inefficiently — at a job, in a club, on a group project — and what you did about it. If this went well, what would you want to be owning at Tom's Waffles a year from now?

Work Location:

In person