Head of Legal

Location: Paris

Reporting to: CFO

Team: 1 direct report (junior legal)

Language: Fluent English and French

Role overview

Taster is transitioning to a franchise-led growth model across multiple European markets. To support this ambition, we are hiring a Head of Legal to own and scale the legal foundations of the business.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You will combine deep franchising expertise with pragmatic commercial judgement, ensuring that Taster’s franchise model, operational frameworks, and commercial agreements are robust, enforceable, and fit for scale, without slowing the business down.

While the role has the title and accountability of a Head of function, success in the first phase will be driven by personal execution rather than delegation.

Core responsibilities

Franchise system ownership

• Own Taster’s franchise legal architecture across all markets, including franchise agreements, pre-contractual documentation, and related frameworks.

• Ensure franchise documentation, operational manuals, and commercial practices are legally aligned and enforceable.

• Act as the legal owner of franchise readiness, identifying gaps, risks, and inconsistencies and escalating where required.

  Commercial contracting

• Draft, review, and negotiate a broad range of agreements, including:

• Franchise and multi-unit franchise agreements

• Lease agreements and amendments

• Supply and logistics contracts

• NDAs and commercial side letters

• Influencer, creator, and talent agency agreements

• IP/Brand ownership

• Litigation Management

• Balance legal risk, commercial upside, and speed to enable growth without undermining long-term defensibility.

Multi-country legal coordination

• Manage legal matters across multiple jurisdictions within country-led legal structures, maintaining group-level coherence.

• Draft core documents in-house and coordinate with external counsel for localisation and validation.

• Own external counsel relationships, ensuring quality, cost control, and clear accountability.

Business partnership & escalation

• Act as a senior legal partner to Operations, Expansion, and Commercial teams, providing pragmatic, solutions-oriented advice.

• Surface legal and structural risks early and escalate decisively to CFO when trade-offs are required.

• Support legal research across franchising, consumer law, IP, brand protection, and operational risk.

Function leadership

• Line-manage and develop a junior legal team member.

• Improve internal legal processes, document management, and ways of working as the organisation scales.

Required experience (non-negotiable)

• Proven franchising legal experience, drafted and rolled out franchise systems, managed franchise dispute/termination, experience with master franchising abroad, either from in-house and/or private practice.

• Experience in drafting and implementing franchise systems, including managing disputes and terminations. Proficient in handling international master franchising, gained either in-house or in private practice.

• Experience working with consumer brands, QSR, retail, or similarly operationally intensive businesses.

• Demonstrated experience managing multi-country or cross-border legal matters.

Profile we are looking for

• Commercially minded lawyer with strong judgement and comfort making trade-offs.

• Comfortable drafting from first principles rather than relying on precedent.

• Able to influence senior stakeholders without relying on formal authority.

• Execution-oriented, resilient, and comfortable operating in a fast-scaling, imperfect environment.

Why join Taster

This role gives you ownership of one of the hardest problems in scaling a franchised business: building a legal system that protects the brand without suffocating growth.

For the right individual, this role has a clear path to becoming the strategic legal leader of a multi-country franchised platform.