Awkward Family Photos is bringing its portrait studio into shopping malls for the holidays. Guests step into a set built like Grandma's living room, put on the silliest outfits we could find, and take the most over-serious family portrait of their lives. It's a comedy brand with a lot of heart, and it turns out people love it.
We're hiring a Popup Coordinator to run one location for the season.
THE JOB
📍 Locations (seasonal independent contractor, 1099):
Capital Mall (Olympia, WA)
Broward Mall (Plantation, FL)
Franklin Park Mall (Toledo, OH)
Southlake Mall (Merrillville, IN)
Yorktown Center (Lombard, IL)
🗓️ Season: November 6th, 2026 through December 24th, 2026, plus training the week of October 19–23
⏱️ Schedule: Booth hours Mon–Fri 1–8pm, Sat 11am–9pm, Sun 11am–6pm. Shifts are up to 8 hours, including 30 minutes of setup and pack-down, and weekends and evenings are required. Dress code: all black, plus the crew vest we provide.
WHAT YOU'LL ACTUALLY DO
You are the person who makes the location work. On any given day that means:
- Opening and closing the booth, and owning the standard of everything in between — including guest check-in on the iPad (Zenfolio bookings, with walk-ups booked into the next open 15-minute slot)
- Leading your booth's photographers — including helping to train any new team members over the season
- Being the mall's point of contact: their management, their security team, their rules
- Receiving the kit we ship direct to the mall (including the camera gear coming from our LA team), checking every item against the packing list, and getting it all packed and shipped back at the end of the season
- Handling the things nobody else should have to: an unhappy guest or an equipment failure
- Reporting daily numbers and flagging problems early enough that we can fix them
You will not handle cash or card payments — guests pay on their own phones — but you will manage the inventory of the location.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
- Supervisory experience in retail, events, hospitality, or anything else where you ran a floor and a team at pace
- Genuinely calm when it gets busy. Holiday mall traffic is relentless and the job is mostly about keeping a small team steady through it
- Comfortable being the adult in the room on safety and consent matters, including saying no to a paying customer
- Available across the whole season, weekends and holidays included — this is the one period we cannot flex
- Reliable communicator. If something breaks at 6pm on a Saturday we need to hear it from you at 6pm on a Saturday
Nice to have, not required: experience with pop-up retail or seasonal photo operations, a driver's license, prior experience training staff.
WHAT YOU DON'T NEED
You don't need to be a photographer. You don't need to know anything about cameras. We have photographers; we need someone to run the place.