Head Chef/ Cook (1)

Also known as: Food Service Supervisor, Kitchen Manager, Food Service Manager

A head chef is responsible for cooking and co-ordinating the staff in a school’s kitchen. You will oversee the preparation of the food to ensure it is compliant with the school’s policies.

Your day-to-day duties may involve:
• food preparation
• managing budgets
• maintaining health and hygiene procedures
• allocating tasks to junior team members
• ordering stock

As head chef you will manage the kitchen team while they cook large quantities of food for the pupils and staff. It is your duty to create the menu, ensuring the content is healthy and there is plenty of choice. Working as a team you will maintain good working relationships with colleagues, and assist the kitchen staff with their personal development and training.

You will supervise all the kitchen staff with the production of food, ensuring recipes are followed and a strict portion control so everyone is fed. You will also maintain health and hygiene standards in the kitchen and check that all team members are adhering to them. Many ingredients have a low shelf life, so you will monitor stock to make sure there is no contamination of the fresh food.

The head chef also has the responsibility of ordering new stock for the school meals. As there is a high quantity of food with a low shelf life, this will need to be done weekly. The head chef will work closely with the kitchen manager to co-ordinate the budget for each school term.