Job Description

JOB PURPOSE:

Lead a talented culinary team while managing daily kitchen operations, food quality, food safety, sanitation, and executional excellence. Support the total guest experience by establishing and accomplishing business goals, developing people, and ensuring consistent operational standards.

WHAT YOU’LL BE DOING:

May include, but not limited to:

• Lead a talented team in a high-volume, fast-paced, casual dining restaurant to achieve profitable returns, strong guest loyalty, a high-performance culture, and continuous improvement.

• Increase kitchen team effectiveness through sound business practices, processes, and systems.

• Develop cross-functional collaboration between restaurant outlets and front-of-house leadership.

• Sustain Four Diamond-plus service standards through consistent culinary execution and guest experience.

• Establish and sustain key, cross-functional, guest-focused processes.

• Contribute to Greenleaf Hospitality’s total effort while maintaining professional and technical knowledge. 

• Lead with energy, urgency, accountability, purpose, mission, and values.

• Lead and support all facets of kitchen operations with a focus on execution, growth, and long-term success. 

• Partner with the Restaurant General Manager, Executive Chef, and Sous Chef to implement and uphold standards through regular interaction with managers and staff.

• Lead daily kitchen shifts to ensure excellence in food quality, ticket flow, cleanliness, organization, and team performance.

• Support staffing deployment and shift readiness to meet business demands and maximize operational efficiency.

• Train, coach, and develop cooks and stewards to improve performance, consistency, and bench strength. 

• Reinforce recipe adherence, portion control, plating consistency, and quality standards across all dayparts.

• Monitor prep execution, pars, line readiness, and product availability to ensure smooth and successful service. 

• Support food inventory controls, recipe administration, waste reduction, and proper product utilization.

• Ensure equipment, workstations, and kitchen areas remain clean, organized, and service ready.

• Maintain attention to detail and work collaboratively as a committed team player.

• Identify operational opportunities and help implement solutions that improve execution, consistency, and results.

• Ensure proper sanitation, food handling, workplace safety, and full compliance with local, state, and company food safety standards.

• Oversee proper labeling, dating, rotation, and storage of food products using F.I.F.O. and approved food hierarchy standards.

• Verify and enforce safe cooking, cooling, reheating, hot holding, and cold holding procedures.

• Correct food safety and sanitation deficiencies immediately and provide coaching or retraining as needed.

WHAT YOU NEED FOR THIS POSITION:

• Talent Level above benchmark.

• Strong people acumen to develop solid working with relationship both internally and with customers

• Decisiveness with “big picture” perspective

• Previous Chef or Kitchen Manager of high volume Restaurant 

• Drives to improve work and implement new ideas to improve the goals of the business

• Sets direction, maintains it and achieves the agreed-upon goal.

• Has an upbeat attitude that creates a contagious work environment

• Good decision maker who understands the use of measurements and data in running a business

• Experience with developing processes and systems in a Kitchen environment

• Driven by purpose, mission, values, and has sense of urgency 

• Able to work closely with staff through strong communication and verbal skills

• Able to stand for long periods of time, up to 10 hours or more

• Able to stoop and bend

• Able to lift up to 40 pounds from time to time

• Able to safely work with potentially dangerous chemicals and equipment

• Able to comply with safety and health code standards

• Able to handle responsibilities that require repetitive motion tasks

• Able to safely work with potentially dangerous chemicals and equipment

• Able to comply with safety and health code standards

• Able to handle responsibilities that require repetitive motion tasks