Executive Chef - Senior Living

Responsibilities

• Leads daily culinary production and kitchen operations to ensure meals are prepared safely, accurately, attractively, and consistently according to approved menus, recipes, portion guidelines, production standards, and resident dietary needs.
• Establishes and reinforces standards for food quality, taste, freshness, temperature, doneness, presentation, garnish, portion control, and service readiness.
• Supervises, schedules, trains, coaches, and evaluates assigned culinary and kitchen team members, including sous chefs, cooks, utility, dishwashing, storeroom, trayline, and related kitchen support staff.
• Provides hands-on culinary leadership when needed, including preparing, cooking, plating, garnishing, expediting, and supporting service execution during meal periods, special events, staffing shortages, or operational needs.
• Plans and organizes daily production, including production sheets, recipe scaling, preparation timelines, leftovers utilization, future menu preparation, and coordination of kitchen workflow.
• Partners with the Director of Dining Services on menu execution, purchasing, inventory control, labor planning, budget adherence, culinary standards, resident satisfaction, and dining experience improvement.
• Collaborates with dining room leadership to support timing, plate presentation, communication, special requests, service recovery, and coordination between kitchen production and dining service.
• Assists with recruitment, onboarding, performance management, corrective action, and retention of culinary team members in partnership with the Director of Dining Services and Human Resources.

Requirements

• Current ServSafe Food Protection Manager certification, Food Handler certification, or ability to obtain required certification within the timeframe required by the organization and applicable law.
• Knowledge of food safety, sanitation, HACCP principles, safe food handling, temperature controls, storage practices, and commercial kitchen safety requirements.
• Ability to supervise, coach, train, and direct culinary and kitchen staff in a fast-paced service environment.
• Ability to communicate effectively with residents, team members, managers, vendors, and other departments.
• Ability to use basic computer systems, menu software, ordering platforms, email, and standard business applications.

Qualifications

• Culinary degree preferred.
• Three to five years of culinary management experience.
• High volume production and catering experience is essential.
• Experience in a Life Plan Community, continuing care retirement community, healthcare dining, or similar environment serving residents with varied dietary, nutritional, and service needs.
• Desire to learn and grow with a top-notch foodservice company.