Kitchen Trainer Chicago Market Full-Time

About the role

Fairgrounds is building a café where the food program matters just as much as the coffee. We're expanding our food offerings across the Chicago market (River North, Oak Park, and University of Chicago), and we need someone who lives and breathes kitchen execution to ensure every plate that goes out is right. This is not a desk job—you'll be in the cafés, on the line, at the prep station, and working shoulder-to-shoulder with our teams. You'll own food training and execution across three Chicago locations, lead new menu launches from recipe to plate, and maintain our standards as we grow.

Responsibilities

• Train all café staff on food preparation, assembly, plating, and quality standards.
• Build and run hands-on training sessions for new hires and ongoing skill development.
• Lead new menu rollouts from recipe development through in-café execution, including writing and refining SOPs, training teams before items go live, and auditing execution during launch.
• Conduct regular kitchen audits across all locations, checking portioning, temperature, presentation, and speed, and provide real-time coaching when gaps arise.
• Help cafés establish and maintain prep schedules, par levels, and batch production that scales across locations without sacrificing quality.
• Standardize build stations, ingredient specs, and plating to ensure cross-café consistency—guests should get the same experience at River North as they do at Oak Park.

Requirements

• 2+ years in a commercial kitchen (line cook, prep cook, or junior kitchen leadership role).
• Experience with prep sheets, batch cooking, and high-volume service.
• Proven ability to train others, even if informally.
• Attention to detail—you care about the difference between "good enough" and "right."
• Ability to read and teach recipes to beginners with patience.
• Organizational skills to manage three locations without dropping the ball.
• Desire to step into a role where you shape kitchen operations, not just execute them.

Food safety certification (ServSafe or equivalent) is preferred but not required—we’ll get you certified if needed.

Skills

• Kitchen execution and line experience
• Training and coaching
• Recipe development and SOP writing
• Quality auditing and real-time feedback
• Prep scheduling and batch production
• Cross-location standardization

Benefits

• Health insurance
• Paid time off
• Free café food and coffee

Pay

$25–$30/hr including average tip rate.

Schedule

Primarily daytime shifts with flexibility for launch weeks and occasional weekends. Regular travel between River North, Oak Park, and University of Chicago locations is required (all within Chicago metro).