Chef resume example

• Entry level

  Line cook with two years on saute and grill in a 140-seat American bistro and an associate degree in culinary arts. Holds ServSafe Food Protection Manager certification and keeps a clean station through 200-cover Saturdays. Trains new prep cooks on knife cuts and labeling. Ready to step into a junior sous chef role in a scratch kitchen.

• Mid level

  Sous chef with seven years in scratch kitchens, now running a 12-cook line that serves around 320 covers on weekends. Writes the prep lists and the schedule, places produce and protein orders, and brought food cost from 33% to 29% in one year. Builds weekly specials from seasonal produce and keeps HACCP logs inspection-ready.

• Senior

  Executive chef with fifteen years in restaurant and hotel kitchens and a current ACF Certified Executive Chef credential. Leads three kitchens and 38 cooks, sets every menu and holds food cost near 28% and labor under 30%. Opened two restaurants from first menu tasting to full service and keeps cook turnover low by promoting from within.

• Hotel banquets

  Banquet chef in a 300-room conference hotel, producing plated and buffet events for 50 to 600 guests. Builds production sheets from banquet event orders, schedules a crew of 12 for split shifts and works with the catering sales team on custom menus, tastings and guest dietary requests.

• Culinary graduate

  Recent culinary arts graduate with a 400-hour externship on the garde manger and grill stations of a hotel restaurant. ServSafe Manager certified. Looking for a line cook role in a scratch kitchen where I can learn every station and move toward sous chef.

• Home cook to pro

  Former warehouse supervisor with a culinary certificate from a community college night program and six months of weekend prep work. Used to leading crews and hitting tight schedules. Applying for a prep cook role with training on the hot line.

• Listing cuisines instead of kitchen results

  Fix: "French, Italian and Mexican" says little on its own. Tie each kitchen to output: covers per service, the size of the menu you cooked, how many cooks you led and one cost or quality change. A chef who held ticket times under 14 minutes at 250 covers reads as ready to run a line.

• Hiding your actual level in the kitchen

  Fix: Titles vary from one restaurant to the next. A "kitchen manager" at one place is a sous chef at another. Add a short scope line under each title: stations run, cooks supervised, whether you wrote the schedule, placed orders or set the menu.

• Leaving food safety to a single line

  Fix: A certificate at the bottom of the page is not enough for a lead role. Show the system: logs you kept, HACCP steps for cooling and holding, allergen labeling and how inspections went. One bullet about a clean health inspection with no critical violations says more than the badge alone.

• Writing the menu as a list of dishes

  Fix: Owners want to know the menu worked. For each menu you built, give the number of items, how you costed them and what happened next, such as a plate that became the top seller or a seasonal change that cut waste.

Match these against the job posting you are applying to: the free resume checker shows which keywords your resume is missing.

Sous chef

Put the title in the headline with the cooks you led and covers served.

Food cost

Give a before and after percentage in a bullet and name the change that moved it, such as recosting or in-house butchery.

Labor cost

State that you wrote the schedule and the labor percentage you held across a season.

Menu development

Count the menus and plates you created and say what one of them did for sales or waste.

ServSafe Manager

List the certification with its issuer and year in the certifications section, and keep it current.

HACCP

Describe the logs or plan you kept and the inspection results that followed.

Inventory management

Say how often you counted and any waste or shrink you reduced.

High volume

Use covers per service or meals per day in the summary so the reader sees the scale at once.

• Ran the saute station for a 180-seat brasserie, holding ticket times under 12 minutes on Friday and Saturday services.
• Brought food cost from 34% to 29% in nine months by recosting every recipe and moving two proteins to whole-animal fabrication.
• Cut weekly food waste about 20% by adding a waste log at each station and adjusting prep pars every Monday.
• Wrote and costed a 22-item spring menu with three new vegetarian plates, one of which became the top-selling entree.
• Scheduled a 14-person kitchen staff and kept labor at 29% of sales through a slow winter without cutting core shifts.
• Trained 9 prep and line cooks on knife work, station setup and allergen labeling, and promoted 3 to line positions.
• Passed four consecutive county health inspections with no critical violations after rebuilding the HACCP cooling and holding logs.
• Opened a 90-seat second location, setting up the kitchen layout, hiring 11 cooks and running 6 menu tastings before launch.

• Match the menu and the volume

  Read the posting and the restaurant's current menu before you send anything. A tasting-menu kitchen wants precision, plating and technique; a high-volume grill wants speed, ticket times and consistency. Move the bullets that match to the top of each job, use the cuisine words the menu uses. Tailor your resume to this kitchen's menu

• Open the letter with a dish you know they serve

  Chefs read short letters. Start with something specific about their food, such as a dish or a sourcing choice, and connect it to your own work with the same technique or ingredient. Then give your level, the covers you run and your food cost result, and say when you can come in for a stage. Write a cover letter for a chef job

• Prepare for the stage and the tasting

  Chef hiring usually includes a working interview, often a stage of a few hours on the line, and senior roles may ask you to cook a tasting. Practice the dishes you would offer, bring your own knives, and expect questions about food cost and how you would run a short-staffed night. Practice chef interview questions

• Show your progression on one page

  Kitchens promote quickly, and owners want to see that climb. If you moved from prep to line to sous at the same restaurant, list each title under one employer with its own dates so the promotions are visible. Then run a checker to confirm the dates read in order. Check your chef resume