Line Cook resume example

• Entry level

  Prep cook ready for the line after a year in a 120-seat neighborhood restaurant. Runs the morning prep list alone, breaks down chicken and fish, and covers the fry station on weeknights. Holds a ServSafe Food Handler card and keeps cooling and temperature logs. Available nights, weekends and holidays, with my own knife kit.

• Mid level

  Line cook with four years on grill and sauté in high-volume American kitchens. Holds the grill alone on 200-cover nights, keeps an average ticket time under 13 minutes and sets up from the prep list without supervision. Trained three new cooks on plate specs and station breakdown. ServSafe Food Handler and Allergens certified.

• Senior

  Lead line cook with eight years across steakhouse, brunch and banquet kitchens, able to run any station and call tickets at expo. Writes the daily prep list, places produce and protein orders when the sous chef is off and trains new cooks. Holds a ServSafe Manager certificate and is ready for a junior sous chef role.

• Writing "cooked food" instead of naming stations

  Fix: Every kitchen breaks its line into stations, so use their names. Say grill, sauté, fry, pantry or garde manger, flat top, pizza oven or expo, and which ones you held alone. A chef filling a sauté spot will skim for that word in your first bullet.

• Giving no sense of volume

  Fix: A 60-seat bistro and a 400-cover brunch are different jobs. Add covers per service, tickets during a rush or plates fired per shift, plus the menu size you cooked. One number per job is enough to show the pressure you have worked under.

• Leaving out the opening and closing work

  Fix: Setting up from a prep list, labeling and dating, rotating stock first in first out, cooling logs, breaking down the station and deep cleaning hoods or fryers are half the job. Chefs notice cooks who leave a clean station. Give it one bullet with a detail, such as filtering the fryers nightly.

• Hiding your availability

  Fix: Kitchens hire for shifts. If you can work nights, weekends, holidays, doubles or brunch, say it in your summary. If you can only work certain days, say that too, so you are matched with the right opening instead of being screened out later.

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

• Held the grill station alone on 220-cover Friday nights, firing up to 90 steaks and burgers a service at the right temperature.
• Kept an average ticket time of 12 minutes on sauté during a 300-cover brunch, measured on the kitchen display system.
• Ran the morning prep list for 14 menu items, finishing setup 30 minutes before doors opened on every shift for six months.
• Portioned proteins to spec with a scale on every order, helping the kitchen cut protein waste by 9% in one quarter.
• Broke down and deep cleaned the fry and flat top stations nightly, contributing to a zero-violation health inspection.
• Covered 3 stations during a two-cook callout on a holiday weekend, keeping tickets moving for 260 covers.
• Trained 4 new line cooks on plate specs, station setup and breakdown during their first two weeks.
• Filled 40 allergy and special-diet orders a night by using separate boards, pans and utensils and reading every modifier aloud.
• Prepped stocks and 6 house sauces in batches each morning, labeling and dating every container and rotating first in first out.
• Cooked 450 plates for a banquet in 90 minutes as part of a 5-cook line, plating to a photo spec for each course.

• Lead with the station the posting is hiring for

  Kitchen postings usually name a station or a style: grill cook, sauté cook, brunch line, pizza or banquet. Put that station in your headline and move the matching job to the top of your bullets. If the posting mentions a cuisine or a piece of equipment you have used, such as a wood-fired oven, say so plainly. Tailor your resume to a kitchen posting

• Keep the cover letter short and practical

  Most chefs read three or four lines at most. Say which station you want, the busiest kitchen you have worked in, the days and shifts you can work and when you are free for a stage. A short note sent with your resume often gets read faster than a long letter. Write a short line cook cover letter

• Get ready for the stage and the questions

  Expect to cook. Bring your knives and non-slip shoes, read the menu before you arrive and ask for the prep list. Chefs may ask how you handle being in the weeds, what temperature chicken must reach, how you set up your station or how you deal with a ticket you cannot read. Practice short, honest answers. Prepare for a line cook interview

• Aiming for sous chef next? Study the chef example

  If you already write prep lists, place orders or train new cooks, you are doing parts of a sous chef's job. Compare your resume with the chef example to see how food cost, ordering and leadership are written up, and start adding one line about each from your current kitchen. See the chef resume example