Do you have senior chef/catering experience and a passion for good local food?
Would you like a chance to be part of a recently started high quality café/restaurant on a high profile farm with an Artisan cheese manufacturing business, winner of Live Love and Eat Best Café in Devon 2014 ?
This is a part time permanent position, currently 3 days a weeks to include weekends plus 1 day average for evening working and to cover for holidays and sickness, to fulfil the demands of the business.
Applicant would need experience of managing and day to day running of a kitchen, including food safety, and be highly motivated and committed to developing menus and evening openings, using our own and local produce.
Job Purpose
- AIM – To be responsible for producing great food for the guests of Quickes Farm Kitchen, during the time they are on duty and when they are not
- To ensure our own world class artisan cheese and farm products are presented world class in the Kitchen, and that other products used are of similar quality and provenance
- Be instrumental in increasing brand awareness, profile and reputation by satisfied customers
- To cater for events in the Kitchen and elsewhere
Key Responsibilities and accountabilities
The Head Chef is responsible for ensuring that Quickes Farm Kitchen is world class, achieving this by: –
Operational
- Hands on producing iconic meals, an exemplar to others in the team, and responsible for the quality of meals produced by others
- Day to day management of Kitchen function
- Ensuring great quality and presentation to delight our guests, including dealing calmly and effectively with workload peaks, maintaining quality whatever the challenges
Menu
- Ensuring best use of the products that come from the farm and cheese business, and feeding back on the quality of them
- Trialling new products and menus, working with Front of House Manager, Chefs and the rest of the team what works and what doesn’t, and developing new menus with Front of House Manager
- Developing seasonal and special events and dinner menus with Consultant Kitchen, Retail and Events Manager, and taking from Front of House Manager what works for guests and adapting accordingly
People
- Having the chef team work to their Job Descriptions
- Creating and managing rotas for chefs, and alerting Consultant Kitchen, Retail and Events Manager what staff we need, including for daily, seasonal, event and dinner peaks
- Complete timesheets for chef team
- Hiring as required, inducting, training and recording training of chef team
- Conducting performance reviews & disciplinary actions for chef team
- Communicate effectively with the aim of resolving issues and contributing to relevant meetings
Resources
- Ordering sufficient ingredients of the correct quality from Shop, Farm, including MC Kelly (farm meat) or external suppliers consistent with shop stocking, receiving, signing for & accounting for incoming ingredients
- Maintaining stocks of consumable stores & ordering as required
- Completing the required records and developing and implementing standard operating procedures to ensure Kitchen catering unit runs smoothly, and problem solving as required
- Maintaining Health & Safety and First Aid for chefs and maintaining all appropriate records
- Ensuring Food Safety consistently, undertaking required actions and maintaining all required records, responsible for ‘Safer Food Better Business’ implementation in catering unit
- Keeping all equipment operational in catering unit
- Ensuring all equipment and catering unit are left clean, safe and fit for use
Finances
- Delivering correct portion size to deliver targeted margins, and feeding back constraints to achieving them
Quality Control
- Responding to complaints in a positive manner, and resolving them and working to remove root cause of complaints
This is a part time permanent position, currently 3 days a weeks to include weekends plus 1 day average for evening working and to cover for holidays and sickness, to fulfil the demands of the business. The Farm Shop and Kitchen are open 9.00 – 5.00 Monday – Saturday and 10.00 – 4.00 Sundays and Bank Holidays with developing evening events
The Person will be:
- Highly motivated, self-utilising and self-starting, inspired by Quickes Farm Kitchen and what it provides to guests
- Fulfilled by delighting guests
- Experienced at managing competing pressures and delivering iconic food to every guest
- Be willing to be held to account and to hold other people to account
- Able to raise issues and concerns with the person who can deal with those issues
- Take full ownership and responsibility for their role
- Be flexible and prepared to do whatever is required (e.g. working outside normal hours where necessary)
- Be robust and alert to the impact of a highly visible role
- A team leader and team player
- Have a high level of communication skills
- Disciplined and organized in the use of their and others’ time
- Hygienic and clean, able to maintain their appearance despite the pressures, with a good eye for presentation and detail
- Passionate about world class food and enjoy using, eating and sourcing artisan products
The Person will have the following experience:
- Proven track record of success in catering
- Experience of managing and training other chefs and being responsible for organising their own day as well as others.
- Essential interest in artisan food or drink, desirable background and training will be given.
Skills:
The position requires a high calibre performer, who is:
- A great chef
- Catering college or equivalent experience
- Numerate
- Literate
- Computer literate – email, spreadsheets and word processing
Salary
Remuneration dependent upon experience £8 – £10/hr