Career Information: Chef’s Job Description

---

Chef de cuisine (“chef” for short) is charged with managing everything in a professional kitchen. A chef is the person in charge and who also reports to the owner of the establishment where he or she works. That is, if they do not own the establishment themselves.

A chef decides on the menu, specials, how the plates/platter should look when it leaves the kitchen, and decides on the signature dishes. Whether great, good, or bad, the chef is responsible for the plates that leave the kitchen and the restaurant’s profitability.

Chef Career Job Description

•Creates the menu from top to bottom
•Manages the kitchen staff – this includes hiring, training and firing staff
•Building relationships with vendors
•Ordering supplies from vendors
•Putting in place specific standards of quality and plating techniques
•Ensuring that all orders are executed uniformly and correctly
•He or she is involved in watching out for the newest trends and equipment suitable for the establishment’s kitchen.
•Performs cost analysis of man hours, each item order, and the cost for customers
•Checks quality control of deliveries
•Ensures that the owner is well aware of problems or changes
•Handling staffing issues in a timely manner
•Serves as the leader of the kitchen workers by helping to boost morale and ensuring that things are kept in check
•Creating recipes that can be effectively and quickly prepared by kitchen staff
•Enforcing sanitation and health standards for the kitchen
•Frequently on the lookout for affordable and new vendors to lower costs
•Handling complaints made by customers efficiently
•Charged with every administrative responsibilities of the kitchen
•Steps in and helps cook during special events or when short-staffed.

Understanding the Chef Career Description and Your Duties

Although, the nature of this profession is known to be highly competitive, aspiring chefs with formal culinary training can count on getting more opportunities than those who only have hands-on experience. In order to improve one’s chances, one should complete a 4-year bachelor’s degree program in culinary arts.

In the bachelor’s degree program, aspiring chefs are trained in several areas like finance, business, and organization management, which are a very vital aspect of the position they occupy. To attain the “Boss” status, a chef needs to be certified by the American Culinary Federation (ACF) either as a Certified Chef de Cuisine (CCC) or a Certified Executive Chef (CEC).

Like any other kitchen expert, a newbie chef will need to prove him or herself by working hard. One’s training and hard work in every phase in the kitchen will be rewarded, as one move up the ranks. As an aspiring chef, you will also need to make sure that you take great advantage of networking opportunities, not only through your culinary training, but also in the kitchen too.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) presently projects no considerable change in the amount of new chef positions that will be created from now till the year 2020. However, this projection may change with the status of the nation’s economy.