Chef Operations Supervisor

CookUnity•Los Angeles, CA

8d•Onsite

About The Position

CookUnity is seeking a hands-on Chef Operations Supervisor to support the launch, stabilization, and ongoing performance of licensed culinary businesses in the market. The role works alongside chef-operators to strengthen teams, processes, and leadership capabilities so kitchens can execute consistently and independently. As CookUnity’s on-site operational representative, the supervisor connects daily kitchen operations with the General Manager, Licensed Operations, and functional partners. The role focuses primarily on assigned licensed stores, identifying risks, coaching kitchen leaders, coordinating issue resolution, and ensuring corrective actions deliver lasting improvements. When capacity permits, the supervisor may also support selected strategic chef launches and targeted team-development needs across the market. This is an on-site role. Scheduled days off primarily fall between Tuesday and Thursday.

Requirements

At least 7 years of experience in high-volume culinary operations, commissary production, food manufacturing, catering, restaurant groups, or multi-unit operations.
Experience leading complex production in a time-sensitive environment.
Strong understanding of production planning, labor management, throughput, yields, quality systems, food safety, equipment, and kitchen execution.
Demonstrated experience opening, stabilizing, or turning around culinary operations.
Ability to diagnose operational problems through direct observation and performance data.
Experience coaching chefs and kitchen leaders while maintaining clear accountability.
Strong communication and coordination skills, including the ability to work effectively across chef-operators, corporate functions, senior leaders, and hourly teams.

Nice To Haves

Formal culinary training or prior executive-chef experience, supported by strong operational leadership skills.

Responsibilities

Lead operational onboarding, kitchen setup, training, production trials, and launch-readiness assessments for assigned licensed stores.
Develop kitchen-level launch plans with the General Manager, confirming readiness across staffing, recipes, ingredients, equipment, workspace, food safety, capacity, packaging, and production handover.
Verify that approved recipes and processes can be executed consistently in production, and provide structured feedback to Product Development without independently changing culinary intent.
Recommend launch go/no-go decisions to the General Manager using objective readiness criteria, and provide hands-on support through launch and ramp-up.
Assess daily production readiness, identify risks early, and maintain visibility during critical production periods and volume increases.
Coach chef-operators and kitchen leaders on shift planning, production checks, quality reviews, staffing, training, and problem-solving to strengthen independent execution.
Develop targeted improvement plans for performance gaps and escalate recurring capability or accountability concerns to the General Manager with supporting evidence.
Coordinate immediate containment and recovery when issues threaten production, food safety, quality, customer experience, or handover, maintaining clear ownership between operators and CookUnity teams.
Maintain issue logs and track problems through root-cause analysis, corrective action, and verified resolution, preventing temporary workarounds from becoming permanent practices.
Monitor adherence to approved recipes, cooking temperatures and programs, yields, portions, batch standards, critical control points, and licensed-brand requirements.
Partner with Food Safety and Quality Assurance and Product Development on concerns requiring technical support, and verify that corrective actions produce sustained improvement.
Maintain operating scorecards covering launch readiness, production-plan attainment, handover, product availability, preventable replacements or production-cap reductions, quality, customer feedback, and corrective-action progress.
Track production disruptions, resolution times, repeat incidents, and operator independence to identify opportunities for improvement.
Communicate risks, decisions, commitments, accountable owners, and due dates clearly.
Use recurring issues and launch retrospectives to improve training, tools, service levels, and operating playbooks.
Support other high-value or operationally complex chef launches and targeted team development when licensed-store priorities and capacity permit.