Culinary Operations Manager

RiverWoods Durham•Durham, NH

8d•Onsite

About The Position

RiverWoods is hiring a full-time Culinary Operations Manager to direct kitchen operations at RiverWoods Durham, serving independent living and supportive living residents, employees, and guests. This hands-on role works directly with kitchen staff and manages operations within the approved budget while ensuring efficient, sanitary, and safe food preparation and handling. The manager is responsible for fostering employee learning, professional growth, and development, and ensuring compliance with local, state, and federal requirements. The role oversees menu creation and execution across multiple dining venues and levels of care, including therapeutic and texture-modified diets, allergen management, food safety, and regulatory compliance. It also owns food and labor costs, inventory, purchasing, waste management, equipment readiness, staffing, and team development. The Culinary Operations Manager collaborates with culinary leadership, nursing, dietary services, dining operations, and other teams to support resident needs, community events, and smooth dining service.

Requirements

High school diploma or GED.
Formal education in Culinary Arts.
At least five years of experience as a sous chef, chef, or manager in a continuing care retirement community, hotel, restaurant, hospital, or school.
Proven successful prior work experience.
Proficient computer skills, including Microsoft Office for word processing and entering data into Excel worksheets.
ServSafe Food Protection Manager certification, or ability to obtain it within 90 days of hire.

Nice To Haves

A two- to four-year Culinary Arts degree.
Certified Dietary Manager (CDM) credential.
Certified Culinary Professional credential.

Responsibilities

Create seasonal menus using approved partners and local and sustainable practices when practical and consistent with the budget and RiverWoods culinary program.
Plan, prepare, and execute daily menus across the main dining room, bistro or café, health center, and small-house or memory-support kitchens.
Maintain ACF-format standardized recipes and plan for compostable by-products.
Ensure at least 85–90% scratch-cooked production in keeping with community culinary standards.
Partner with the Regional Director of Culinary Operations on seasonal menus, rotation cycles, daily specials, and resident satisfaction feedback.
Maintain consistent plate presentation, portioning, and food quality across service points.
Ensure accurate execution of physician-ordered therapeutic and texture-modified diets in line with IDDSI standards.
Coordinate with nursing, dietitians or dietary consultants, and PointClickCare-fed diet orders to prevent discrepancies between medical records and kitchen production.
Maintain consistent therapeutic-diet terminology and procedures across levels of care.
Manage Big-9 allergen identification, labeling, and cross-contact prevention.
Analyze food flow and maintain HACCP compliance, including temperature logs, receiving standards, and critical-control-point monitoring.
Serve as a primary contact for state health department and other food-service regulatory surveys.
Ensure routine cleaning and sanitation under the Uniform Food Code using department logs and checklists across kitchens, pantries, and storage areas.
Maintain ServSafe certification or equivalent and ensure appropriate certification coverage among kitchen leadership.
Ensure timely, thorough inventories of perishable and non-perishable goods.
Manage food cost, labor cost, and waste targets; analyze variances and adjust production.
Manage purchasing, receiving, inventory, and vendor relationships in partnership with procurement.
Support production planning that reduces overproduction and waste.
Use menu and production management systems, such as Must Have Menus, and POS data for forecasting.
Schedule culinary operations staff within the approved budget two weeks in advance.
Keep equipment in good working order, place repair orders as needed, and work with the Regional Director to develop preventive maintenance.
Select, hire, orient, train, coach, recognize, and evaluate culinary team members, directly and through subordinate team members.
Recruit, train, schedule, and develop a kitchen team combining full-time staff and per diem workers.
Develop job flows by identifying critical tasks, communicating procedures and desired outcomes, and specifying expected completion times.
Set performance expectations and provide hands-on coaching, particularly for high school- and college-age per diem staff.
Build a positive kitchen culture that supports cross-training and internal advancement.
Partner with the Dining Operations Manager and supervisors to ensure smooth transitions between kitchen production and dining-room service.
Work with internal and external teams to achieve results.
Partner with nursing and dietary services on resident-specific dietary needs and care-plan changes.
Support community dining, special functions, and fundraising events with menu design and execution.
Represent culinary operations in interdisciplinary care conferences as needed.
Participate actively in the Dining Committee.
Model professionalism, integrity, ethical standards, and commitment to high-quality products.