Executive Chef

Asbury Communities•Gaithersburg, MD

10d•Onsite

About The Position

The Executive Chef is responsible for leading all back-of-house culinary operations for skilled Nursing and Assisted Living while supporting campus-wide culinary initiatives, café operations, resident engagement programming, and special events. This position oversees all culinary production, healthcare diet compliance, food safety systems, kitchen sanitation, regulatory readiness, menu execution, and culinary team leadership across healthcare dining operations. The Executive Chef ensures meals are produced safely, efficiently, therapeutically correct, and served at the highest quality standards for residents in skilled nursing, assisted living, rehabilitation, memory care, and healthcare environments. The Executive Chef must possess strong healthcare culinary experience including therapeutic diets, texture-modified diets, IDDSI standards, allergy management, sanitation compliance, and production systems within a regulated healthcare setting. This role also requires elevated culinary expertise to support upscale resident experiences, café operations, special events, action stations, and campus culinary programming. This leader works collaboratively with Clinical Nutrition, Nursing, Operations, and Dining leadership to ensure exceptional resident satisfaction, operational excellence, and regulatory compliance.

Requirements

Minimum of 7–10 years of culinary leadership experience required.
Experience managing therapeutic diet production and texture-modified diets required.
High School Diploma or GED required.
ServSafe Certification required.

Nice To Haves

Minimum of 3–5 years in healthcare, senior living, rehabilitation, or skilled nursing culinary operations strongly preferred.
Experience with IDDSI standards, healthcare tray line systems, and regulatory compliance strongly preferred.
Experience in upscale dining, catering, café operations, and special event programming preferred.
Experience leading large culinary teams in a high-volume environment preferred.
Culinary degree or formal culinary training preferred.

Responsibilities

Direct and oversee all healthcare culinary production for Wilson and Kindley operations.
Ensure all meals are prepared according to therapeutic diet orders, physician orders, resident preferences, and IDDSI standards.
Oversee production and execution of: Regular diets, Texture-modified diets, Pureed diets, Mechanical soft diets, Renal diets, Diabetic diets, Low sodium diets, Allergy-sensitive meals, Thickened liquid requirements.
Ensure accurate tray assembly, portioning, meal ticket accuracy, and timely meal delivery to maintain proper food temperatures and resident safety.
Maintain consistency in food quality, flavor, presentation, and nutritional integrity across all healthcare dining operations.
Monitor and enforce proper HACCP procedures, cooling logs, reheating standards, temperature logs, and sanitation documentation.
Support achievement of departmental financial goals including: Food cost targets, Labor management, Waste reduction, Inventory control, Purchasing compliance.
Monitor inventory levels, ordering practices, and product utilization.
Ensure efficient production scheduling and labor deployment.
Maintain integrity of standardized recipes, portion controls, and production systems.
Collaborate with Dining leadership on operational improvements and resident satisfaction initiatives.