Executive Chef- Full-Time

Mercyhealth•Harvard, IL

4d•Onsite

About The Position

The Food Production Lead supports daily kitchen operations in a healthcare setting by ensuring safe, high-quality meal production for patients, visitors, and staff. This role provides leadership to the production team, maintains compliance with food safety, sanitation, and infection control standards, and helps deliver an exceptional dining experience while supporting efficient department operations.

Requirements

High school diploma or equivalent
Minimum of five years of experience as a cook
State Food Safety Sanitation Certification per department requirements.
Excellent interpersonal / communication skills
Full knowledge of kitchen equipment
Able to perform mathematical calculations
Ability to read and comprehend simple instructions, short correspondence, and memos.
Ability to write correspondence.
Ability to effectively present information in one-to-one and small group situations to other employees of the organization
Ability to communicate with others in a positive manner
Ability to add, subtract divide and multiply all numbers
Ability to perform these operations using units of American money, weight measurements and volume
Ability to apply common sense understanding to carry out instructions.
Ability to deal with problems.
Basic computer knowledge needed
Regularly required to stand; walk; use hands to finger, handle, or feel; reach with hands and arms; talk or hear and taste or smell.
Occasionally required to sit; climb or balance; stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl.
Must regularly lift and/or move up to 15 pounds, frequently lift and/or move up to 25 pounds and occasionally lift and/or move up to 50 pounds.
Good manual dexterity to operate kitchen equipment.
Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, color vision, peripheral vision and ability to adjust focus.

Nice To Haves

Graduate of vocational school, or culinary program preferred.

Responsibilities

Supervises daily job duties of personnel in the absence of the supervisor.
Order supplies and replacement equipment.
Monitors adherence of sanitation standards for department.
Conducts weekly Sanitation/Safety/Maintenance Audit and follows up by assigning cleaning and initiating Engineering requests.
Ensures adherence of effective sanitation and infection control procedures according to the state and county health departments.
Responsible for the orientation and training of production staff on core competency requirements.
Attends mandatory inservices and completes Edunet/MLC per health system policy.
Assists in planning menus for patients and retail.
Demonstrates and monitors adherence with HACCP standards.
Monitors effective utilization of unused portions to maintain quality and reduce food costs.
Conducts daily walk through of food storage areas/coolers to ensure proper labeling and dating.
Assists in supervising receiving and examines foodstuffs and supplies to ensure quality and quantity meet established standards and specifications.
Performs inventory, ordering and initiating reports.
Monitors portion control throughout the various points of service throughout the department; gives instructions to workers as to size of portions and methods of garnishing.
Cooks or otherwise prepares food according to recipe.
Devises special dishes and develops standardized recipes
Recognizes and adopts the appropriate menus and recipes to the specific needs of the patient population and demonstrates knowledge of specific issues directly related to age and needs of patient, line and cafeteria customers.
Demonstrates excellent guess/customer service relationships with internal and external customers.
Achieve/maintain excellent ratings on patient and customer satisfaction surveys in area of food quality, appearance, presentation, portions, taste and temperature.
Participate in interviewing candidates for openings.
Observe and test foods to determine if they have been cooked sufficiently.
Knowledge of various cooking procedures and methods.
Monitors production staff to ensure department safety and sanitation regulations are followed.
Responsible for overseeing the maintenance of the food service vehicle.