Executive Chef

HumanGood • Los Altos, CA

5d • Onsite

About The Position

The Executive Chef leads culinary production and kitchen operations for the community’s dining services program. This role is responsible for food quality, menu execution, presentation, sanitation, inventory practices, kitchen workflow, and supervision of assigned culinary and kitchen team members. The Executive Chef partners with the Director of Dining Services to deliver a high-quality, hospitality-centered dining experience for residents across applicable levels of care. The role supports HumanGood’s efforts to elevate dining through consistent culinary standards, attractive food presentation, resident feedback, team development, and disciplined execution of menus, recipes, food safety requirements, and service expectations.

Requirements

• Current ServSafe Food Protection Manager certification, Food Handler certification, or ability to obtain required certification within the timeframe required by the organization and applicable law.
• Knowledge of food safety, sanitation, HACCP principles, safe food handling, temperature controls, storage practices, and commercial kitchen safety requirements.
• Ability to supervise, coach, train, and direct culinary and kitchen staff in a fast-paced service environment.
• Ability to communicate effectively with residents, team members, managers, vendors, and other departments.
• Ability to use basic computer systems, menu software, ordering platforms, email, and standard business applications.

Nice To Haves

• Culinary degree preferred.
• Three to five years of culinary management experience.
• High volume production and catering experience is essential.
• Experience in a Life Plan Community, continuing care retirement community, healthcare dining, or similar environment serving residents with varied dietary, nutritional, and service needs.
• Desire to learn and grow with a top-notch foodservice company.

Responsibilities

• Leads daily culinary production and kitchen operations to ensure meals are prepared safely, accurately, attractively, and consistently according to approved menus, recipes, portion guidelines, production standards, and resident dietary needs.
• Establishes and reinforces standards for food quality, taste, freshness, temperature, doneness, presentation, garnish, portion control, and service readiness.
• Supervises, schedules, trains, coaches, and evaluates assigned culinary and kitchen team members, including sous chefs, cooks, utility, dishwashing, storeroom, trayline, and related kitchen support staff.
• Provides hands-on culinary leadership when needed, including preparing, cooking, plating, garnishing, expediting, and supporting service execution during meal periods, special events, staffing shortages, or operational needs.
• Plans and organizes daily production, including production sheets, recipe scaling, preparation timelines, leftovers utilization, future menu preparation, and coordination of kitchen workflow.
• Partners with the Director of Dining Services on menu execution, purchasing, inventory control, labor planning, budget adherence, culinary standards, resident satisfaction, and dining experience improvement.
• Collaborates with dining room leadership to support timing, plate presentation, communication, special requests, service recovery, and coordination between kitchen production and dining service.
• Assists with recruitment, onboarding, performance management, corrective action, and retention of culinary team members in partnership with the Director of Dining Services and Human Resources.

Benefits

• Health, Dental and Vision Plans
• 20 days of paid time off (increases with years of service), plus 7 company holidays
• 401(k) with up to 4% employer match and no waiting on funds to vest
• HSA option with employer contribution
• Tuition Reimbursement and continuing education programs
• $25/line unlimited cell phone plan (plus taxes and fees)
• Cell Phone Stipend
• 5-star employer-paid employee assistance program

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Education Level: No Education Listed