R&D Chef I

Home Chef • Chicago, IL

12d • Onsite

About The Position

The Research and Development Chef I will conceive and create new recipes for the Home Chef menu that meet our nutritional, cost and ingredient specifications. This is a kitchen centric role that works cross functionally throughout the department.

Requirements

• Completion of a two-year program such as an Associate degree Culinary degree preferred
• 10+ years experience working in a kitchen or other professional cooking environment.
• Able to work in a clean and organized manner.
• 2+ years prior recipe development experience.
• Self-starter and highly motivated to make meals that an average person can successfully cook at home.
• ServSafe or food handling certification preferred
• Sense of teamwork and collaboration.
• Works well in group settings to move projects forward, provide constructive feedback when needed, and support the overall team workload
• Strong verbal communication skills
• Willing and able to receive feedback and implement suggestions
• Understanding of current nutrition, food and food industry trends.
• Must be able to taste and provide thorough feedback on every meal and ingredient sample test in the kitchen, including vegetarian, pork, chicken, steak, and seafood meals.

Responsibilities

• Conceive accessible, creative new recipes in the test kitchen that apply to cost, ingredient, caloric/nutritional, and time constraints
• Collaborate with kitchen team, to improve and test each other’s dishes, potentially coordinating daily taster assignments
• Take extensive and honest feedback every day on meal accessibility and flavors and incorporate into recipes
• Work closely with the recipe development team to ensure constraints are met, recipe tester feedback is incorporated, and customers will be able to execute meals
• Collaborates with photography team in order to plate dishes in a way that will appeal to customers for menu surveys
• Manages a minimum average rating of 4.00 with equal success across all product lines
• Averages a minimum 3 meals weekly through the Selection Committee process
• Thoroughly understand how average customer cooks and strive to make meals as streamlined, quick, and easy as possible
• Analyze customer comments on meals from both menu runs and beta runs, and incorporate learnings into new recipes
• Attend and participate in weekly culinary team meetings, including Performance Board, Team Check-ins, and Taster Pre-shift with opportunity to lead
• Attends and supports cross functional teams initiatives, new product lines, sampling ingredients, supply team check-ins

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, life and disability insurance available
• Paid holidays, sick time and vacation time
• 401k program
• Flexible spending accounts for qualified medical, dependent care, parking, or transit expenses

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: Associate degree