Executive Chef

Role required – Executive Chef – East Midlands – Leisure & Hospitality

The Brief

Recruit an Executive Chef to run a cluster of diverse restaurants within a leisure environment. To provide the guests with quality restaurant and hospitality offers, serving a variety of high street style food products delivered in an excellent manner.  The ideal Executive Chef will be expected to exceed guest expectations and stimulate repeat business whilst maximising profit and managing all of the kitchen / back of house functions.

The minimum essential requirements for this role were; NVQ Level 3, City & Guilds 705 1/2/3 or equivalent. Desirable was City & Guilds 706 1/2/3 along with Advanced Food Hygiene.

The Company

The employing organisation was a renowned group of popular holiday villages. Their food & beverage offer ranges from high street full-service restaurants to coffee shops and quick service fast casual style offers.  They also provide a wide range of catering and hospitality for conference events of varying sizes.  This is a company who operate 365 days a year / 7 days a week and cater for high numbers during peak times.

The Role Requirements  

The Executive Chef role required at least 5 years’ experience in kitchen management ideally multi-unit operations encompassing fine dining to quick service / fast casual dining. The key skills and attributes we were tasked with sourcing were:

• Essential experience in budgeting and forecasting
• A hands-on approach with excellent communication skills at all levels
• A clear understanding of cost of sales management and proven commercial acumen
• The ability to set departmental targets and budgets for food costs and GP
• The ability to monitor performance in relation to food cost of sales
• Strong leadership skills, to conduct and monitor staff performance reviews within the kitchen division
• Evidence of maintaining an awareness of developments within the Industry, nationally and locally, in terms of new food products and trends
• Evidence of a high level of culinary flair appropriate for volume restaurants and hospitality catering
• Proven experience in working with suppliers & food service manufacturers on new product development to create innovative dishes for menus
• Someone with an active presence on the hot plate who manages by ‘walking about’
• Up to date knowledge of the law appertaining to the sale of any food product sold or dispensed in food & beverage outlets
• Experience of leading and managing large culinary teams
• Evidence of taking the responsibility for training and development for all employees in the kitchen operation

 

 

The ideal Executive Chef needed to have presence and gravitas as they would be responsible for the kitchen and culinary leadership of around 15 food and beverage outlets, turning over a combined £15 million.

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