Are you a passionate chef with strong leadership skills and a flair for delivering great food and exceptional service? We are seeking a Lead Chef to take responsibility for our café and catering operation, leading a small team in providing fresh, high-quality food for customers, tenants, meetings and events. This varied role combines hands-on food preparation with team leadership, menu development, stock control, administration and service improvement.
We are seeking an experienced, enthusiastic and proactive Lead Chef to lead our small catering operation at Greenhouse Business Centre.
This is an exciting opportunity for a talented chef who enjoys a hands-on role and is passionate about delivering high-quality food and excellent customer service. As Lead Chef, you will take responsibility for the day-to-day management of the café kitchen and business catering service, ensuring high standards of food quality, food safety, team performance and customer satisfaction.
Working closely with colleagues across the business centre, you will play a key role in developing menus, managing stock and budgets, leading and supporting staff, and delivering catering for meetings, conferences and special events.
About the Role
As Lead Chef, you will:
- Lead all aspects of the café kitchen and catering operation.
- Prepare and deliver fresh, high-quality food for café customers and business events.
- Design, plan and cost seasonal menus.
- Manage stock, ordering and supplier relationships.
- Ensure full compliance with food hygiene, HACCP and health and safety standards.
- Supervise, support and develop catering and front-of-house staff.
- Conduct staff reviews and contribute to recruitment and training activities.
- Take ownership of operational issues and identify practical solutions.
- Maintain accurate records, reporting and administrative systems.
- Drive continuous improvement across food quality, service delivery and operational efficiency.
About You
We are looking for someone who:
- Has previous experience as a Lead Chef, Senior Chef or similar role within a café, catering or hospitality environment.
- Is an excellent cook with strong culinary knowledge and creativity.
- Has experience managing or supervising staff.
- Demonstrates strong organisational, administrative and time management skills.
- Can confidently manage competing priorities and work independently.
- Is solution-focused, proactive and accountable.
- Has excellent communication and customer service skills.
- Is competent using Microsoft Office, including Outlook, Word and Excel.
- Holds a Food Hygiene Level 3 qualification (or is willing to obtain one if required).
The successful candidate will be more than just a skilled chef. We are looking for a leader who takes ownership, solves problems, supports their team and helps drive the development of our catering service.
If you are passionate about food, thrive in a varied environment and are ready to take responsibility for a growing catering operation, we'd love to hear from you.
How to Apply - click at the bottom of this page.
For an informal chat about the role, contact: Nanci Spedding Business Centre Coordinator on: 01388 662 666 or email your CV to [email protected]
We want you to be yourself at Groundwork and we value everything that makes you unique. We recognise and celebrate your difference and together we make Groundwork a special and great place to work. As a Disability Confident employer we offer a guaranteed interview to applicants with a disability who meet the essential criteria for the role.
At Groundwork we ensure that we provide a safe environment for adults, children and young people to take part in any activity or service that we organise. We are committed to creating a culture that promotes safeguarding and the welfare of all children, young people and adults at risk. Our safer recruitment practices support this by ensuring that there is a consistent and comprehensive process of obtaining, collating, analysing and evaluating information from and about candidates to ensure that all the people we appoint are suitable to work with our children, young people and adults
This role is not eligible for UK Visa Sponsorship - the successful applicant will need to have a pre-existing Right to Work in the UK in order to be offered an employment contract.
Please note, should we receive a high volume of applications, we may look to close the role early, therefore we recommend an early application.
Interview expected week commencing 17th August.
