Are you an experienced cook looking to use your skills to make a real difference?
At Sea Change, we're looking for an experienced Kitchen Supervisor & Workplace Mentor who combines strong cooking and kitchen leadership skills with the patience and ability to teach and develop others.
Based at our café in Doxford Park, within a residential setting and also open to the wider public, you will help deliver a high-quality café and meal service for residents, visitors, customers, and other Inclusionists services.
This is a hands-on role. You will prepare and cook a varied range of traditional, nutritious hot and cold meals, supervise the kitchen, manage stock and food waste, and confidently take responsibility when a manager is not present.
Alongside this, you will work with neurodivergent and disabled adults within a real workplace environment, helping them develop practical skills, confidence, independence, and experience that can support their progression towards employment, volunteering, or further training.
What You'll Be DoingCooking & Kitchen Operations
- Prepare, cook, and present a varied range of traditional, nutritious hot and cold meals, accommodating dietary requirements and individual needs.
- Prepare, portion, package, label, and safely store meals for delivery to other buildings or for use on days and mealtimes when the café is closed.
- Support menu planning and manage stock, including ordering, rotation, portion control, and maintaining appropriate stock levels.
- Monitor and minimise food waste, using ingredients creatively and resourcefully to achieve good value while maintaining quality and nutrition.
- Contribute creative ideas for menus, specials, and seasonal dishes.
- Maintain excellent standards of food hygiene, allergen management, food storage, temperature control, cleanliness, and health and safety.
Kitchen Supervision & Leadership
- Take responsibility for the day-to-day running of the kitchen and café when required, including when a manager is not present.
- Use initiative and sound judgement to make decisions, solve problems, and prioritise workloads.
- Organise and delegate tasks, providing clear direction and support to staff, trainees, and volunteers.
- Lead by example, maintaining high standards of food quality, customer service, teamwork, cleanliness, and professionalism.
- Confidently manage routine operational matters while escalating significant concerns to management when required.
Workplace Mentoring & Development
- Work alongside neurodivergent and disabled adults, providing meaningful training and experience within a real working café.
- Teach practical skills including food preparation, cooking, cleaning, organisation, customer service, teamwork, communication, timekeeping, and workplace routines.
- Demonstrate and break tasks into manageable steps, adapting your communication and teaching approach to individual needs and abilities.
- Encourage individuals to complete tasks as independently as possible, providing patient, positive, and constructive guidance.
- Help individuals develop the confidence, independence, and transferable skills needed to progress towards employment, volunteering, or further training.
- Create a calm, supportive, inclusive, and welcoming workplace while maintaining appropriate professional standards and expectations.
Safeguarding, Communication & Compliance
- Promote the welfare, dignity, safety, and inclusion of the people we support and report safeguarding concerns promptly.
- Communicate effectively with colleagues, managers, trainees, residents, customers, support staff, and professionals.
- Maintain required records relating to food safety, kitchen operations, stock, training, and participant progress.
- Follow organisational policies and requirements relating to safeguarding, GDPR, food hygiene, allergens, health and safety, and professional standards.
- Use BrightHR and other organisational systems to complete required documentation, training, and compliance activities.
- Undertake mandatory training and keep your knowledge and professional practice up to date.
- Represent The Inclusionists and Sea Change positively and professionally.
- Carry out other reasonable duties appropriate to the role as required.
How You Will Make a Difference
This role is about more than preparing great food. You will use your cooking experience, leadership skills, creativity, and patience to create a real workplace where neurodivergent and disabled adults can learn, contribute, and grow in confidence.
For some of the people we support, this may be their first experience of work. By working alongside them, demonstrating tasks, encouraging independence, and recognising their progress, you can help them discover what they are capable of and take meaningful steps towards their future.
We need an experienced and confident cook who can take responsibility, lead others, use initiative, and maintain high professional kitchen standards, while also being patient, approachable, encouraging, and willing to adapt how they teach and support others.
If you have strong catering and leadership skills and would like to use them to create great food, meaningful opportunities, and make a genuine difference to people's futures, we would love to hear from you.
Pay: £13.45 per hour
Benefits:
- Free parking
- On-site parking
Work Location: In person
