The Catering Assistant will be responsible for preparing and serving food, maintaining cleanliness across the catering and dining areas, managing stock and waste as well as ensuring a smooth functioning kitchen, focusses on positive customer experiences. The role holder will be expected to deliver safe, high-quality food, whilst maintaining a hygienic and compliance focussed environment.
Food preparation and support
- Responsible for preparing food times according to menus and standard recipes, ensuring consistency, quality and safe consumption.
- Responsible for excellent customer satisfaction relating to attractive food offerings and service standards.
- Drive efficient standards and service, delivering a positive dining experience.
- Support with delivery handling and storage, ensuring that stock levels are accurate and preventing spoilage.
- Operate pot wash and plate wash areas, ensuring that there is a continuous supply of clean service equipment.
Housekeeping
- Responsible for routine cleaning including vacuuming, mopping and sanitising to maintain a hygienic and safe environment for customers and staff.
- Maintain dining room cleanliness and replenish supplies to ensure readiness for service.
- Participate and manage schedule for deep cleaning activities as required to maintain long term hygiene, ensuring adherence with standards and audit.
- Responsible for high touch areas, to drive hygiene standards and reduce risk of contamination - supporting health standards within the kitchen and buildings.
- Manage the collection, replacement and correct disposal of cleaning equipment.
Stock Control and Waste Management
- Apply and following FIFO (First In, First Out) stock rotation to minimise waste, ensuring fresh stock and support wider measures on cost control.
- Responsible for following waste management procedures, focussed on reducing environmental impact and ensure compliance with organisational requirements.
Health, Safety and Compliance
- Maintain hygiene standards to ensure compliance with food safety regulations and to protect customer wellbeing.
- Manage chemical use in accordance with MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) to ensure safe handling and prevention of accidents and contamination.
- Follow and drive safety culture - ensuring all procedures are managed to reduce risk and maintain a safe working environment.
- Responsible for reporting defects and hazards promptly, to support timely corrective action and prevent incidents.
Customer Service and Communication
- Respond to customer requests and feedback, resolving any issues promptly to drive high satisfaction levels
- Participate in team meetings and improvement initiatives, to support continuous service enhancement, and operational efficiency.
General Responsibilities
- Attend and complete all required training to maintain compliance, competence and readiness for any changes in operational needs.
- Support overall catering operations, to ensure a smooth daily service and operational reliability.
- Secondary education (National 5 or equivalent)
- Holds entry level experience in catering and/or hospitality
- Experience as an assistant chef is desirable but no essential
- Familiar with cleaning and hygiene routines in a kitchen setting.
- Knowledge of catering operations and food service support
- Familiar with a hygiene and compliance focussed environment
- Good understanding of safe manual handling techniques.
- Strong customer service skills
- Good communication and literacy skills
- Ability to work independently and as part of a team
- Good numeracy and literacy skills
- Awareness of health and safety requirements
