Chef Resume Template & Examples
A chef resume is read by an owner or executive chef who wants three answers fast: how big a kitchen you ran, what it cost to run it, and whether the food got better on your watch. Covers per night, food cost percentage, team size, health inspection results and the menus you wrote matter more than adjectives like "passionate" or "creative".
Key Skills: Menu development · Food cost control · Kitchen leadership · Line expediting · Inventory and ordering · HACCP and food safety · Recipe costing · Staff training
Resume Writing Tips
Size the kitchen in the first line
"Sous chef" means one thing in a 40-seat bistro and another in a 300-cover hotel banquet operation. Open each job with the scale: seats, covers per service or per day, number of cooks you led, and the style (à la carte, tasting menu, banquet, high-volume casual). A hiring chef compares your kitchen to theirs before reading anything else.
Show food cost and waste as numbers
Owners hire chefs to protect margins. If you brought food cost from 34% to 29%, renegotiated a produce order, introduced a whole-animal program or cut trim waste with a prep list, write the before and after. Labor cost per cover and inventory turns also work. One honest percentage beats three lines about "managing the budget".
Name the menus you actually wrote
List seasonal menus, specials programs, brunch launches or catering menus you created, and what happened next: dish sales mix, check average, repeat bookings, a local press mention. If you cooked someone else's menu, say so plainly and describe how you executed it — consistency on a busy line is a real skill and reads better than a borrowed claim.
Put inspections and certifications where they are seen
A clean health inspection record, a Certified Food Protection Manager credential such as ServSafe Manager, and allergen training are things a kitchen needs to stay open. Add the score or result and the year. If you ran HACCP logs, temperature checks or allergen matrices, one bullet about the system you built says more than the word "sanitation".
Describe how you lead a line
Chefs are hired as managers as much as cooks. Say how many cooks, dishwashers and prep staff reported to you, how you scheduled them, who you trained and promoted, and what changed in ticket times or turnover. "Cut average ticket time from 18 to 12 minutes on Friday service" tells a reader you can run a pass under pressure.
Licences and requirements
Certified Food Protection Manager
The FDA Food Code (section 2-102.12) asks that the person in charge of a food establishment be a Certified Food Protection Manager who passed an exam from an accredited program. States and counties adopt different editions of the Code and set their own exemptions, so check your local health department. ServSafe Manager is one widely used accredited exam; put the certificate name and expiry date on your resume.
Resume summary examples
- Line cook moving into a first sous chef role after four years on sauté and grill in a 120-cover restaurant. Runs the pass on the chef's days off, writes weekly specials and has trained six new cooks. ServSafe Manager certified.
- Sous chef with seven years in hotel and banquet kitchens, planning prep and staffing for events of up to 600 plated covers. Built a par system that cut overproduction waste by about 20%. Looking for a chef de cuisine role in full-service dining.
- Executive chef with 11 years in seasonal American restaurants, leading a 22-person kitchen at up to 350 covers a night. Keeps food cost under 30%, writes four menus a year around local farms and has a clean inspection record.
Strong Resume Bullets
- Ran a 22-person kitchen serving 280–350 covers on weekend nights across dining room, patio and private events.
- Brought food cost from 33.8% to 28.9% in nine months through recipe costing, portion specs and a weekly vendor bid.
- Wrote four seasonal menus a year; the spring menu lifted the average check by $6 and became the best-selling quarter.
- Cut average ticket time on Friday service from 17 to 11 minutes by reorganizing stations and adding a dedicated expo.
- Kept three consecutive health inspections at 100 with daily HACCP logs, temperature checks and an allergen matrix.
- Trained and promoted four line cooks to sous chef or lead roles; kitchen turnover fell from 60% to 35% a year.
- Launched a catering menu that grew to 12–15 events a month, adding about $40K in quarterly revenue.
Frequently Asked Questions
Keep photos off the resume itself — many applicant systems strip them and they make the file heavy. Add one link to a simple portfolio or an Instagram account that shows only your plates and menus. The resume should still work without the link: covers, food cost and menus in plain text.
One page if you have under ten years in kitchens, two pages for executive or multi-unit chefs. Older line cook jobs can shrink to a single line each. Hiring chefs skim for scale and results, so cut duty lists like "prepped vegetables" and keep the numbers.
In much of the US, food establishments need a Certified Food Protection Manager on site, and the person in charge is often the chef or sous chef. If you hold ServSafe Manager or another accredited certificate, list it with the expiry date. If it has lapsed, renew it before you apply — it is a short course.
No. Many chefs came up through the line. If you have no degree, put experience first and add short courses, stages at other restaurants or competitions under education. If you do have a degree, one line is enough — after a few years, kitchens care about where you cooked, not where you studied.
Use your real title, then show chef-level work underneath: running the pass on the chef's day off, ordering, writing specials, training new cooks, doing schedules. A line like "led the line two nights a week for 140 covers" lets a reader see you are ready for the next step.
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