Executive Chef Job Description Templates
Executive chef job description templates for restaurants, hotels, clubs, and catering: 6 variants with menu, food cost, brigade, and pay notes.
The first executive chef posting I ever helped an owner write was three lines long. It said the restaurant was looking for a creative chef with a passion for seasonal food. Forty applications came in, and not one of them could answer the only question the owner actually cared about, which was how they would move food cost by two points before the winter.
That is the gap in almost every executive chef job description online. They describe cooking. The job is cooking plus a profit and loss statement plus a hiring pipeline, and the postings that get strong chefs say so in the first paragraph.
A chef who owns numbers wants to know which numbers, and a chef who does not want that responsibility should self-select out before you spend a week interviewing.
At FirstHR we write hiring templates for small operators who do this without an HR department. The six below cover an independent restaurant, a small head chef kitchen, a hotel or resort, a multi-unit group, a private club, and a catering company, each with the classification and compliance notes generic versions leave out.
- Sign the offer letter
- Sign the employee handbook
- Workplace Safety course
What an Executive Chef Actually Owns
An executive chef owns the kitchen as a business unit, not a station. The role sets what goes on the menu, what that menu costs to produce, who cooks it (the brigade, or kitchen team), and whether the operation would pass an unannounced health inspection tonight. Everything else in the job description is detail hanging off those four pillars.
The four pillars matter in a posting because most chefs have deep experience in one or two of them and thin experience in the rest. A chef who came up through fine dining kitchens may have extraordinary menu instincts and have never negotiated with a purveyor.
A chef out of a hotel banquet program may be the reverse: excellent at forecasting and staffing, and cautious about creative risk. Naming all four pillars explicitly lets each candidate place themselves.
Small operators underweight the third pillar, the brigade. Kitchen turnover is relentless, and the executive chef is the person who either builds a bench or spends every Friday covering a call-out personally. If the posting never mentions hiring and training, you will attract chefs who see recruiting as somebody else's job, which in a small restaurant it is not.
Executive Chef, Head Chef, and Sous Chef
In a single independent restaurant, executive chef and head chef usually describe the same job, and the choice of word is a market signal rather than a difference in duties. Executive chef becomes a genuinely distinct role once there is more than one kitchen, more than one outlet, or a head chef reporting upward.
Scope is the honest test, not the title. Ask four questions before you write the posting: how many kitchens or outlets, how many direct reports, whose menu it is, and who is accountable for the food cost number in the owner meeting.
If two or more of those four answers point to the larger job (several outlets, a big team, the chef's own menu, ownership of food cost), you are hiring an executive chef and should pay the market rate for one.
| Title | Typical scope | Owns the menu? | Owns food cost? | Use this template |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Executive chef | The whole culinary operation, one or more outlets | Yes, with owner sign-off | Yes, reports it to ownership | Independent restaurant, hotel, club, or catering |
| Head chef | One kitchen, hands-on most services | Usually yes, in a small kitchen | Usually yes, informally | Head chef, small owner-operated kitchen |
| Corporate executive chef | Multiple locations and concepts | Sets the standard for all units | Sets targets, holds unit chefs to them | Corporate, multi-unit restaurant group |
| Executive sous chef | Second in command on a large property | Executes and contributes | Supports, does not own | Adapt the hotel template downward |
| Sous chef | Runs service in the chef’s absence | No | No | Use the sous chef templates |
| Kitchen manager | Operations, scheduling, ordering, compliance | Rarely | Often yes, on the cost side | Use the kitchen manager template |
If the role you are filling sits below the top of the kitchen, the sous chef templates and the kitchen manager template are better starting points.
What Belongs in an Executive Chef Posting
A strong executive chef posting does four jobs: it describes the restaurant honestly, it states the numbers the chef will own, it filters candidates who want a different job, and it protects you legally. Most postings only do the first, which is why they generate volume and not fit.
The single most effective addition is a number the chef will be accountable for. Covers per week, average check, and a food cost target tell a serious candidate more about your operation than three paragraphs of adjectives. It also filters hard, in the direction you want.
Work through the groups in order: the first two bring chefs in, the third sets your posting apart from a generic one, and the last protects you.
6 Executive Chef Job Description Templates to Download
Download all six as one file or copy them individually. Template 1 is the fullest version: restaurant overview, position summary, menu and culinary ownership, food cost and purchasing, people, safety and compliance, qualifications, what you offer, a classification note, an equal opportunity statement, and how to apply.
The other five are shorter but share the same core of position summary, responsibilities, and qualifications, and they close the same way. The bracketed fields are the only parts you need to change.
Template 1: Executive Chef, Independent Restaurant
The core version, written for an owner-operated restaurant. Menu ownership, food cost reporting, brigade hiring, and food safety are all spelled out as duties rather than implied.
Template 2: Head Chef, Small Owner-Operated Kitchen
The same job under the title most small restaurants actually use, written for a chef who works the line during peak service and runs the kitchen around that. It includes an honest note on when the head chef role is not exempt.
Template 3: Executive Chef, Hotel or Resort
For a property with multiple outlets plus banquets: outlet menus, banquet event orders, forecasting against occupancy, and a brigade split across restaurant, room service, and events.
Template 4: Corporate Executive Chef, Multi-Unit Group
For a restaurant group where the role builds systems rather than plates: master recipes, group purchasing, unit chef accountability, opening teams, and travel across markets.
Template 5: Executive Chef, Private or Country Club
For club dining, where members are repeat guests and a committee reviews the food and beverage budget. Adds member events, seasonal staffing, and committee reporting.
Template 6: Executive Chef, Catering and Events
For off-premise production: a sellable menu catalog, per-event costing against a quoted margin, transport and holding controls, and on-site execution. Pair it with the food and beverage manager template if you also staff the sales side.
Menu Ownership and Food Cost Accountability
Menu authority and food cost accountability are the same conversation, and separating them in a job description is how operators end up with a beautiful menu they cannot afford to serve. If the chef designs the dish, the chef owns the plate cost, the yield, and the decision to reprice or pull it.
Write the five-step loop below into the posting explicitly. A chef who has run it before will recognize it immediately and will tell you in the interview which step they are strongest at. A chef who has never run it will go quiet, which is useful information you would rather have in week one than in month six.
Food cost never sits alone. It shares the profit and loss statement with labor, and our guides to restaurant payroll percentage and to calculating labor cost cover the other half of what your chef is actually managing when they write a schedule.
Hiring and Building the Brigade
The executive chef is your kitchen recruiter, and the job description should say so in the responsibilities rather than burying it. In a small restaurant nobody else screens line cooks, runs a stage (a working trial shift), or decides whether a prep cook is ready to work a station alone.
Turnover in food service is high enough that a chef who cannot recruit will spend the season covering shifts personally, and quality collapses from there.
Give the chef the authority the job requires. If they interview candidates but cannot extend an offer, cannot set a starting rate within a band, and cannot end a bad hire, you have created a bottleneck and weakened the case that the role is exempt from overtime. Write the hiring authority into the posting as a specific spend and decision limit.
The paperwork side is where small kitchens leak. Every new cook needs an offer, a handbook acknowledgment, Form I-9 verification, tax forms, and a record of station training, and in many states and localities a food handler card as well.
Running this paperwork as a repeatable restaurant onboarding checklist instead of a folder on the office desk is the difference between a clean file and a scramble during an audit. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
Overtime, Tips, and the Executive Exemption
An executive chef is usually exempt from overtime, but the exemption rests on duties, not on the title or on the fact that you pay a salary. The federal executive exemption regulation sets four tests, and a working chef in a small kitchen can fail any of them.
The federal salary floor is $684 per week, or $35,568 a year, and the highly compensated employee threshold, a separate higher-pay route to exemption, is $107,432. The Department of Labor restored those 2019 figures by technical amendment in May 2026 after the 2024 increase was vacated in court, so any posting or offer letter written against the higher number needs a second look.
| Test | What it requires | Where a small-kitchen chef fails it |
|---|---|---|
| Salary basis | Paid a predetermined salary of at least $684 per week that does not vary with quality or quantity of work | Docking pay for a slow week or paying an hourly rate with a salary label |
| Primary duty | Management of the enterprise or of a customarily recognized department or subdivision | The chef cooks a station nearly every shift and someone else builds the schedule and the orders |
| Directs others | Customarily and regularly directs the work of at least two other full-time employees or the equivalent | A kitchen so small the chef works alone or with one part-time cook |
| Hiring authority | Authority to hire or fire, or recommendations on hiring and firing that are given particular weight | The owner interviews and decides everything and the chef is not consulted |
The Department of Labor sets out the same four prongs in Fact Sheet 17B on the executive exemption. If your chef fails any of them, classify the role as non-exempt, track hours, and pay overtime past forty in a week.
Food safety authority is the third compliance point for the posting. The FDA Food Code (2026 edition) is a model that states and localities adopt in their own versions. Its section 2-102.11 requires the person in charge to demonstrate food safety knowledge to the inspector.
Section 2-102.12 then requires the person in charge to be a certified food protection manager, except in operations the regulatory authority treats as minimal risk. In your posting, name the certification, say whether it is required at hire or within a set number of days, and record the expiration date on file.
What to Pay an Executive Chef
Benchmark to your market, concept, and volume rather than to a national average, because the published category blends a two-person cafe kitchen with a resort culinary department. Use the national figure as a floor reference and adjust upward for outlets, direct reports, and revenue responsibility.
| Setting | How to position against the national median | What else closes the candidate |
|---|---|---|
| Independent restaurant, one kitchen | At or modestly above the median, adjusted for your market | Menu autonomy, consecutive days off, a bonus tied to food cost |
| Small owner-operated kitchen, head chef title | Near the median, closer to it in low-cost markets | Short chain of command and a real say in the concept |
| Hotel or resort, multiple outlets | Above the median, scaled to outlet count and banquet volume | Incentive plan, benefits, structured career path |
| Corporate or multi-unit group | Well above the median, priced as a management role | Equity or profit share, travel policy, opening bonuses |
| Private or country club | Above the median, with a seasonal pattern to explain | Predictable calendar, closed periods, family-friendly hours |
| Catering and events | Around or above the median, often with per-event upside | Margin bonus, defined busy season, no nightly line service |
Publish a good-faith range wherever pay transparency laws require it, and write the bonus mechanism into the posting rather than describing it as competitive. A chef comparing two offers will pick the one where the upside is spelled out, because in this trade a vague bonus usually means no bonus.
Running the Search Without an HR Department
Chef searches fail in predictable places: the posting is generic, the process takes three weeks longer than a competing operator's, and nobody tests the candidate against the actual numbers. Each has a straightforward fix, and none of them requires an HR department.
Decide the five steps before the first interview, and ask every finalist the same food cost and menu questions. Comparing chefs on the same evidence beats improvising at the table.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does an executive chef do?
An executive chef runs the entire kitchen operation rather than a station. The job has four pillars: the menu, including recipe cards, spec sheets, dish development, portion sizes, and plating standards; the food cost, including purchasing and purveyor negotiation, inventory, yield, waste, and recosting when ingredient prices move; the people, including hiring, training, scheduling to a labor budget, coaching, and discipline; and the standard, including food safety, temperature logs, allergen controls, and inspection readiness. In a large hotel or restaurant group, the role tilts toward forecasting, budgets, and developing other chefs. In an independent restaurant, the same person works the line at peak service and spends the rest of the week on the numbers. The posting should say which version of the job you are hiring for, because chefs self-select on exactly that.
What is the difference between an executive chef and a head chef?
In most small restaurants there is no real difference, and treating them as separate roles wastes your time. Head chef is the more common title in a single independent kitchen where the chef cooks the line most services. Executive chef is the more common title when the role oversees more than one kitchen or outlet, sits above a head chef or an executive sous chef, and spends more of the week on menus, budgets, and people than on a station. Some operators use executive chef purely as a recruiting signal for a single-unit job, which is legitimate as long as the responsibilities in the posting match the pay. What matters far more than the word is scope: the number of outlets, the number of direct reports, whether the menu is the chef’s own, and who answers for the food cost figure. Write those four things down and the title argument resolves itself.
How much does an executive chef make?
Nationally, chefs and head cooks earned a median of $62,470 a year, or $30.03 an hour, in the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey (May 2025), which covers about 200,040 jobs. Because that category blends every kind of chef job, an executive chef running one independent restaurant typically sits above the median, while a corporate or hotel executive chef with several outlets sits well above it. For a sense of the rungs below the role, the same survey shows first-line supervisors of food preparation and serving workers at a median of $44,080 ($21.19 an hour) and restaurant cooks at $37,390 ($17.98 an hour). Treat the national number as a floor reference, not a target. Set your pay against your own market, concept, and volume, publish a good-faith range wherever pay transparency rules require one, and remember that consecutive days off and closed holidays win chef candidates as reliably as base pay does.
Is an executive chef exempt from overtime?
Usually yes, but only when the job’s real duties meet the federal executive exemption. The regulation sets four requirements. The chef must be paid a salary of at least $684 per week. Managing the enterprise or a customarily recognized department must be the primary duty. The chef must customarily and regularly direct the work of at least two other full-time employees or their equivalent. And the chef must have the authority to hire or fire, or make hiring and firing recommendations that are given particular weight. A working chef in a small kitchen who spends nearly every shift on a station, does not build the schedule, and has no say in hiring may fail these tests even with an executive chef title and a salary. Misclassification is costly because the remedy is back pay for overtime that went unpaid, reaching back years. Decide by duties, write the classification into the job description, and revisit it whenever the job changes. This is general information, not legal advice.
Can an executive chef take a share of the tip pool?
No, not from a mandatory tip pool. Under federal law an employer may not keep its employees’ tips, and a manager or supervisor may not keep any part of another employee’s tips, regardless of whether the employer takes a tip credit. The Department of Labor defines a manager or supervisor here by reference to the duties prongs of the executive exemption. So the duties that make your executive chef exempt from overtime also bar that chef from sharing in the pool. One narrow exception exists: a manager or supervisor may keep a tip that a customer gives directly for a service the manager personally and solely provided, such as a chef’s table the chef served alone. Kitchen staff who are not supervisors can generally join a tip pool shared with front-of-house staff, provided the employer pays the full minimum wage and takes no tip credit. Check your state rules too, since several states are stricter than the federal rule.
What qualifications should I require for an executive chef?
Require the things that predict performance and mark everything else as preferred. The non-negotiables for most kitchens are documented experience leading a kitchen, demonstrated food cost ownership the candidate can explain in numbers, the ability to build a schedule against a labor budget, and a food protection manager certification or the willingness to earn one on a stated deadline. Culinary school is genuinely optional: many strong chefs came up through stations, and requiring a degree narrows your pool without improving the hire. Physical requirements belong in the posting with an accommodation clause. Availability should be stated plainly, including nights, weekends, and holidays. If your concept depends on a specific cuisine or technique, name it as a requirement rather than hoping a general posting attracts a specialist. The templates on this page keep those items in a fixed order so nothing gets dropped when you rewrite for a new search.
How do I hire an executive chef for a small restaurant with no HR department?
Follow a fixed sequence and keep it short, since strong chefs are almost always employed and talking to other operators. First, publish a posting with real numbers in it: covers per week, average check, salary, food cost target, and days off. Second, screen on cost ownership by having each candidate explain a food cost figure they moved and how they moved it. Third, run a paid stage (a trial shift) for one service, then ask for a costed menu built for your concept and price point. Fourth, check references with the owner or general manager, not just the chef the candidate reported to. Fifth, make the offer quickly and put it in writing. Once the offer is signed, the work becomes onboarding: signed offer and handbook acknowledgment, Form I-9, tax forms, food protection manager certification on file with its expiration date, and station training records. FirstHR runs that sequence with e-signature, document storage, and renewal tracking so a certificate never expires quietly. Applicant tracking is coming soon to FirstHR.
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