A chef and culinary resume builder that turns a structured form into a clean, professional resume tuned for kitchen roles — line cook to executive chef. It surfaces what hiring chefs and restaurant managers scan for: cuisine specialties, brigade size, food-cost results, notable establishments and certifications, each in its own labelled section.
How it works
You fill labelled fields for your header, a short summary, and the culinary-specific sections: cuisine specialties (French, Italian, Japanese, modern British), kitchen management (brigade size, stations run, services covered), food-cost and labor achievements with numbers, notable establishments (named restaurants, stars or rosettes), and food-safety certifications. The builder assembles these into a plain-text resume with standard headings.
Experience entries take one bullet per line, so you can paste rough notes and let the tool format them. The output is real, selectable plain text with no tables or graphics — exactly what applicant tracking systems parse cleanly. Everything runs client-side: your draft auto-saves to your browser and nothing is uploaded.
What numbers kitchens actually care about
A chef resume is judged differently from most professional CVs because kitchens run on operational metrics, not responsibilities. The numbers that signal your level to a hiring chef:
- Food-cost percentage — the cost of ingredients as a share of revenue. Holding this at 28–32% at a high-volume restaurant shows you understand purchasing, portion control, and waste management.
- Covers per service — how many guests the kitchen turned each sitting. 100 covers is very different from 300.
- Brigade size — the number of cooks you directly manage or supervise during service.
- Labour cost percentage — the staffing cost as a share of revenue, relevant for head chef and kitchen-manager roles.
- Menu launches — the number of seasonal menus or special dishes you developed, if applicable.
You do not need all of these for every role. A line cook might list covers per service and their station; a sous chef adds brigade size and food-cost awareness; an executive or head chef adds the full picture including labour and development.
Tips and example
Lead operational lines with a number. A weak line reads managed the kitchen; a strong one reads
Ran a brigade of 12 across 220 covers a night, holding food cost at 28% and labor at 24%. Food
cost, covers, brigade size and waste are the figures a head chef trusts.
Name the establishments that prove your level: Sous Chef, The Ledbury (1 Michelin star) — pass and larder. Keep your certifications current — ServSafe Manager, Level 3 Food Hygiene, HACCP — because a kitchen can’t roster you without them. Press Copy resume and paste the result into an application or print it for a stage.
Explaining career progression in kitchen hierarchies
Kitchen titles follow a clear brigade hierarchy, and a hiring chef reads your career path to understand how quickly you moved through it. If you moved from commis to chef de partie in two years instead of four, that signals potential. If you ran a section at a Michelin-starred restaurant early in your career, that signals accelerated training under pressure. Make the progression explicit: show your title, the establishment, and how long you held each role. Gaps that were spent at stages (unpaid training placements at prestigious kitchens) should be listed — they are valued, not hidden.