Assistant Kitchen Manager – Catering
- Support the Kitchen Manager in daily production operations.
- Lead and train kitchen staff while maintaining high food quality standards.
- Manage productivity and ensure compliance with food safety regulations.
Job Overview
Sydney CBD | $80,000–$90,000 + Super
Monday–Friday | Approx. 12:30pm–9:30pm | No routine weekends
Ready to take the next step in your kitchen career?
If you’re a strong Senior CDP, Junior Sous or Sous Chef who has proved you can perform in a busy kitchen and you’re ready for more leadership responsibility, this could be an excellent next move.
Our client is a rapidly growing Sydney food business producing fresh, high-quality food at scale for major corporate workplaces.
They’re looking for a capable and ambitious chef to become the 2IC of their PM production operation, supporting the Kitchen Manager in leading a sizeable team and ensuring production runs efficiently, accurately and to a consistently high standard.
This isn’t traditional restaurant service.
It’s an opportunity to develop your skills beyond cooking and service and learn how to manage people, production, labour, productivity and quality across an entire shift.
The role
Working closely with the PM Kitchen Manager, you’ll help coordinate the day-to-day production operation and provide leadership to the kitchen team.
You’ll be responsible for:
- Supporting the Kitchen Manager with daily production
- Helping organise and allocate the kitchen team
- Monitoring production progress throughout the shift
- Keeping individual benches and production areas on schedule
- Maintaining recipe, portioning and presentation standards
- Identifying issues early and helping get production back on track
- Training and supporting team members
- Providing clear direction and constructive feedback
- Maintaining strong food safety and hygiene standards
- Helping manage productivity and labour hours
- Stepping up to lead the operation when the Kitchen Manager is unavailable
- Supporting continuous improvement across the kitchen
You’ll work alongside an experienced leader while progressively taking ownership of more of the operation yourself.
Who we’re looking for
You don’t need to already be a Kitchen Manager or Senior Sous Chef.
We’re interested in chefs who have built a strong foundation and are now ready for their next genuine leadership opportunity.
You could currently be a:
- Senior Chef de Partie
- Junior Sous Chef
- Sous Chef
- Production Chef with leadership responsibilities
- Kitchen Supervisor or Team Leader
Ideally, you’ll bring:
- Experience in a genuinely high-volume kitchen or food-production environment
- Strong organisational and time-management skills
- Experience supervising, training or supporting other kitchen staff
- High standards around food quality and consistency
- The ability to maintain standards while working at pace
- Confidence communicating with and directing a team
- A good understanding of food safety and kitchen compliance
- A practical approach to productivity and labour
- A willingness to receive feedback and continue developing
- Ambition to progress into broader kitchen leadership
Experience across large-scale catering, corporate catering, production kitchens, hotels, events, airline catering or other high-volume food operations would be highly regarded.
Why consider it?
For the right chef, this role provides a pathway from being an experienced kitchen professional into becoming a broader operational leader.
You’ll receive:
- $80,000–$90,000 + super
- Monday–Friday working week
- Approx. 12:30pm–9:30pm roster
- No routine weekends
- Genuine 2IC leadership responsibility
- Exposure to labour management and productivity
- Experience using production systems and data
- Development in team leadership and performance management
- Opportunity to step up and run the PM operation
- Career development within a growing business
The business has a strong track record of developing people internally and is continuing to grow.
This isn’t simply a Monday–Friday chef job.
You’ll be expected to take ownership, help lead people, maintain standards and understand how a high-volume production kitchen performs as a complete operation.
For someone who has mastered the fundamentals and is asking “what’s next?”, this is an opportunity to start building the skills required to become a Kitchen Manager.
If you’re ready for more responsibility and want to develop into a stronger kitchen leader, we’d like to hear from you.
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