Kitchen Manager – Catering
- Lead and motivate a high-volume kitchen production team.
- Ensure timely and accurate food production while maintaining quality standards.
- Develop future team leaders and improve operational efficiency.
Job Overview
Sydney CBD | $95,000–$105,000 + Super
Monday–Friday | Approx. 12:30pm–9:30pm | No routine weekends
Ready to move beyond traditional kitchen leadership?
If you’re a strong Senior CDP, Junior Sous, Sous Chef or Senior Sous who thrives in high-volume environments, this could be the career step that moves you from being a great chef into becoming a strong operational leader.
Our client is a rapidly growing Sydney food business producing fresh, high-quality food at scale for major corporate workplaces.
With significant growth underway, they are looking for a capable kitchen leader to take ownership of their PM production operation, initially leading a team of approximately 15 people with further growth expected.
This isn’t traditional restaurant service.
Your success will come from getting the entire production team performing — balancing people, productivity, labour, food quality and deadlines throughout the shift.
The role
Working Monday to Friday, approximately 12:30pm–9:30pm, you’ll take responsibility for the smooth running of PM food production.
You’ll be responsible for:
- Leading, organising and motivating a high-volume production team
- Ensuring daily production is completed accurately and on time
- Allocating and reallocating staff as workloads change
- Monitoring productivity and labour hours throughout the shift
- Identifying bottlenecks and responding before they become problems
- Maintaining recipe, portioning, presentation and food-quality standards
- Coaching team members and addressing performance issues
- Training and cross-training staff across different production areas
- Developing a strong 2IC and future team leaders
- Using production data and systems to make operational decisions
- Identifying opportunities to improve efficiency and workflow
Who we’re looking for
You don’t necessarily need to already be a Kitchen Manager.
We’re equally interested in ambitious Senior CDPs, Junior Sous Chefs and Sous Chefs who have already demonstrated leadership in genuinely busy kitchens.
Ideally, you’ll bring:
- At least two years’ experience in high-volume kitchens or food production
- Experience leading, training or coordinating other kitchen staff
- Strong food-quality standards, even when working at serious volume
- The ability to organise people and keep production moving
- An understanding of labour, productivity and commercial kitchen performance
- Confidence giving clear direction and constructive feedback
- Strong food safety and hygiene standards
- A calm, accountable leadership style
- The ability to receive feedback and adapt
- A genuine desire to develop into broader kitchen and operations management
Experience within large-scale catering, corporate catering, production kitchens, hotels, events, airline catering or other high-volume food operations would be particularly relevant.
Why consider it?
This role offers something increasingly difficult to find in hospitality: serious leadership responsibility with a Monday–Friday roster.
You’ll receive:
- $95,000–$105,000 + super
- Monday–Friday working week
- Approx. 12:30pm–9:30pm roster
- No routine weekend work
- Leadership of a sizeable and growing team
- Exposure to labour management, KPIs and production data
- Development in workforce planning and operational management
- Opportunity to build and develop future team leaders
- Genuine career development within a rapidly growing business
The company has a strong history of promoting people internally and is looking for someone who wants to grow as the operation grows.
This isn’t a role for someone looking to coast into an easier Monday–Friday job. Expectations around productivity, quality and leadership are high.
It is an excellent opportunity for someone who has already proved themselves in a demanding kitchen and now wants to become a better leader, understand the numbers behind the operation and take ownership of something bigger.
If you’re ready to take the next step from chef to operational leader, we’d like to hear from you.
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