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Resume example

Chef resume example

Owns the menu, the kitchen team, and the food cost that decides whether it works. Below is a complete chef resume, written the way one has to be written to survive a first screen, with every bullet explained underneath.

28
open right now
12
companies hiring right now
21%
of those openings are remote
Mostly in

Starbase, Bastrop, Montreal

Hiring now
  • SpaceX8
  • Pennylane5
  • Flix3
  • HelloFresh3
  • Lyft2
  • Betterment1
  • Deliveroo1
  • Hootsuite1

Counted by Refolk from the public job boards of 1,745 companies, refreshed through the day. These are live openings, not a forecast, so the numbers move as roles are posted and filled.

Alex Moreno

Chef

alex.moreno@example.com · +1 555 0134 · Portland, OR

Summary

Chef with six years of experience. Ran a kitchen of 11 through 250 covers a day across lunch and dinner. Looking for a chef role with more responsibility and steady hours.

Experience

Chef, The Anchor and Crown

2022 - Present

  • Ran a kitchen of 11 through 250 covers a day across lunch and dinner.
  • Cut food cost from 34% to 28% without changing menu prices, through supplier and yield work.
  • Designed four seasonal menus and grew average spend per head 19%.

Chef, Riverside Cafe

2019 - 2022

  • Covered Food costing day to day at a 120-cover neighbourhood restaurant, and trained my replacement before I left.
  • Became the person the team came to on Kitchen management.

Skills

Menu development · Food costing · Kitchen management · Supplier relationships · Food safety · Team training

Education

High school diploma. Food safety certification, 2016

A sample, not a real person. The name, the employers, and the figures are invented to show the shape of a strong page - use the structure and put your own evidence in it.

How to read this chef resume example

The sample above is not a template to copy word for word - copied resumes read as copied. It is here to show the shape of a page that gets past a first screen: one column, standard headings, and bullets that end in an outcome rather than a duty. Food cost percentage, covers, and the team you kept together.

  • Every bullet opens with a verb and carries a number. That is the pattern, not a coincidence.
  • The summary makes a claim and then supports it in the first bullet underneath.
  • Skills are named tools, not adjectives, and each one appears again in the experience section.
  • The earlier role is short. Recent work carries the weight of the page.

The numbers in a chef resume

The most common thing missing from a chef resume is a number. Not because the work had none, but because nobody wrote them down at the time. These are the measures a chef can usually reach for, and the example uses them.

  • Ran a kitchen of 11 through 250 covers a day across lunch and dinner.
  • Cut food cost from 34% to 28% without changing menu prices, through supplier and yield work.
  • Designed four seasonal menus and grew average spend per head 19%.

Before and after: rewriting a weak bullet

Most chef resumes are one edit away from being much stronger, and the edit is the same every time: replace the description of the job with the result of doing it. The pairs below are the same work, written twice.

  • Weak: "Responsible for menu development and related tasks." Strong: "Ran a kitchen of 11 through 250 covers a day across lunch and dinner."
  • Weak: "Worked on food costing projects across the team." Strong: "Cut food cost from 34% to 28% without changing menu prices, through supplier and yield work."
  • Weak: "Helped improve processes and supported chef initiatives." Strong: "Designed four seasonal menus and grew average spend per head 19%."

Adapting the example to your own history

Work backwards from the posting. Find the two or three things it actually screens for, then make sure the top third of your page answers them. Everything below that is supporting evidence.

  • Reorder your bullets so the one closest to the posting comes first in each role.
  • Rewrite the summary for the specific job. It is the only part a human reliably reads.
  • Cut any skill you would not want to be asked about for ten minutes.
  • Keep Menu development, Food costing, Kitchen management visible in context, not stranded in a list.

FAQ

Can I copy this chef resume example?
Copy the structure, not the sentences. The layout, the ordering, and the shape of the bullets all transfer. The content does not: a recruiter who reads twenty resumes for the same role notices identical phrasing quickly, and the numbers in this sample are illustrative rather than anyone's real history.
What if I do not have numbers like these?
Most people have more than they think. Look for volume, frequency, time, cost, error rate, or a before-and-after on anything you touched. Where the number genuinely does not exist, say what changed and who noticed - "the process that used to need a weekly meeting now does not" is a real outcome without a metric.
How long should a chef resume be?
One page up to about eight years of experience, two pages beyond it. This example is one page. Length signals scope, so a long page with small-scope bullets reads worse than a short one.
Will this format pass an applicant tracking system?
Yes. One column, real text, standard headings, and no graphics or tables is the format parsers handle reliably. Most parsing failures come from multi-column layouts, text inside images, and headings the parser does not recognise.
Should the example change for a more senior chef role?
The structure stays. What changes is the scope in the bullets: more ambiguity you resolved yourself, more decisions with a tradeoff, and more effect on work that was not directly yours. Food cost percentage, covers, and the team you kept together.

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