How to Hire All Types of Chefs

No chefs? No food. 

Chefs are an essential part of every restaurant. They develop recipes, manage the kitchen staff, deal with inventory and vendors, and are ultimately responsible for what ends up on a guest's plate.

There are many different types of restaurant chefs and cooks with their own unique sets of duties, responsibilities, and expectations. As a result, you need to take a tailored approach to hiring and managing each member of your back-of-house team. 

In this guide, you’ll learn how to hire a talented chef for your restaurant, what to put in your chef job description, and what salary expectations to consider for each type of chef.

What’s in this guide?

• How to Hire Chefs for Your Restaurant

• Types of Chefs You Can Hire

• Hiring Specialized Chefs & Cooks

• Hire All Types of Chefs

How to Hire Chefs for Your Restaurant

To hire a restaurant chef, you must first figure out what you’re looking for. After all, the hiring process for a head chef is vastly different from recruiting a pastry chef.

Consider what vacancies you have in your restaurant and what specialties you require. Are you looking for an experienced chef with culinary school qualifications? Or are you simply after a fry cook with entry-level cooking skills?

Once you’ve determined the position you’re hiring for, you should write the job description. It doesn’t have to be long, but it should contain the key responsibilities, salary or hourly wage, and any qualification requirements.

Then, you can use one of these three methods to advertise your job listing:

1. Use a Job Board: The obvious place to turn is job boards and listing sites, where you can advertise your vacancy to a wide audience. You’ll likely attract more experienced chefs and reach a broader market, which will ultimately give you more chance of finding the right candidate.

2. Recruit Internally: The right chef for the job may not be as far away as you think. If there are capable staff already preparing food in your kitchen, recruiting internally may be the solution. Plus, an internal hire will already know the ins and outs of your establishment, saving you time during the onboarding process.

3. Post on Social Media or In-House: Utilizing social media platforms or pinning your job advert in your establishment’s window are great ways to attract chefs who are already familiar with your restaurant. This will help you find candidates who are genuinely excited about working in your place.

In the next section, you’ll learn how to hire different kinds of chefs and what hiring costs to expect.

Types of Chefs You Can Hire

To hire for specific positions, it’s important to note the difference between chefs and cooks. Both roles are responsible for preparing and cooking the food in a restaurant, but their day-to-day duties and background experience tend to vary.

Chefs are high-ranking employees in the back of the house. They're typically tasked with organizational and managerial assignments, like contributing to the menu, developing recipes, overseeing all your back-of-house staff, and making back-of-house schedules. Chefs sometimes have formal culinary education and usually have at least five years of experience in a similar role. 

A cook is a more junior member of your back-of-house team. They're responsible for preparing ingredients and fulfilling orders for specific stations. They tend to have less input into recipes and instead follow the chef's instructions and recipe cards.

When hiring back-of-house staff, it’s important to understand the difference between each role, its duties, and why they matter. Here’s a list of 8 types of chefs and cooks and how to hire for each.

1. Chef-Owner

If you’re looking to hire a chef-owner, you’re essentially seeking a full-time business partner. Chef-owners always have their plates full as they’re running not just the kitchen but the entire restaurant, as well as the business and people management aspects. 

A successful chef can demonstrate top leadership skills and boost your establishment’s reputation within the restaurant industry. If you want to step back into more of an investor role or you need more help running the whole operation, you can promote your executive chef to chef-owner or go with an outside hire. 

• Chef-Owner Salary: A significant ownership stake plus an average chef salary of $103,682,000 per year.

2. Executive Chef / Head Chef / Chef de Cuisine

An executive chef runs the kitchen. Typically, this person doesn't own the restaurant, but they may be a founder or recognized leader of the business. They generally forego some operational duties to put all of their efforts into creating the best meals possible.

Executive chefs spend their time developing recipes, managing relationships with food vendors, guiding back-of-house staff, assuring food quality, and many more duties that contribute to the food that arrives on the customers’ plates. 

You’ll likely seek out your head chef before opening the restaurant. You could research prominent sous chefs in your area who may be looking to run their own kitchen or build relationships with chefs in the community with new or additional interests. If you're replacing your executive chef, first check if your own sous chef is ready for the next step in their career. 

• Executive Chef Salary: $48,000 - $99,000

3. Sous Chef

The sous chef is the back-of-house's second in command. Tasked with managing the line cooks and running the kitchen in the head chef's absence, this is typically a role most don't want to stay in forever—many of those in this spot have their eyes on the head chef position. 

Sous chef skills involve a good balance of ambition and work ethic. You want somebody who is creative, skilled, great with people, and driven but who is also patient and willing to earn their stripes. Their work weeks are often some of the toughest, with the longest hours. 

• Sous Chef Salary: $37,000 - $65,000

4. Pastry Chef

Restaurants that aim to offer the best baked goods and sweet pastries need an all-star pastry chef. This role often extends past baked creations to designing the entire dessert menu and formulating recipes.

Skilled pastry chefs will be knowledgeable about common allergens and proficient in baking for many dietary restrictions, such as gluten-free and lactose-intolerant. When hiring, look for creativity because a great dessert or pastry menu offers the unexpected. Pastry chefs often supervise one or two (or more) pastry cooks who help execute the pastry chef's vision.

• Pastry Chef Salary: $13.28 - $23.59/hr

5. Prep Cook

Prep cooks, as their name implies, handle the kitchen's daily food preparation. Prep cooks are often new to working in a kitchen, so you'll find them learning the basics, like chopping, mincing, labeling, defrosting, and general kitchen preparation for meal services. 

When hiring prep cooks, you should verify their various skills and knowledge of the hospitality industry at large. While these are entry-level positions, prep cooks who can handle a knife and already know operational and health basics will significantly contribute to a more efficient kitchen.

• Prep Cook Salary: $9.76 - $17.08/hr

6. Line Cook

A line cook is a generalist who cooks the orders as they come flooding in all throughout a service. They can work on the grill station, cold station, hot line, pasta station, and more. Sometimes, they'll even have to man more than one station in a shift if a kitchen is short-staffed. 

Line cooks usually do some prep work before each shift. The best line cooks are excellent team players, efficient and clean cooks, and have at least a year or two of experience. If you have to pay an extra dollar or two per hour to hire an experienced line cook, it’s worth it. 

Your best prep cook can be given some extra responsibilities before being offered a promotion to line cook if it all goes well.

• Line Cook Salary: $10.42 - $18.40/hr

7. Short-Order Cook

Typically found in diners or other casual restaurants, short-order cooks work efficiently and quickly to make simple dishes that can be cooked one after another instead of intricate ones with many steps. 

A prep cook can be promoted to a short-order cook role to get a taste of creating the orders that come rushing in all shift long, or you can hire externally and find someone with a year or two of experience in a fast-paced kitchen. 

For this role, you'll need a master multitasker who can cook 24 eggs at once to different levels of doneness and in various styles without breaking a sweat. 

• Short Order Cook Salary: $9.76 - $17.39/hr

8. Fry Cook

Usually found in fast-food restaurants, a fry cook runs the fryers and sometimes the burger station when needed. When hiring fry cooks, it’s important to look for someone who can take the heat — literally — because standing in front of a fryer for hours is not for the faint of heart. 

• Fry Cook Salary: $7.44 - $11.44/hr

Hiring Specialized Chefs & Cooks

When it comes to those positions that specialize in preparing meat, fish, sauces, or vegetables, the line between chef and cook is much blurrier, depending on the specifics of a restaurant.

Though some fine-dining restaurants follow the classic French hierarchy, which includes roles like the Saucier (sauce cook/chef) or Poissonnier (fish cook/chef), most North American restaurants don’t. Instead, they hire less-specialized cooks and chefs who can perform multiple roles at once or switch roles on different days as needed.

We’ll now explore how to hire four different kinds of specialist cooks. Not all restaurants will need these positions, but you may want to hire a specialist to boost your reputation and credibility.

1. Roast Cook 

Also known as the Rôtisseur or the meat cook, this position takes meat preparation to the next level. Any meat-based menu items are in this chef’s wheelhouse, including the marinades and gravies used to season them. Roast cooks should be extremely capable of discerning levels of doneness to ensure the meat is safely prepared and cooked to every customer’s satisfaction.

• Roast Cook Salary: $36,404 per year (median average)

2. Poissonnier

The Poissonnier, or fish cook, prepares all seafood in the kitchen, including stocks and soups. In the absence of a Saucier, they may be expected to prepare any sauces that should accompany the fish. 

The Poissonnier can also be responsible for acquiring fresh fish on a daily basis from local merchants or bringing in out-of-market catches as the menu requires. If you’re operating a higher-end restaurant that features seafood on the menu, it’s essential to have a Poissonnier who knows the local fishermen and has extensive experience acquiring the daily catch. 

You'll want someone particularly detail-oriented for this role—a rogue pin bone on a plate of roasted cod can ruin a guest's dining experience.

• Poissonnier Salary: $10.10 - $44.71/hr

3. Sauce Cook

Formally referred to as a Saucier, a sauce cook is responsible for choosing and preparing sauces used in a kitchen. These can range from salad dressings to gravy, pasta sauces, soups, and stews. 

A great Saucier has a refined, worldly palate and the creativity to think outside the box when creating sauces. You'll want someone very consistent in this role: your red sauce should taste the same every single day. 

• Sauce Cook: $11.84 - $24.33/hr

4. Vegetable Cook

Sometimes called the Entremetier, the vegetable cook works on veggies, starches, and sometimes eggs. Smaller restaurants may not have the resources to hire a dedicated vegetable cook, instead dividing these duties among the rest of the back-of-house crew.

• Vegetable Cook Salary: $23,978 per year (median average)

Hire All Types of Chefs with Toast

As with your menu, variety is a virtue. Hiring a dedicated mix of top chefs and support cooks will keep your restaurant running smoothly and successfully.

Whether you run a fine-dining restaurant that employs specialist chefs or you only have a handful of cooks working together, it's crucial that your kitchen runs like a well-oiled machine. Hire the best people you can find, even if it costs you a little more: it'll pay off in the long run.

Once you’ve hired the best, you should equip them with the best restaurant technology to give them the greatest chance of success. With Toast, you’ll get an intelligent restaurant management system with point-of-sale features, team management functionalities, and even hardware to help you grow your business. Request a Toast demo today to give your new recruits the tools they need to succeed.

FAQs

How many chefs does my restaurant need?

Naturally, that depends on the size and type of your restaurant. In general, though, we recommend around 4-7 back-of-house staff members, covering positions such as head chef, sous chef, prep cook, and dishwasher.

How do I hire a good chef?

To hire the best possible chef for your kitchen, you should clearly define your requirements and implement several recruitment strategies. Post your job listing to job boards, network with your contacts to head-hunt top chefs, and utilize your social media accounts to attract chefs who genuinely want to work for your establishment.

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