Chef resume guide

What to emphasize

• Cuisine and concept.
• Covers and team size.
• Menu or concept launches.
• Cost and quality metrics.

Skills to feature

Menu development · Food cost · Team leadership · Safety · Service timing · Vendor relations

Only list skills you can discuss. Use Lynt’s tailoring tool to mirror honest language from each job description, then verify structure with the ATS checker.

Common mistakes

• No volume context
• Recipe lists
• Ignoring leadership

Example chef resume bullet points

Each of these follows the same shape: what you did, how you did it, and what changed as a result. Swap the specifics for your own; keep the structure.

• Ran a 12-cook brigade through 320-cover Saturday services, holding average ticket times under 14 minutes.
• Rebuilt the menu around seasonal sourcing, lifting gross margin from 62% to 71% without raising entree prices.
• Cut food waste 30% by introducing prep-par sheets and cross-utilization across the a la carte and banquet menus.
• Took the kitchen through two unannounced health inspections with zero critical violations.
• Hired and trained 18 line cooks over two years, promoting five to station lead.

ATS keywords for chef resumes

Parsers match plain strings, so spell acronyms out at least once. Only include a term if your experience backs it up.

• executive chef
• sous chef
• menu development
• food cost control
• inventory management
• ServSafe
• HACCP
• kitchen management
• line cook
• portion control
• vendor negotiation
• banquet service

Action verbs that fit

Led · Costed · Sourced · Trained · Expedited · Designed · Standardized · Negotiated · Plated · Scaled

Certifications worth listing

ServSafe Manager

Commonly required to run a kitchen. Cheap to hold and immediately disqualifying to lack.

HACCP certification

Matters for volume production, catering, and anywhere with a written food-safety plan.