Chef Resume: Examples (2026)

A chef resume is not a cook resume with a bigger title. The owner or general manager reading it already assumes you can cook. What they want to know is whether you can run a kitchen: hire and train a crew, write a menu guests order from, hold food cost and labor where the business needs them, and pass every health inspection without drama. Those four things are the spine of a strong chef resume, and each one can be shown with a number.

This guide covers what to put on a resume for sous chef, chef de cuisine, head chef and executive chef jobs, how to show food cost and menu work, the food safety credentials employers ask for, summary and bullet examples you can adapt, and a full example for a sous chef stepping up to run his own kitchen. If you work a station rather than lead the line, the cook resume example is the better fit.

Chef postings mix cooking skills with management skills. Use the ones that are true for you, in the words the posting uses, in your skills section and in your bullets.

Hard skills

• Menu planning and recipe development
• Plate costing and food cost control
• Labor scheduling to covers
• Ordering, receiving and inventory
• Vendor negotiation
• Butchery and fish fabrication
• Sauce work and classical technique
• Banquet and catering production
• HACCP plans and temperature logs
• Allergen and special diet handling

Soft skills

• Leading a crew through a rush
• Teaching and correcting on the line
• Calm decisions when a station falls behind
• Working with front of house managers
• Clear, direct feedback
• Holding standards on every plate

Tools and software

• POS systems such as Toast or Square
• Inventory and costing software (MarketMan, MarginEdge)
• Scheduling apps such as 7shifts
• Recipe and spec sheets in Google Sheets or Excel
• Combi ovens and immersion circulators
• Kitchen display systems

Pick the level closest to yours and replace the details with your own. Each one names the kind of kitchen, its size, what you control and the job you want.

First sous chef role

Line cook and lead cook with five years in a 90-seat Italian restaurant, running the pasta and grill stations and closing the kitchen three nights a week. Write the prep lists, check in deliveries and train new cooks. ServSafe Manager certified; seeking a sous chef position in a scratch kitchen.

Chef de cuisine or head chef

Head chef of a 75-seat neighborhood bistro, responsible for the menu, a crew of eight and a food cost that has stayed between 28 and 30 percent for two years. Change the menu every season and run a weekly specials program that tests new dishes. Seeking a chef de cuisine role in a restaurant group.

Executive chef

Executive chef with fifteen years in hotels, now leading culinary operations for a 300-room property with a restaurant, a lobby bar and 12,000 square feet of event space. Manage a team of 40, a food budget of $2.1 million a year and banquets of up to 600 guests. Seeking a multi-outlet executive chef or director of culinary position.

Good chef bullets name the kitchen, the scale and a result that matters to the business. Borrow the structure and use your own numbers.

• Lowered food cost from 36 to 30 percent in two quarters by rewriting portion specs and cross-using proteins across three menus.
• Opened a second location on schedule, hiring and training a kitchen crew of 18 in six weeks.
• Wrote a brunch menu that grew weekend covers from 210 to 340 within four months.
• Cut kitchen overtime by 25 percent by scheduling to forecast covers in 7shifts.
• Produced banquets for up to 450 guests while running a 110-seat restaurant from the same kitchen.
• Built a specials program that tested 30 dishes a year; 8 moved onto the permanent menu.
• Kept the kitchen at zero critical health code violations across 10 inspections in five years.
• Reduced food waste by 18 percent by tracking trim and spoilage in a daily waste log.
• Trained 12 cooks to open and close stations on their own, allowing a second closing shift without a sous chef.
• Moved 60 percent of produce buying to four local farms while keeping food cost under 31 percent.
• Created allergen matrices for 45 menu items and trained front of house staff on how to use them.

There is no license to be a chef, but food safety credentials are expected, especially for anyone who runs a shift. The FDA Food Code is a model that state, local and tribal regulators use to write their own rules, and its current 2026 edition says the person in charge of a food establishment should be a certified food protection manager who passed an exam from an accredited program. Your state or local health department decides how that applies to your kitchen and which exams it accepts, so check with it. The credentials chefs list most often:

• ServSafe Manager (Food Protection Manager Certification) from the National Restaurant Association: an exam accredited by ANAB under the Conference for Food Protection standard, the kind of certification the Food Code describes.
• Food handler training such as ServSafe Food Handler: required for kitchen staff in some states and cities. Texas, for example, requires many food employees to complete an accredited food handler course within 30 days of hire (as of September 2026). A chef should know the rule where the kitchen is, since the crew has to meet it.
• Other food protection manager exams accredited under the same standard are accepted in many places. List the exact name printed on your certificate and the year it was issued.

The example is for Andre, a sous chef in Denver who is ready to run his own kitchen as a chef de cuisine. Here is what each part does.

Headline: Sous Chef, Seasonal American Kitchen. It names his level and the style of food, so a restaurant with a similar concept sees the fit right away.

Summary: ten years in scratch kitchens and five running the line in the first sentence; the size of the job (a 140-seat room, a crew of 14, 280 to 350 covers) and what he owns in the second; his ServSafe Manager certification and the job he wants in the third.

Experience: five bullets at Ashgrove Kitchen and Bar, each covering one part of a chef's job. The line (14 cooks, 6 stations), money (food cost from 34 to 29 percent in 9 months, with how he did it), menus (4 a year, 11 of 16 dishes kept), people (9 cooks hired and trained, 2 promoted) and safety (6 inspections, zero critical violations). His chef de partie job at Juniper Hollow Bistro gets two bullets: station volume and a prep list that cut waste by about 20 percent, an early sign he thinks about cost.

Certifications: his food protection manager certificate, with the issuer and the year, in its own section where a general manager can find it.

Education, skills and languages: his culinary arts degree, ten skills that mix cooking and management, including the POS and inventory tools by name, and fluent Spanish, which matters in many US kitchens.

• Writing a cook's resume for a chef's job. Bullets about searing proteins and plating dishes describe the line. A chef job is decided on leadership, menu and cost, so most of your bullets should be about those.
• Titles without context. Chef can mean the only cook in a cafe or the leader of a 40-person hotel brigade. Add seats, covers, crew size and the type of operation to every job.
• No food cost number. Owners read chef resumes looking for this. If you cannot share exact figures, give the range you held or the change you made in percentage points.
• Listing restaurants but not the food. A reader cannot tell a barbecue joint from a sushi counter by the name alone. Say the cuisine and style once per job.
• A certificate with no name or date. Food safety certified is vague. Write the exact credential, who issued it and the year, and renew it before it lapses.
• Using a photo of your plating as the resume. Keep dish photos for a portfolio link or the tasting. The resume itself should be plain text in a single column so hiring systems can read it.

Other hospitality resume examples, plus guides for moving up:

• Cook resume: for line, prep and station cooks who are building toward a sous chef job.
• Server resume: the front of house side of the same restaurant.
• Supervisor resume: how to show you lead a team in any setting, useful for kitchen managers.
• Career change resume: for chefs moving into sales, food manufacturing or teaching.

Every example is in the resume examples hub, grouped by job and situation.