Chef Cover Letter Example

Four years without a failed health inspection, food cost held near 30% and labor near 15% of sales: those are the numbers from the 70-seat kitchen I run at Marina Street Kitchen. I am applying for the Executive Chef role at Cypress Point Restaurant Group because I am ready to hold those numbers across more than one kitchen.

I lead a team of 11 and serve about 150 covers on a busy night. Food cost stays near 30% through weekly ordering, portion checks and trimmings used in daily specials, and tracking what we throw away each week cut waste by 20%. Cooks are scheduled to forecast covers, which keeps labor where it should be. The menu changes four times a year and every dish is costed before it goes on, and a documented cleaning and temperature log means an inspection is routine rather than a scramble.

Cypress Point's shared prep kitchen is the part of this role that interests me most, and it would be new to me: so far I have run one kitchen at a time. What carries over is the system. As sous chef at Embarcadero Bistro I wrote the prep lists and par levels the whole kitchen ordered from, and those documents are what a central kitchen runs on. You also need someone to develop a seasonal menu and train cooks for promotion. I have trained cooks in station work and knife skills, promoted two to sous chef, and 7 of my current 11 have stayed two years or more. Three restaurants give good cooks somewhere to go next, which is a real reason I want to work for a group.

Cooking a tasting for your partners, costed to your food cost target, would show how I cook and how I count. Before that, I want to understand how your three chefs share ordering today, since that decides how the prep kitchen should be set up.