Executive Chef - High Volume Catering

SailFuture | St. Petersburg, FL

Found a culinary operation at scale. True North Nutrition makes elevated school lunches, full-service catering, and premium food products for retail and wholesale. All profit is donated to a nonprofit private school to lower tuition and widen access. You’ll lead the whole operation: food, systems, staff, and growth.

The job at a glance

Salary

$70,000 to $90,000 + performance incentives tied to growth and profitability

Scale

About 400 school lunches a day across five schools to start, with a goal of over 1,000, plus catering and retail products

Reports to

Head of Staff

You lead

Culinary staff, interns, and externs

Benefits

$250/month toward health insurance, 401(k) with 6% match, 10 days PTO, paid holidays

What you’ll do

• Run the kitchen
• Lead every part of True North Nutrition’s culinary operation
• Design and run an elevated school lunch program, starting at about 400 meals a day across five schools
• Build production systems that hold quality at scale
• Develop seasonal menus, standardized recipes, and production schedules
• Keep the kitchen compliant with food safety, sanitation, licensing, health, National School Lunch Program, and DOE rules
• Grow the business
• Grow lunch volume from 400 to over 1,000 a day
• Build a profitable catering operation for corporate, nonprofit, and community clients
• Create and launch specialty food products for wholesale and retail
• Find new revenue and efficiency, and align the kitchen with leadership’s long-term goals
• Lead the team and the numbers
• Recruit, train, and mentor culinary staff with a culture of accountability
• Manage food cost, labor cost, inventory, purchasing, and vendors
• Create real learning experiences for culinary interns and externs

What you bring

• 5+ years of progressive culinary leadership
• Experience running high-volume production or commissary kitchens
• Catering, food manufacturing, or multi-unit food service experience preferred
• Budgeting, forecasting, and cost management skills
• A record of building teams and developing leaders
• ServSafe Manager Certification, or the ability to get it on hire
• An entrepreneurial, “whatever it takes” mindset and a passion for business as a force for social impact

Why this role

You’ll have real autonomy to build a culinary brand and new revenue, and the profit you generate goes to underprivileged students’ education.