Overview As Chef Manager at Baylor Scott and White Lakeway Hospital, you lead daily culinary operations in a patient-centered Food & Nutrition Services setting, balancing hands-on cooking with oversight of staff and workflows. You partner with clinical and retail teams to ensure safe, compliant meals that meet therapeutic and dietary requirements while maintaining service quality. You drive efficiency, cost control, and inspection readiness, shaping standards across shifts. This role offers growth opportunities in a mission-driven, fast-paced hospital environment where patient care is the priority.
Responsibilities- Coordinate production with patient census and meal periods to meet therapeutic diets, allergies, textures, recipes, portions, temperatures, and presentation
- Support tray-line readiness and on-time meal service
- Maintain food safety, sanitation, infection prevention, and departmental standards; participate in inspections and survey readiness
- Manage staffing and workflow during call-outs or volume fluctuations
- Monitor waste, labor productivity, inventory, and food cost; collaborate with clinical nutrition, nursing, diet office, retail, and purchasing
- Serve as the floor culinary leader, addressing operational issues in real time while prioritizing patient production and retail quality
- Develop staff, reinforce accountability, identify process improvements, and maintain consistent standards across shifts
- Be prepared for changing duties as needed to meet commitments (flexibility)
Key requirements- Culinary education and progressive food-service experience; supervisory or management experience required
- 3-5 years of hands-on culinary/food-service experience with leadership responsibilities
- Strong knowledge of large-volume production, standardized recipes, batch cooking, portion control, presentation, inventory, and food-cost control
- Working knowledge of therapeutic diets, food allergies, modified-texture diets, patient meal service, and healthcare food-service requirements
- Hands-on leadership ability to cook, train, coach, troubleshoot, and supervise concurrently
- Strong knowledge of food safety, HACCP, sanitation, temperature control, cross-contamination prevention, and regulatory compliance
- ServSafe Manager certification or equivalent required or to be obtained within required timeframe
- Ability to lead across patient and retail operations, manage competing priorities, and make decisions in a fast-paced hospital environment
- Excellent communication, organizational, leadership, and problem-solving skills
- Flexible schedule availability including early mornings, evenings, weekends, and holidays
- Physical ability to stand for long periods and lift/move food and equipment within safety requirements
- communication
- leadership
- problem-solving
- large-volume food production
- standardized recipes
- batch cooking
