The full example
Everything below is fictional. The venues are described rather than named, and the achievements are the kind of thing a real head chef does — written the way they should appear on a CV, not inflated.
Head chef CV — example
Header
[Full Name] [Town, UK] · [phone] · [email]
Professional summary
Head chef with nine years in professional kitchens, four of them leading one. Currently running a 90-cover neighbourhood restaurant with a brigade of [X], writing the menu, costing the dishes, holding the supplier relationships and owning the food safety system. Looking for a kitchen with a bigger events side, or a group role with more than one site to think about.
Core skills
Menu planning and dish development · Dish costing and portion control Supplier relationships and ordering · Recruitment, induction and training Rota input and kitchen staffing · HACCP ownership and food safety systems Allergen control and matrix upkeep · Stock counts and waste management Service leadership from the pass · Consistency across chefs and shifts Environmental health inspections · Kitchen equipment and maintenance
Experience
Head Chef — 90-cover neighbourhood restaurant, Bristol Mar 2023 – present · Write and change the menu with the seasons, costing each dish against its spec before it goes on. · Lead a brigade of [X] through service, with a sous chef and chefs de partie across larder, sauce and grill. · Recruit, induct and train kitchen staff, and feed availability and cover into the rota with the general manager. · Hold the produce, meat and dry goods supplier relationships, place the orders and deal with substitutions and shortages. · Own the food safety system — HACCP, temperature logs, the allergen matrix and supplier due diligence — and took the kitchen through its last environmental health inspection. · Run the pass through service and keep plates consistent whichever chef is on the section. Sous Chef — hotel restaurant with banqueting, Bath Jan 2021 – Feb 2023 · Second to the head chef across restaurant, room service and functions. · Ran service on the head chef’s days off and through annual leave. · Managed the weekly stock count and the ordering it fed into. Chef de Partie — 70-cover bistro, Bath Sep 2019 – Dec 2020 · Ran the grill and larder sections through a full service. · Wrote the prep list for the section and trained a commis chef on it.
Education and certifications
Level 4 Award in Managing Food Safety in Catering — 2023 Level 3 Award in Supervising Food Safety in Catering — 2021 Level 2 Award in HACCP for Catering — 2020 Level 2 Award in Allergen Awareness — 2020 First Aid at Work (3-day) — 2024 Level 3 Diploma in Professional Cookery — 2019
Additional
Availability: full flexibility including weekends and bank holidays
Templates that suit this example
- Brigade — A timeline that shows progression across kitchens, which is most of what a head chef CV has to prove.
- Executive — Competency groups instead of a skills list — suits a CV led by menu, team and cost responsibility.
- Essential One-Page — Dates in a left gutter, so a long kitchen career still fits on one page.
Want this structure with your own experience in it?
Build your head chef CVWhy each section is written that way
Professional summary
- Why it matters.
- An owner or operations manager is deciding whether to trust you with their food, their food cost and their kitchen team. Give them the size of the site, the size of the brigade and what sits on your name, immediately.
- A strong version.
- Covers, brigade size, what you own — menu, ordering, food safety — and the move you are making. Four sentences at most.
- Common mistake.
- A paragraph about your passion for seasonal British produce. Every head chef says it. The space is better spent on what you are accountable for.
Core skills
- Why it matters.
- A head chef CV without commercial vocabulary reads like a very experienced sous chef CV. Costing, ordering, recruitment and HACCP ownership are the words that place you at the right level.
- A strong version.
- The things you hold rather than the things you can cook: the menu, the costings, the suppliers, the rota input, the food safety system.
- Common mistake.
- Listing cuisines and techniques at the top. Your section skills are assumed by now — leading with them quietly argues you are not ready for the job.
Experience
- Why it matters.
- Two head chefs can be doing entirely different jobs: one runs a 40-cover independent alone, another runs a hotel kitchen with banqueting and a brigade of twenty. Scale, brigade and what you own are what distinguish you.
- A strong version.
- Covers, brigade size, the sessions and services you run, and the parts of the operation that are yours. Where a number would help, use [X] and fill in your own — a figure you cannot evidence is worse than none.
- Common mistake.
- Claiming a revenue increase, a cost reduction, an award or a rating improvement. Those depend on the whole business, they are almost never yours alone, and a reader who cannot verify them will discount everything around them too.
Food safety and certifications
- Why it matters.
- At head chef level you are usually the person named on the food safety system. Level 3 is often a condition of the role and Level 4 is what separates candidates for bigger kitchens.
- A strong version.
- Level 4 or Level 3 food safety, HACCP, allergen awareness and first aid, each with a year, plus your cookery qualification. Mention an environmental health inspection you took a kitchen through.
- Common mistake.
- Treating certificates as a footer. For an operator with a legal duty and an inspection history, this is one of the first sections they look for.
If your experience looks different
Most people are not the candidate in the example. Three common situations, and what to change for each.
Your first head chef role — moving up from sous
Your summary. Say it directly: "Sous chef with five years, looking for a first head chef role." Then spend the rest of the summary on the head-chef work you have already done rather than on your sections.
What to emphasise. Menu input and specials, costing, ordering, recruitment, and any stretch where you ran the kitchen outright — a vacancy, a long absence, a second site covered.
Bullets you could adapt
- ·Ran the kitchen for [X] months while the head chef role was vacant, including ordering, rotas and food safety.
- ·Wrote and costed [X] specials a week alongside the standing menu.
- ·Inducted and trained [X] new chefs, and wrote the section prep lists they worked from.
Certifications. Level 3 Supervising Food Safety at minimum; Level 4 Managing Food Safety is what makes a first-time head chef look ready on paper.
Experienced head chef — going for a bigger site or a group role
Your summary. Move up an altitude. Lead with multi-outlet, volume, events or development work rather than with a single kitchen, and name the scale you can already handle.
What to emphasise. More than one outlet, banqueting and events volume, opening or refitting a kitchen, writing menus used by other sites, and chefs you developed into head chef roles themselves.
Bullets you could adapt
- ·Ran restaurant, bar food and banqueting from one kitchen, with [X] covers on the largest function.
- ·Opened a new kitchen, from equipment specification and supplier setup to the first service.
- ·Developed [X] sous chefs into head chef roles within the group.
Certifications. Level 4 Managing Food Safety, plus mental health first aid — increasingly asked for wherever you are responsible for a team’s hours.
Moving into a head chef role from another kind of catering
Your summary. Lead with the spine that transfers — volume, food safety ownership, teams, budgets — and be honest about what is new. Contract catering, education and healthcare kitchens run at a scale most restaurants never see.
What to emphasise. Covers per day, menu cycles, dietary and allergen work, HACCP ownership, team size and budget responsibility. Then say plainly which parts of restaurant service you have not yet done.
Bullets you could adapt
- ·Produced [X] covers a day across a [X]-week menu cycle, to allergen and dietary specifications.
- ·Held the HACCP system for the site and led it through external audit.
- ·Managed a kitchen team of [X], including recruitment, training and rotas.
Certifications. Level 4 or Level 3 food safety and HACCP carry across unchanged. They are the fastest way to show an operator that the standards you worked to are the same ones they need.
Next steps
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