The full example
Everything below is fictional. The venues are described rather than named, and the achievements are the kind of thing a real kitchen porter does — written the way they should appear on a CV, not inflated.
Kitchen porter CV — example
Header
[Full Name] [Town, UK] · [phone] · [email]
Professional summary
Kitchen porter with two years in busy kitchens, used to keeping wash-up ahead of service so the sections never wait for clean pans. Trained in COSHH and food safety, reliable on early starts and late finishes, and comfortable working the deep-clean rota as well as the shift itself. Looking for a kitchen porter role in a kitchen that runs at pace.
Core skills
Wash-up flow through service · Pot wash and dishwasher operation Equipment, utensil and container cleaning · Waste separation and recycling COSHH-compliant chemical use, dilution and PPE · Deep-clean schedules Floor, drain and extraction cleaning · Deliveries and stock movement Stock rotation by date · Basic prep support (washing, peeling) Reliability on early, late and weekend shifts
Experience
Kitchen Porter — 150-cover carvery pub kitchen, Nottingham Apr 2023 – present · Keep wash-up ahead of service so the sections never wait for pans, plates or containers during the busiest part of the shift. · Run the pot wash and the dishwasher through peak, and clear the pass area between waves of orders. · Separate general, food and recycling waste and take it out at set points in the shift rather than letting it build up. · Use cleaning chemicals to the COSHH instructions, with the right dilution and PPE, and store them locked away between shifts. · Work the weekly deep-clean rota — extraction filters, fridges and freezers, floors and drains — and sign each task off. · Take deliveries to the right store and rotate stock by date. Kitchen Porter — care home kitchen, Nottingham Sep 2022 – Mar 2023 · Cleaned to a fixed daily schedule and signed off each task on the sheet. · Kept the dishwasher descaled and reported faults to the kitchen manager. · Helped with basic prep — washing and peeling vegetables — when short-staffed. General Assistant — events catering (seasonal), Nottingham Jun 2022 – Aug 2022 · Set up and broke down mobile kitchens at outdoor events. · Washed equipment on site with limited water and a set turnaround time.
Education and certifications
Level 2 Food Safety and Hygiene for Catering — 2023 COSHH Awareness — 2023 Manual Handling — 2022 GCSEs including English and Maths — 2022
Additional
Availability: early starts, late finishes, weekends and bank holidays
Templates that suit this example
- Floor — Certificates sit in an emphasis row near the top, and the layout stays practical. The safest choice for a first job.
- Essential — One column, standard headings, nothing decorative — easy to read and easy to fill when you have a short history.
- Classic — A more formal document, for hotel kitchens and catering groups that expect one.
Want this structure with your own experience in it?
Build your kitchen porter CVWhy each section is written that way
Professional summary
- Why it matters.
- A head chef hiring a KP is checking for one thing above all: will this person turn up, every time, including Sunday. Say it in the first two lines rather than burying it.
- A strong version.
- The kind of kitchen, the pace you are used to, your certificates, and your genuine availability. Three or four sentences is plenty.
- Common mistake.
- Apologising for the job, or for having little experience. Kitchen portering is skilled, physical work that a kitchen cannot run without, and writing about it as though it were a stopgap reads exactly like that.
Core skills
- Why it matters.
- This is where you show you already know how a kitchen works — the flow, the chemicals, the waste streams — rather than just that you are willing to wash up.
- A strong version.
- Concrete, checkable things: wash-up flow, dishwasher operation, COSHH dilution and PPE, waste separation, deep-clean tasks, deliveries and rotation.
- Common mistake.
- Writing "hard working" and "good team player" and nothing else. They are true of every applicant, so they carry no information. "Uses chemicals to COSHH instructions" is something a chef can check.
Experience
- Why it matters.
- Kitchen sizes vary enormously, and so does what a KP is expected to cover. Saying which kind of kitchen, and what you handled beyond the sink, is what makes the entry useful.
- A strong version.
- Cover count or venue type, what you owned during service, and the tasks beyond wash-up — deep cleans, deliveries, waste, basic prep. Say what you kept moving, not what you were told to do.
- Common mistake.
- One line that says "washed dishes". Everything above is what the job actually involves, and a chef reading two CVs will always call the one that shows it.
Certifications and adapting this honestly
- Why it matters.
- Level 2 Food Safety and COSHH are cheap, quick and often the difference between two similar applications. They also tell a chef you will not need watching around the chemicals.
- A strong version.
- Level 2 Food Safety, COSHH and manual handling with years. Replace every detail above with your own — if you have never done deep cleans or taken deliveries, take those lines out rather than claiming them.
- Common mistake.
- Copying an example CV without changing it. A chef will ask about the extraction filters in the interview, and the answer has to be yours.
If your experience looks different
Most people are not the candidate in the example. Three common situations, and what to change for each.
No experience at all — your first job
Your summary. Say plainly that this would be your first kitchen job, then lead on the two things a chef actually needs from a new KP: that you turn up on time, and that you keep going when it gets busy. Nothing else in the first paragraph.
What to emphasise. You do not need paid experience to have evidence. Anywhere you cleaned to a standard, worked to a time, or kept going when tired counts — school or college, a family business, volunteering, a sports club, helping at events, caring for someone at home. Genuine availability for evenings and weekends is worth as much as experience here, because it is what most kitchens are short of.
Bullets you could adapt
- ·Volunteered in a community kitchen [X] times a month, washing up and clearing for [X] guests a sitting.
- ·Cleared and cleaned the hall after weekly events at [organisation], working to a set finish time.
- ·Completed Level 2 Food Safety online before applying, at my own expense.
Certifications. Level 2 Food Safety and Hygiene takes an afternoon online and costs very little. On a first-job CV with no work history, it is the single strongest thing you can add — it turns "willing" into "already trained".
Some experience — going for a senior KP or commis chef role
Your summary. Name the step. "Kitchen porter with three years, looking to move into a commis chef role" tells the chef what to assess you against instead of leaving them to guess.
What to emphasise. Prep you already do, sections you have covered, anyone you have shown the ropes to, and responsibility you hold without the title — opening the kitchen, ordering cleaning supplies, running the deep-clean rota.
Bullets you could adapt
- ·Took on vegetable prep for the larder section each morning before service.
- ·Showed [X] new kitchen porters the wash-up flow, the waste streams and the chemical store.
- ·Opened the kitchen on early shifts, including fridge temperature checks.
Certifications. Level 2 Food Safety if you do not already hold it, then an introduction to professional cookery — a Level 1 or Level 2 qualification makes the commis step much easier to argue.
Coming into a kitchen from another kind of work
Your summary. Lead with the transferable spine — physical work, shift patterns, cleaning to a standard, working somewhere with real safety rules — and state the move directly. Warehouse, cleaning, care and factory work all transfer well.
What to emphasise. Pace and physical stamina, shift and weekend availability, any COSHH or manual handling training you already hold, and any environment where hygiene or safety was audited.
Bullets you could adapt
- ·Worked [X]-hour shifts in a warehouse, including nights and weekends, with no missed shifts in [X] months.
- ·Cleaned to an audited standard in a healthcare setting, using chemicals to COSHH instructions.
- ·Completed Level 2 Food Safety ahead of applying for kitchen work.
Certifications. Level 2 Food Safety first. If you already hold COSHH or manual handling from previous work, put them on — they are the same certificates a kitchen would have to pay for.
Next steps
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