Nutrition Services Culinary Associate

Posting Information

• Date Posted: 12/8/2025
• Date Available:
  
  2025-26
• Closing Date: 01/20/2026

Job Title: Nutrition Services Culinary Associate

Pay Program: Support Staff

FLSA Status: Non-Exempt

Reports to: Culinary Manager, Nutrition Services

Pay Range: CH 6 $ 17.57 - $19.97

Work Year: 172 Days / 4 Hours

We Fuel Successful Learning.

Operating under the general supervision of the school’s Culinary Manager, employee is a member of the school’s culinary team working to create and serve scratch produced meals to the District’s students. Performs highly technical scratch food production duties utilizing all components of the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act and Nourish Colorado Scratch School Meal Initiative. Employee is charged with providing well-balanced nutritious meals per approved USDA & Live Well recipe & production records.

Serving high risk populations, school food service activities require the highest degree of customer service skills, production & food safety practices.

This position is ideal for individuals with experience in food preparation or cooking who want to work in a school based culinary environment. Employees prepare scratch made meals similar to the work of a cook, including prepping ingredients, following recipes, and operating commercial kitchen equipment.

• Using highly technical scratch meal production techniques, employees provide well-balanced, nutritious, and tasteful meals to students. Employee uses a wide range of commercial kitchen equipment including but not limited to food processors, steamers, kettles, immersion blenders, and convection ovens as part of the scratch cooking environment. Cooking skills required include basic cooking principles for prep work, baking, stove top, and knife work.
  
  District follows USDA standardized recipes, maintains production records, and incorporates Nourish Co. scratch meal training into employee’s daily responsibilities.
• Serving prepared meals as part of the school’s culinary team in a friendly, tactful, and professional manner, employee must adhere to the school’s established mealtime schedules and maintain compliance with correct portion size and correct USDA Offer versus Serve regulations. In addition, employee is aware of and follows the USDA Counting & Claiming procedures as part of the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act.
• Ensuring the health and safety of students and staff is paramount as scratch ingredients are used at each site, including raw proteins and produce products, employee must incorporate a high degree of food safety knowledge and procedures. Employee must be knowledgeable of and maintain compliance with all District, Colorado Department of Education, USDA, state and federal laws, statutes and guidelines. Employee is also responsible for monitoring proper food and equipment temperatures using HAACP standards and when necessary taking proper protocols for foods outside the safe range.
• Focusing on the highest hygiene and sanitation standards, employee performs cleaning tasks including dishwashing, cleaning and sanitizing all food contact surfaces used for preparation, cleaning all non-food contact surfaces such as floors, shelving, walls, windows, kitchen restroom facilities, laundering of linens, and towels etc. Employee follows all health & safety Vector training.
• Rotating and cross‑training in all scratch meal production and serve stations within the kitchen employee is able to easily adjust and change assigned tasks to ensure food quality, safety, and customer service standards are met. Duties will include point of sale (POS) and time clock computer usage as well as cash handling and daily deposit preparations. In some circumstances the employees will need to be utilized at other school locations.
  
  All nutrition staff are required to work one annual food open house event per year to help promote & market our healthy school meal program to parents & community.
• Assisting the Culinary Manager, employee uses First‑In, First‑Out (FIFO) and the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) guidelines to rotate stock and manage inventory.
• Other duties as assigned.