Sous Chef

Sous Chef

Essex Westford School District is seeking a skilled, collaborative, and service-oriented Sous Chef to support the Child Nutrition Program's central production kitchen at the Essex Educational Center.

Working under the immediate direction of the Head Chef, the Sous Chef is a hands-on culinary leader who helps coordinate large-scale meal production for Essex High School, the Center for Technology, and satellite schools throughout the district. The position supports the preparation of high-quality, nutritious, safe, and appealing meals while providing day-to-day direction, coaching, and technical support to production kitchen employees.

Key responsibilities include:

• Preparing, cooking, portioning, packaging, and presenting meals using standardized recipes.
• Supporting daily production planning, workflow, and food distribution.
• Monitoring food quality, temperature, portioning, and presentation.
• Supporting scratch cooking, culturally responsive menus, local food integration, and Farm-to-School initiatives.
• Training and coaching production kitchen employees.
• Assisting with inventory, receiving, production records, and waste reduction.
• Reinforcing food safety, sanitation, allergen-management, and HACCP procedures.
• Coordinating assigned kitchen operations when the Head Chef is unavailable.
• Promoting excellent customer service and positive student meal experiences.

Preferred candidates will have at least three years of experience in commercial, institutional, school, healthcare, hospitality, or another high-volume food production setting. Experience with scratch cooking, standardized recipes, commercial kitchen equipment, inventory practices, and providing work direction or training is preferred.

Serv Safe Manager Certification is required within six weeks of hire. EWSD will provide the course and examination and compensate the employee for required training time.

This is a school-year, 8 hour/day position. Pay starts at $23.51+/hour.

Regular and reliable attendance is essential, and the position shall require early mornings. Candidates available to work during our summer meals program is preferred, but not required.

EWSD offers excellent benefits including generous paid time off, medical, and dental insurance, life insurance, tuition reimbursement, and a retirement plan with up to 6% employer contribution.

EWSD conducts thorough screenings of all applicants being recommended for hire, which may include contacting references not listed on your application. Selected individuals are subject to criminal records background checks and child and adult abuse registry checks. Any offer of employment will be contingent upon acceptable results of these checks at the sole discretion of the Superintendent or his/her designee.