Kitchen Porter CV Examples & Writing Guide

This is a one-page CV for someone with four years in kitchens who now runs the pot wash and covers prep. The person and the restaurants are invented. A head chef reads this in under 20 seconds, so the shift pattern, the cover count and the food hygiene certificate all appear early.

KP is the position kitchens fill most often, so head chefs have a short list and they check it in seconds. Everything on your page should answer one of these four questions.

• Will you turn up? Attendance is the whole job. Any line like "never missed a scheduled shift in 21 months" or "picked up 30 extra shifts" is worth more than any adjective.
• Can you keep up on a busy night? Give the cover count, the seat count or the number of racks per hour. "500 to 650 covers on a Saturday" tells a chef exactly what you can handle.
• Do you know the safety basics? Dishwasher temperatures, sanitiser dilution, COSHH and chemical labelling, your food hygiene certificate. This is what the environmental health officer asks about.
• When can you work? Evenings, weekends, bank holidays, doubles, closing shifts. Put your availability in the contact line at the top. It is often the deciding factor.

“For dish I hire on attendance and pace, in that order. A CV that says how many covers the kitchen does and that the person closed on Saturdays goes straight to the top. If someone already has a food hygiene certificate, they can start this week instead of next.”

Two or three lines at the top. Use a personal statement if you have kitchen experience, a career objective if this is your first job. Both should end with your availability, because that is what the head chef is really scanning for.

"Washed dishes" is on every kitchen porter CV ever written. Add the volume, the equipment or the standard you held, and yours stops looking like the other twelve in the pile.

Eight to twelve is enough for a one-page CV. Mix the equipment you can run, the safety knowledge and the physical realities of the job. Name the machine type if you know it, because a chef reading "pass-through dishwasher" knows you have actually stood at a pot wash.

• Equipment and stations: pass-through (hood) and undercounter dishwashers, rack conveyor machines, pot wash sinks, glass washer, cutlery soak and polishing, floor scrubber.

• Food safety: wash and rinse temperature checks, sanitiser testing with test strips, COSHH chemical labelling and storage, cross-contamination basics, allergen awareness, fridge and dry store organisation, FIFO rotation, waste and recycling separation.

• The physical and team side: standing 8 to 10 hours, lifting 20 to 25 kg cases, working in heat and steam, keeping pace during a rush, taking direction from the chef on the pass, evening and weekend availability, a second language if your kitchen runs on two.

This is one of the easiest jobs in the country to get with no history, so keep the page short and make the three things a head chef wants obvious. Half a page is fine. A padded two-page CV for a KP job looks worse, not better.

1. 1Put your availability in the contact line: which evenings, whether you can close, whether you can work weekends and bank holidays.
2. 2Get a Level 2 Food Hygiene and Safety certificate before you apply. You can usually take the course online in an hour or two for a small fee, and many kitchens ask for it within your first few weeks anyway.
3. 3Use whatever clean-up or fast-paced work you have done: school canteen duty, a tea bar or food kiosk, church or catering events, cleaning work, farm or garden work, helping in a family restaurant. Give hours and what you cleaned.
4. 4Add anything that shows reliability with a number: perfect school attendance, two seasons on the same team, a year in the same volunteer slot.
5. 5Say how you get to work. Kitchens close after the buses stop, so "own transport" or "10 minutes away by bike" genuinely helps.
6. 6Skip a skills list full of guesses. List the two or three you can prove and let the manager train the rest, which is what they expect to do.

A lot of people search for how to word KP work when they are applying somewhere else. Never hide it. Pot wash is proof of stamina, reliability and working in a team under pressure, and hiring managers in other fields know that. What you change is the title and which bullets you keep.

• Titles you can use honestly: Kitchen Porter, KP, Pot Washer, Kitchen Steward (common in hotels), Dishwasher (the usual US term). Use the title your employer actually gave you, and add the common one in brackets if it is unusual.
• Applying for commis chef or prep chef: keep the prep cover, knife work, portioning, FIFO and par levels, and any section you have run when short-staffed.
• Applying for warehouse or production: keep the pace, the lifting, the shift pattern, equipment operation and your safety and attendance record.
• Applying for cleaning or facilities: keep chemical handling and COSHH, floor care, closing checklists and your kitchens' food hygiene ratings.
• Applying for an office or customer role: keep the reliability numbers and the teamwork, and cut the equipment detail down to one line.

One page, always. No photo, no date of birth, no full home address (your town or city is enough). Reverse chronological order with month and year, and keep the font plain so a phone screen can read it, since many head chefs open applications on a phone in the office.

• Mirror the advert's words: kitchen porter, pot wash, dishwasher, cleaning, steward, closing shift, food hygiene, prep support, back of house.
• Put your availability at the top and again at the bottom if you have room. It is the single most useful line on a kitchen porter CV.
• Include a phone number you answer. Kitchens call, they rarely email, and the first person to pick up often gets the shift.
• Send a PDF for online applications, and take three printed copies to any restaurant you walk into between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m., which is the quiet time between services.
• List a chef or shift supervisor as a reference with their phone number, if they agreed. One call from a chef who says you turned up ends the process.