Sous Chef CV Examples & Writing Guide
A sous chef CV has to show you can run service without the head chef in the building. Give covers per night, food and labour cost percentages, ticket times, the size of the brigade you managed, your sections and technique, and a current Level 3 Food Hygiene certificate.
Sous chef CV example (independent restaurant, 200 covers)
A fictional CV for a sous chef in a scratch kitchen doing about 200 covers a night. If you work in hotels, banqueting, contract catering or a restaurant group, keep the structure and change the volume words: covers become plated banqueting counts, meal periods or daily transactions.
Grace L. Okonkwo (fictional example)
Sous Chef | Scratch Kitchen, 200 Covers
Bristol · 07700 900158 | g.okonkwo@example.com | Level 3 Food Hygiene
Summary
Sous chef with 10 years in kitchens, 4 of them second in command of a 140-seat scratch restaurant running 180 to 220 covers a night. Brought food cost from 32.4% to 29.1% in 14 months while holding average ticket time at 14 minutes. Runs a brigade of 14 chefs and 4 kitchen porters and covers the head chef 2 days a week.
Experience
Sous Chef · The Larkspur Room (140-seat independent modern British restaurant)
Apr 2022 - Present
- Run service for 180 to 220 covers on weeknights and up to 320 on Saturdays, running the pass and holding average ticket time at 14 minutes across a 26-dish menu.
- Cut food cost from 32.4% to 29.1% in 14 months by rewriting 9 recipe cards to spec, tightening yield tests on proteins, and moving trim into a daily staff meal and stock programme.
- Manage a brigade of 14 chefs and 4 kitchen porters: rotas, prep lists, section assignments and daily section checks, with labour held at 28% of sales.
- Own ordering and deliveries from 11 suppliers, running weekly stocktakes on 240 items and keeping variance under 1.5%.
- Kept a food hygiene rating of 5 through two council inspections, with HACCP records, cooling logs and the allergen matrix kept up to date daily.
Chef de Partie, then Junior Sous Chef · Harbour and Vine Brasserie (110-seat French bistro)
Feb 2019 - Mar 2022
- Ran the sauté section and then the entire hot side of a 5-section brigade doing 150 covers a night, six services a week.
- Wrote and costed 12 seasonal specials, three of which went onto the permanent menu at a 71% contribution margin.
- Trained 9 commis and demi chefs on section set-up, mise en place standards and plating specs; cut 90-day chef turnover from 55% to 30%.
- Butchered whole primals in house, including 8 to 10 pork shoulders and 4 whole lambs a week, saving roughly £700 a month against buying pre-portioned.
Commis Chef (Grill and Sauté) · Meridian Hotel and Conference Centre (280-room hotel)
Jun 2016 - Jan 2019
- Worked grill and sauté for a hotel restaurant plus banqueting up to 400 plated covers, often two events in one day.
- Ran breakfast production for 180 to 250 guests a morning with a 2-person team and no service delays flagged in the guest log.
- Kept section checks and cooling logs that passed 6 consecutive internal audits.
Education
Level 3 Diploma in Professional Cookery
Further education college, Bristol, 2016
Certifications
- Level 3 Award in Supervising Food Safety in Catering, 2025
- Food allergen awareness (14 allergens, Natasha's Law), 2024
- Level 3 Award in HACCP for Catering, 2023
- Manual handling and COSHH training, refreshed 2025
- Emergency First Aid at Work, renewed 2025
Skills
What a head chef reads first
A sous chef is hired to be the chef when the chef is not there. So the person reading your CV is asking one question in four different ways: can this person hold a Saturday night together alone?
- Volume and format. Covers per night, seats, banqueting plate counts, meal periods. A 60-cover bistro sous chef and a 600-cover banqueting sous chef are not the same hire.
- The money numbers. Food cost (or GP), labour cost, waste, stock variance. A sous chef who has never seen a P&L is a chef de partie with a title.
- Brigade size and turnover. How many chefs you put on the rota, trained and kept. Retention is the crisis in every kitchen right now.
- Food safety standing. A current Level 3 Food Hygiene certificate, and a food hygiene rating you are willing to name.
“I look for two lines. What did you do to food cost, and how many cooks did you keep. Anyone can say they are passionate about food. Show me you dropped cost three points without cutting the menu and that your cooks stayed a year, and we are talking that week.”
Sous chef personal statement and career objective examples
Three or four lines. Format and covers, one cost number, brigade size, then qualifications. Use a career objective only when you are stepping up from chef de partie or changing segment, because that is a move an employer needs explained.
Sous chef with 10 years in kitchens and 4 as second in command of a 140-seat scratch restaurant doing 180 to 220 covers a night. Cut food cost from 32.4% to 29.1% in 14 months while holding ticket times at 14 minutes. Level 3 Food Hygiene and Level 3 HACCP.
Hotel sous chef running banqueting and outlet production for a 280-room property: plated events up to 400 covers, breakfast for 250 a morning, and a 16-person kitchen team across three meal periods. Held banqueting food cost at 27% across 140 events in 2025.
Chef de partie moving into a junior sous chef role, currently running the hot side of a 5-section brigade at 150 covers a night. Wrote and costed 12 seasonal specials, three of which stayed on the menu at a 71% contribution margin. Level 3 Food Hygiene.
Executive sous chef for a two-restaurant operation with 34 kitchen staff and £3.3m in combined food sales. Owns purchasing across 18 suppliers, holds food cost at 28.6%, and rebuilt the training programme that cut 90-day chef turnover from 55% to 30%.
Chef de partie with 6 years on grill and sauté in scratch kitchens up to 200 covers, who already writes prep lists, runs section checks and covers the pass on the head chef's days off. Looking for a first sous chef role in an independent restaurant. Level 3 Food Hygiene since 2024.
Sous chef job description on a CV: weak vs. strong bullets
Kitchen duties are identical everywhere. What separates candidates is volume, money and outcome. Each rewrite below keeps the duty and adds all three.
| Weak (copied duty) | Strong (your version) |
|---|---|
| Assisted the head chef with daily kitchen operations. | Ran service for 180 to 220 covers a night and covered the head chef two days a week, including full ordering and rota responsibility. |
| Managed food costs. | Cut food cost from 32.4% to 29.1% in 14 months by rewriting 9 recipe cards to spec, tightening protein yield tests and moving trim into stock and staff meal. |
| Supervised kitchen staff. | Managed 14 chefs and 4 kitchen porters across rotas, prep lists and section assignments, holding labour at 28% of sales. |
| Ensured food quality and consistency. | Ran daily checks on 5 sections against written plating specs and held average ticket time at 14 minutes across a 26-dish menu. |
| Responsible for ordering and stock. | Ordered from 11 suppliers and ran weekly stocktakes on 240 items, keeping variance under 1.5%. |
| Maintained food safety standards. | Kept a food hygiene rating of 5 through two council inspections, with cooling logs, HACCP records and the allergen matrix updated daily. |
| Helped develop new menu items. | Wrote and costed 12 seasonal specials; three earned a permanent menu slot at a 71% contribution margin. |
| Trained new kitchen employees. | Trained 9 commis and demi chefs on section set-up, mise en place standards and plating specs, cutting 90-day chef turnover from 55% to 30%. |
| Performed butchery as needed. | Broke down 8 to 10 pork shoulders and 4 whole lambs a week in house, saving about £700 a month against buying pre-portioned. |
If you do not know your food cost number, ask your head chef before you leave, or reconstruct it from a stocktake sheet. If you truly cannot, use waste, yield or supplier savings instead.
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Skills to put on a sous chef CV
Split cooking from managing. A sous chef is hired for both, and most CVs only prove the first.
Technique and sections:
- Sections run: sauté, grill, larder, pastry, fry, the pass
- Butchery and fish: whole primals, whole fish, poultry, portion control
- Stocks, sauces and classical technique; fermentation, curing and preserving if you do them
- Cuisines and formats you can genuinely execute, named honestly
- Plating standards and consistency across a shift
Running the kitchen:
- Running the pass and calling tickets during a rush
- Recipe costing, yield testing and portion spec writing
- Ordering, deliveries, supplier negotiation and invoice checking
- Stocktakes, variance investigation and waste tracking
- Rotas to a labour target and covering last-minute absences
- Recruitment, training and section sign-off for new chefs
- HACCP, cooling and reheating logs, allergen and cross-contamination control
- Kitchen systems: EPOS and kitchen display screens, stock software, rota apps
The one thing worth saying about temperament: chefs hire for whether you stay calm when the printer will not stop. Prove it with a ticket time held during a 320-cover Saturday, not with the word "calm".
Junior sous, sous and executive sous: how the CV changes
These three titles are searched separately because they are genuinely different jobs, and the CV should shift its weight accordingly.
- Junior sous chef: mostly section leadership. Lead with sections mastered, prep list ownership, section checks and training you already do. One cost or waste number is enough.
- Sous chef: second in command. Lead with covers, food cost, labour cost, brigade size and the days you run the kitchen alone. Ordering and rotas belong in the top job.
- Executive sous chef: multi-outlet or large brigade. Lead with total headcount, food sales volume, purchasing across suppliers, and a programme you built (training, banqueting menu, prep system) rather than a shift you covered.
- Banqueting or hotel sous chef: replace covers with event counts and plate counts, and add production planning for events booked weeks ahead.
- Contract catering sous chef: add daily transaction counts, contracted meal periods, dietary and allergen work, and any client-facing responsibility.
Qualifications and training worth listing
Kitchen hiring runs on experience, not certificates, with one exception: food safety. That one is a legal matter and belongs near the top.
- Level 3 Food Hygiene (for example the Level 3 Award in Supervising Food Safety in Catering). UK food law requires kitchen staff to be trained and supervised in food hygiene to suit their role, and employers expect Level 3 from a sous chef. Give the year.
- Allergen training covering the 14 allergens, and Natasha's Law if your kitchen makes prepacked for direct sale (PPDS) food. Employers ask for it because allergen mistakes are the fastest route to a closure or a court case.
- Level 2 Food Hygiene for the chefs you supervise. Mention it if you run the training records, since checking them is part of the sous chef's job.
- HACCP training (Level 2 or 3) if you work with cook-chill, sous vide, curing or vacuum packing, where the food safety plan needs extra controls.
- Professional cookery qualifications: Level 2 or Level 3 Diploma in Professional Cookery, or a chef apprenticeship (for example chef de partie at Level 3 or senior culinary chef at Level 4). They matter most in hotels, contract catering and group kitchens.
- College is optional in this trade. If you have a qualification, list it in one line; if you came up through kitchens, the covers and cost numbers carry the CV.
Format, length and words to mirror from the job advert
- Two pages at most, and one is fine for a sous chef with a short history; executive sous chefs with multiple sites use the full two. Chefs read CVs standing up.
- Order: name with qualifications, personal statement, experience, skills, qualifications, education. Put the money numbers in the top third.
- PDF. No photo, date of birth or marital status on a UK CV. A US resume also leaves them out, so the same rule works for both.
- List the restaurant type and seat count next to each employer, because a name alone means nothing outside its own town.
- Short stays are common in kitchens, but three of them in a row need one honest line of context rather than missing dates.
Restaurant groups and hotels screen applications through software before a chef sees them. Use the advert's own vocabulary inside your bullets:
- Title variants: sous chef, junior sous chef, executive sous chef, second chef, head chef, kitchen manager.
- Operations words: covers, ticket times, section checks, mise en place, prep list, running the pass, section.
- Cost words: food cost percentage, GP, labour cost, stock variance, yield, contribution margin, waste.
- Safety words: Level 3 Food Hygiene, HACCP, allergens, Natasha's Law, cooling log, temperature control, food hygiene rating.
- Format words: scratch kitchen, banqueting, high volume, fresh food, seasonal menu, tasting menu.
Frequently asked questions
How do I write a sous chef CV?
Open with covers per night, one cost number and your brigade size. Then write each job with bullets that carry volume and money: food cost moved, labour held, ticket times, stock variance, chefs trained and kept. Put Level 3 Food Hygiene near the top, keep it to two pages at most, and name the seat count and format of every restaurant.
What should a sous chef CV description include?
Running service and the pass, rotas and prep lists, ordering and deliveries, stock and food cost, recipe costing and menu development, section checks and plating standards, food safety records, and training. Each one needs a number: covers, pounds, percentages or headcount. Written as a plain duty list it reads like every other applicant.
What skills does a sous chef need on a CV?
Sections run and butchery on the cooking side; costing, ordering, stock, rotas and training on the management side; and food safety systems including HACCP records and allergen control. Add the EPOS or kitchen display system you use. A sous chef CV that only proves cooking skill reads as a chef de partie CV.
What is a good career objective for a sous chef CV?
Use one only if you are stepping up from chef de partie or changing segment. Say the volume you work at, the sous chef duties you already perform, and what you want next. For example: "Chef de partie running the hot side at 200 covers who already owns prep lists and section checks, seeking a first sous chef role in an independent kitchen."
How is an executive sous chef CV different?
It shifts from shifts to systems. Lead with total kitchen headcount, food sales volume and purchasing across suppliers, then show a programme you built: a training plan, a banqueting menu, a prep system, a cost control that held across outlets. Covering service is assumed at that level, so it stops being the headline.
How long should a sous chef CV be?
Two pages at most, and one is fine if your history is short. If you have worked in many restaurants, keep the last three in full detail and compress the rest into a short earlier-experience list with dates, titles and venue types.
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How this page was made: a first draft was written with AI assistance from cvplex's example library, then edited and fact-checked by the cvplex Careers Team. Examples are fictional composites; numbers are illustrative. Report an error via the editorial policy page.