Cook and Line Cook Resume Examples & Writing Guide

This resume is for a cook who started washing dishes and prepping, then moved to the line at a casual chain, and now runs sauté and grill at a busy independent restaurant. The name and restaurants are made up. The numbers are the ones a chef knows by heart: covers a night, ticket times, prep items, health inspection scores, food cost, no-shows.

Cook resumes are read by the executive chef, the sous chef or the kitchen manager, usually between lunch and dinner service, often on a phone. Chains and hotel groups run them through an applicant tracking system first. The reader is trying to answer four questions fast.

• Which stations, at what volume? Sauté and grill at 300 covers is a different cook from fry at a 60-seat cafe. Name your stations and your covers per night (or meals per day in a school, hospital or camp kitchen).
• Can you keep up and stay consistent? Ticket times, remakes, prep items a day, and whether you have worked a Friday night rush. "Fast-paced environment" is a phrase; "400 covers on Saturday with 8-minute tickets" is proof.
• Will you show up? Kitchens run short. Nights, weekends and holidays availability, no-show record, and how long you stayed at each job (a year or more looks steady) matter more than any culinary school line.
• Are you safe to have in the kitchen? ServSafe or your state's food handler card, allergen training, and any health inspection results you can point to.

“I look for stations and covers. If a cook writes 'sauté and grill, 300 covers, 8-minute tickets, no missed shifts,' that person gets a call today. If the resume says 'passionate about food' and lists knife skills, I cannot tell whether they can survive a Saturday.”

Most cook resumes copy the posting: "prepared food according to recipes, maintained a clean station, followed food safety standards". Every cook did that. Add the station, the volume, the standard and one number a chef can check, and the same duty proves what you can do. Eight rewrites from real kitchen work:

Group your skills the way a chef thinks: stations, cooking methods, prep, food safety, equipment and systems. Ten to fifteen items. "Knife skills" alone is what everyone writes; "brunoise, julienne, breaking down whole chickens and fish" tells them your level. Leave off "Microsoft Office".

• Stations: sauté, grill and broiler, fry, garde manger (salads, cold apps, desserts), pantry, expo, wok, pizza, short-order and breakfast, banquet and buffet line.
• Cooking: à la carte and batch cooking, cooking proteins to temperature, sauces and stocks, braising and roasting, sous vide, plating to a photo spec, recipe scaling and conversions.
• Prep and product: knife cuts, butchery and fish breakdown, prep lists and par levels, labeling and dating, FIFO, receiving and checking deliveries, inventory counts.
• Speed and organization: mise en place, multi-ticket timing, ticket times, working two stations, communication on the line (calling back orders, all-day counts).
• Food safety: ServSafe Food Handler or Manager, state food handler card, allergen handling and allergen tickets, temperature logs, cooling and reheating rules, HACCP basics, cleaning and sanitizing schedules.
• Equipment: flat-top, char-broiler, six-burner range, fryers, salamander, convection and combi ovens, tilt skillet and steam kettle (institutional), slicer, mixer, immersion circulator.
• Real extras: nights, weekends and holidays availability, own knives, reliable transportation for closing shifts, Spanish or another kitchen language.

Two or three lines at the top: your level (prep, line, lead line), years and kitchen type; your stations and covers; one number (ticket time, waste, inspection score, no-shows); your food safety card and availability. Write a summary if you have cooked for pay. Write a one-line objective only if you have not.

Kitchens hire people with no experience every week; dishwasher and prep cook are the doors in, and a good chef would rather train someone reliable than hire a cook with bad habits. What they cannot teach is showing up on time for every shift, taking direction under pressure and cleaning as you go. Your resume has to prove those with whatever you have done.

1. 1Get a food handler card before you apply. It is required in many states and counties (California, Texas, Illinois, Washington and others), costs about $10 to $15 online, and takes two hours. Put it in your contact line and under Certifications.
2. 2Write a one-line objective that names the job (prep cook, line cook, dishwasher-to-cook) and the restaurant, plus your availability and what you already know.
3. 3Turn any food or fast-paced job into kitchen proof: fast food (orders an hour, fryer and grill, closing), grocery deli or bakery (slicer, portioning, dating), catering or church kitchens, cooking at home for a large family or a team. One number per bullet.
4. 4Say your availability plainly: nights, weekends, holidays, doubles. Then apply in person between 2 and 4 p.m., ask for the chef, and bring the one-page resume. Many independent kitchens hire this way.

No US state licenses cooks, and culinary school is not required for most cook jobs. Food safety cards are a different story: many states and counties require one within 30 days of hire, and chefs prefer to hire someone who already has it. List what you hold with the year; never list a card you do not have, because the health inspector can ask to see it.

• Food handler card: required by state or county law in California, Texas, Illinois, Washington, Utah, Arizona, Hawaii, New Mexico and many local jurisdictions; check your state's requirements. An ANSI-accredited course such as ServSafe Food Handler is accepted in most places; some states (California, Texas, Illinois) have their own approved lists.
• ServSafe Manager Certification (National Restaurant Association): the standard food protection manager credential, required for at least one person on staff in most states. For a cook it signals you can be the lead on a shift; worth listing if you hold it.
• ServSafe Allergens or your state's allergen awareness training: required for some staff in Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan and other states; useful anywhere with allergen tickets.
• Culinary training: a community college certificate or A.A.S. in Culinary Arts, or a culinary school diploma, goes under Education. It helps for hotel and fine-dining kitchens and is optional everywhere else. Registered apprenticeships and certifications through the American Culinary Federation (ACF) also count, mostly in hotels, clubs and institutional kitchens.

Independent restaurants read resumes on a phone or a printout during the afternoon lull. Chains, hotels, hospitals and schools run them through an applicant tracking system that matches the exact words in the posting. One plain page works for both, and it is what you hand the chef when you walk in at 3 p.m.

• One page, always. Twelve years of kitchens fits on one page when older jobs get one line each.
• Order: contact line with your food safety card and availability; two- or three-line summary; skills grouped by stations, cooking, prep, safety, equipment; work history newest first with stations and covers; certifications; education.
• Use the title on the posting: "line cook", "prep cook", "cook II", "kitchen cook". Do not call yourself a chef unless you ran the kitchen; chefs hire cooks, and an inflated title costs you the interview.
• Mirror the posting's words once each: "line cook", "sauté", "grill", "prep", "ServSafe", "food handler", "ticket times", "high volume", "opening and closing", "FIFO", the POS or KDS they name.
• Standard headings, one column, plain font, PDF for online applications and a printed copy for walk-ins. No photo, no date of birth, no street address (city and state is enough).
• The UK, Ireland and Australia call it a CV and often say "chef de partie" or "commis chef" for what the US calls a line cook or prep cook. Same rules; swap ServSafe for the local food hygiene certificate (Level 2 Food Hygiene in the UK).

Paste the posting into the cvplex ATS checker with your resume before applying to a chain or hotel. It shows which station, equipment and food safety words from the posting are missing and whether your skills list parsed as one.