Sous Chef Resume Examples & Writing Guide
A sous chef resume has to show you can run service without the executive chef in the building. Give covers per night, food and labor cost percentages, ticket times, the size of the brigade you managed, your stations and technique, and current ServSafe or state food manager certification.
Sous chef resume example (independent restaurant, 200 covers)
A fictional resume for a sous chef in a scratch kitchen doing about 200 covers a night. If you work in hotels, banquets, corporate dining or a restaurant group, keep the structure and change the volume words: covers become plated banquet counts, meal periods or daily transactions.
Grace L. Okonkwo (fictional example)
Sous Chef | Scratch Kitchen, 200 Covers
Chicago, IL · (312) 555-0158 | g.okonkwo@example.com | ServSafe Manager | ACF CSC
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 cooks and 4 dishwashers and covers the executive chef on 2 days a week.
Experience
Sous Chef · The Larkspur Room (140-seat independent American restaurant)
Apr 2022 - Present
- Run service for 180 to 220 covers on weeknights and up to 320 on Saturdays, expediting the pass and holding average ticket time at 14 minutes across a 26-item 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 family meal and stock program.
- Manage a brigade of 14 cooks and 4 dishwashers: schedules, prep lists, station assignments and daily line checks, with labor held at 28% of sales.
- Own ordering and receiving from 11 vendors, running weekly inventory on 240 items and keeping variance under 1.5%.
- Passed two city health inspections at 98 and 100 points, with the HACCP logs, cooling charts and allergen matrix kept current daily.
Junior Sous Chef, then Chef de Partie · Harbor and Vine Brasserie (110-seat French bistro)
Feb 2019 - Mar 2022
- Ran sauté and then the entire hot line on a 5-station 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 line cooks on station setup, mise en place standards and plating specs; cut 90-day cook turnover from 55% to 30%.
- Butchered whole primals in house, including 8 to 10 pork shoulders and 4 whole lambs a week, saving roughly $900 a month against portioned purchasing.
Line Cook (Grill and Sauté) · Meridian Hotel and Conference Center (280-room hotel)
Jun 2016 - Jan 2019
- Worked grill and sauté for a hotel restaurant plus banquets 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 station line checks and cooling logs that passed 6 consecutive internal audits.
Education
Associate of Applied Science, Culinary Arts
Great Lakes Culinary Institute, 2016
Certifications
- ServSafe Food Protection Manager Certification, renewed 2025
- ServSafe Allergens, 2024
- American Culinary Federation Certified Sous Chef (CSC), 2023
- HACCP for food handlers (16-hour course), 2022
- First Aid and CPR (American Red Cross)
Skills
What an executive chef reads first
A sous chef is hired to be the chef when the chef is not there. So the person reading your resume is asking one question in four different ways: can this person hold a Saturday night together alone?
- Volume and format. Covers per night, seats, banquet plate counts, meal periods. A 60-cover bistro sous chef and a 600-cover banquet sous chef are not the same hire.
- The money numbers. Food cost, labor cost, waste, inventory variance. A sous chef who has never seen a P&L is a line cook with a title.
- Brigade size and turnover. How many cooks you scheduled, trained and kept. Retention is the crisis in every kitchen right now.
- Food safety standing. Current ServSafe or state food manager certification, and a health inspection record 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 resume summary and objective examples
Three or four lines. Format and covers, one cost number, brigade size, then certification. Use an objective only when you are stepping up from line cook 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. ServSafe Manager certified and ACF Certified Sous Chef.
Hotel sous chef running banquet 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 banquet food cost at 27% across 140 events in 2025.
Chef de partie moving into a junior sous chef role, currently running the hot line on a 5-station brigade at 150 covers a night. Wrote and costed 12 seasonal specials, three of which stayed on the menu at a 71% contribution margin. ServSafe Manager certified.
Executive sous chef for a two-restaurant operation with 34 kitchen staff and $4.1M in combined food sales. Owns purchasing across 18 vendors, holds food cost at 28.6%, and rebuilt the training program that cut 90-day cook turnover from 55% to 30%.
Line cook with 6 years on grill and sauté in scratch kitchens up to 200 covers, who already writes prep lists, runs line checks and covers the pass on the chef's days off. Looking for a first sous chef role in an independent restaurant. ServSafe Manager certified since 2024.
Sous chef job description on a resume: 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 executive chef with daily kitchen operations. | Ran service for 180 to 220 covers a night and covered the executive chef two days a week, including full ordering and scheduling 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 family meal. |
| Supervised kitchen staff. | Managed 14 cooks and 4 dishwashers across schedules, prep lists and station assignments, holding labor at 28% of sales. |
| Ensured food quality and consistency. | Ran daily line checks on 5 stations against written plating specs and held average ticket time at 14 minutes across a 26-item menu. |
| Responsible for ordering and inventory. | Ordered from 11 vendors and ran weekly inventory on 240 items, keeping variance under 1.5%. |
| Maintained food safety standards. | Passed two city health inspections at 98 and 100 points, with cooling charts, HACCP logs 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 line cooks on station setup, mise en place standards and plating specs, cutting 90-day cook 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 $900 a month against portioned purchasing. |
If you do not know your food cost number, ask your chef before you leave, or reconstruct it from an inventory sheet. If you truly cannot, use waste, yield or vendor savings instead.
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Skills to put on a sous chef resume
Split cooking from managing. A sous chef is hired for both, and most resumes only prove the first.
Technique and stations:
- Stations run: sauté, grill, garde manger, pastry, fry, expo
- Butchery and fabrication: 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:
- Expediting and calling tickets during a rush
- Recipe costing, yield testing and portion spec writing
- Ordering, receiving, vendor negotiation and invoice checking
- Inventory counts, variance investigation and waste tracking
- Scheduling to a labor target and covering call-outs
- Hiring, training and station certification for new cooks
- HACCP, cooling and reheating logs, allergen and cross-contact control
- Kitchen systems: POS and kitchen display screens, inventory software, scheduling 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 resume changes
These three titles are searched separately because they are genuinely different jobs, and the resume should shift its weight accordingly.
- Junior sous chef: mostly line leadership. Lead with stations mastered, prep list ownership, line checks and training you already do. One cost or waste number is enough.
- Sous chef: second in command. Lead with covers, food cost, labor cost, brigade size and the days you run the kitchen alone. Ordering and scheduling belong in the top job.
- Executive sous chef: multi-outlet or large-brigade. Lead with total headcount, food sales volume, purchasing across vendors, and a program you built (training, banquet menu, prep system) rather than a shift you covered.
- Banquet or hotel sous chef: replace covers with event counts and plate counts, and add production planning for events booked weeks ahead.
- Corporate dining or contract catering sous chef: add daily transaction counts, contracted meal periods, dietary and allergen program work, and any client-facing responsibility.
Certifications and training worth listing
Culinary hiring runs on experience, not certificates, with one exception: food safety. That one is a legal matter and belongs near the top.
- ServSafe Food Protection Manager Certification. Most states require a certified food protection manager on site, and many county health departments name this one. Give the renewal year.
- ServSafe Allergens, and any allergen training your state requires. A few states mandate allergen awareness training for food service staff, so check your state and county health department rather than assuming.
- A local food handler card where your city or county requires it, which is separate from the manager certification.
- HACCP training if you work with cook-chill, sous vide, curing or a variance from your health department.
- American Culinary Federation certifications: Certified Culinarian (CC), Certified Sous Chef (CSC), Certified Chef de Cuisine (CCC) and Certified Executive Chef (CEC). They matter most in hotels, clubs and contract dining.
- Culinary school is optional in this trade. If you have a degree, list it in one line; if you came up through kitchens, the covers and cost numbers carry the resume.
Format, length and words to mirror from the posting
- One page for a sous chef, two only if you are executive sous with multiple properties. Chefs read resumes standing up.
- Order: name with certifications, summary, experience, skills, certifications, education. Put the money numbers in the top third.
- PDF. No photo, no date of birth on a US resume. In the UK this document is a CV and often includes a photo; strip that for US kitchens.
- List the restaurant type and seat count next to each employer, because a name alone means nothing outside its own city.
- 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 posting's own vocabulary inside your bullets:
- Title variants: sous chef, junior sous chef, executive sous chef, second chef, chef de cuisine, kitchen manager.
- Operations words: covers, ticket times, line checks, mise en place, prep list, expediting, station.
- Cost words: food cost percentage, labor cost, inventory variance, yield, contribution margin, waste.
- Safety words: ServSafe, HACCP, allergen, cooling log, temperature control, health inspection score.
- Format words: scratch kitchen, banquet, high volume, from-scratch prep, seasonal menu, tasting menu.
Frequently asked questions
How do I write a sous chef resume?
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, labor held, ticket times, inventory variance, cooks trained and kept. Put your ServSafe manager certification near the top, keep it to one page, and name the seat count and format of every restaurant.
What should a sous chef resume description include?
Running service and expediting, scheduling and prep lists, ordering and receiving, inventory and food cost, recipe costing and menu development, line checks and plating standards, food safety logs, and training. Each one needs a number: covers, dollars, percentages or headcount. Written as a plain duty list it reads like every other applicant.
What skills does a sous chef need on a resume?
Stations run and butchery on the cooking side; costing, ordering, inventory, scheduling and training on the management side; and food safety systems including HACCP logs and allergen control. Add the POS or kitchen display system you use. A sous chef resume that only proves cooking skill reads as a line cook resume.
What is a good objective for a sous chef resume?
Use one only if you are stepping up from line cook or changing segment. Say the volume you work at, the sous chef duties you already perform, and what you want next. For example: "Line cook running the hot line at 200 covers who already owns prep lists and line checks, seeking a first sous chef role in an independent kitchen."
How is an executive sous chef resume different?
It shifts from shifts to systems. Lead with total kitchen headcount, food sales volume and purchasing across vendors, then show a program you built: a training plan, a banquet 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 resume be?
One page. Two only for executive sous chefs running multiple outlets. If you have worked 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.