Sous Chef - Pastry

Role overview

Kitchen production and quality

• Oversee cake artistry, decorating, baking, chocolate, and stewarding sections.
• Plan daily production and ensure orders are accurate and completed on time.
• Monitor recipe adherence and finished-product quality; resolve issues before dispatch.
• Own design, quality, rework, and delivery escalations and decide whether products are held, reworked, or released.

Team and operations

• Set staff schedules and allocate workloads based on order volumes and production needs.
• Lead, coach, and hold section heads and teams accountable for performance, quality, and productivity.
• Conduct daily briefings and coordinate training, onboarding, and employee development with HR.
• Coordinate inventory with Procurement and Inventory teams; minimize stockouts and waste.

Safety, cost, and improvement

• Enforce food safety, hygiene, sanitation, and HACCP standards and work with QC on consistent quality.
• Monitor output, quality, and on-time completion; manage labor, ingredient, and wastage costs against budget.
• Prepare capacity plans for peak periods and improve kitchen workflows, layouts, processes, and productivity.
• Make senior decisions on equipment and operational changes and collaborate on launches, seasonal collections, and production planning.
• Maintain a clean, organized, safe, and efficient kitchen.

Requirements

• 7–10 years of professional kitchen, bakery, or food-production experience and experience managing a multi-section or high-volume facility.
• Strong cake production and decoration knowledge, including expert-level fondant and cake-craft skills.
• Experience managing and developing a kitchen team, including scheduling, coaching, performance management, and team development.
• Working knowledge of inventory, food cost, wastage, and production planning; strong food safety, hygiene, sanitation, and HACCP knowledge.
• Able to manage changing order volumes and tight deadlines; strong problem-solving, decision-making, leadership, and communication skills.
• Commercially aware, organized, detail-oriented, and comfortable in a fast-paced environment; hands-on leadership style.

Workplace

• The role oversees operations in a kitchen and production facility.