Sous chef resume example with covers, brigade, and food cost
Kitchen hiring speaks in three numbers: covers per service, brigade size, and food cost percentage. A resume that omits all three reads as a commis chef with a better title.
A summary that carries a number
Sous chef in a 90-cover neighbourhood restaurant: running service for a six-person brigade, costing seasonal menus, and covering the pass on the head chef's days off. Food cost held at 29% across the last two quarters.
Replace every figure with your own. If you never tracked the metric, use the scale you can defend — team size, volume per shift, contract size, or how long the situation lasted.
Keywords a sous chef search looks for
- sous chef
- covers per service
- food cost
- brigade
- HACCP
- menu costing
- stock rotation
- allergen control
- section management
- rota
Use the ones that are true of your work, spelled the way the posting spells them. Skills belong in a plain list with one item per entry — icon rows and rating bars frequently extract as a single unreadable string.
Five bullets to adapt
- Ran service for 90 covers a night across a six-person brigade, including the pass on the head chef's days off.
- Cut food cost from 33% to 29% by reworking the prep list and renegotiating two supplier lines.
- Wrote 12 seasonal specials, three of which stayed on the menu for the following year.
- Trained four commis chefs on the fish and sauce sections to the point of independent service.
- Held a five-star hygiene rating across two inspections and kept allergen sheets current.
Skills section
Section management · Menu costing · HACCP · Allergen control · Stock rotation · Butchery · Fish preparation · Rota planning · Supplier negotiation
Three numbers before any adjective
Covers, brigade size, and food cost percentage are the vocabulary of a kitchen. Put at least two in the first bullet of every role. "Passionate about food" has never decided a hire.
Compliance is a fact, not a value
Hygiene rating, allergen sheets, temperature logs, and HACCP documentation are audited things. State the rating number and the period, and describe one process you owned — that is what an inspection actually tests.
Show what you can run alone
A sous chef is judged on the shifts they own. Say explicitly which sections you can cover unaided and what happens when the head chef is away. That single line separates a second chef from a senior commis.
Questions about this page
- How do I show food cost on a resume?
- As a percentage held over a period, plus one action that moved it — recipe costing, portion control, supplier renegotiation, or waste tracking. A number without the method invites doubt.
- Should I list every section I have worked?
- List the ones you can run a service on unaided, and mark the rest as support. A head chef will test the claim on your first trial shift.
- Do hygiene certificates belong on the page?
- Yes — the level, the awarding body, and the year. Allergen training especially: it is a legal requirement in most markets and a fast filter for employers.