Do you love spending time with children and have a passion for the kitchen? School chef can be one of the best hospitality jobs for you. Taking up this position can be exciting and challenging t the same time. The position allows you to interact with kids around the clock.

Also, it comes with flexibility, particularly when working for a day school. You will complete your roles during the day and spend your evenings with your family. But as a first-time chef in the school’s kitchen, you might be wondering: what does a school chef do.

Like other chefs, a school chef has some roles defined for them. Here are some of their responsibilities:

Planning and preparing meals and recipes

A school chef is in charge of planning and preparing daily recipes and meals for the kids. You must ensure that the food served has the right nutrition. Since you are dealing with children, the food you prepare must be delicious and should not have hurtful effects on them.

The kids should not experience stomach upsets after eating the meals you serve them. So, you must be conscious and observant throughout the process of planning and preparing daily meals in the school’s kitchen.

A school chef does Ordering and managing supplies

As the school chef, you act as the kitchen manager. You have to ensure that everything you need in the kitchen is available at the right time and amount. The chef has the mandate of ensuring no wastage occurs. Also, the supplies must meet all the required hygiene standards and quality. Hence, you need to be an excellent manager to succeed in your career as a school chef.

A school chef prepares kitchen budgets

As noted, the chef is in charge of the kitchen. You must know what you need to prepare daily foods for children. Usually, schools serve breakfast and lunch. For boarding schools, you will include dinner meals. Since you handle the kitchen tasks, you are responsible for preparing budgets.

You will work closely with the school accountant to prepare the kitchen budgets. Your budgets need to consist of all ingredients and inputs you will need to buy per month or particular budgeting period. So, every chef seeking to work in the school kitchen needs basic budgeting knowledge.

Ensuring strict adherence to health standards and regulations

Working in a school kitchen requires maintaining high hygiene levels. As a school chef, you deal with kids, and their health comes first. A small hitch in the food preparation and serving processes can have a hurtful impact on the children.

So, school chefs need to maintain all hygiene and health standards in the kitchen. All staff working here must comply with the required food preparation and serving policies to ensure the kids eat healthy and quality meals.

Supervising and training junior staff

The school chefs are not the only staff in a kitchen. You will work with interns and cooks. You will need to guide and supervise these workers. As the chef, you are responsible for sharing and assigning roles to each of the kitchen staff.

Also, the school chefs are responsible for training new kitchen recruits. This includes informing them about the health and hygiene standards, culinary processes, and daily recipes followed in the school. As such, you will require some supervision and training skills to stand out in your role.

Wrapping up

In a word, being a school chef is one of the fulfilling positions. The position comes with high opportunities of realizing the work-life balance. Also, you will get maximum time to interact with kids. Seeing this population enjoying your meals will always off a fulfilling experience. However, you need to perform the above task to achieve this happiness. 

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