Culinary Experience Team Lead

Impact Kitchen; Toronto; Hybrid; CAD 43,000 - 52,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Tip pooling program

Discount on Impact Kitchen products

Flexible scheduling

Job summary

Impact Kitchen is seeking a Culinary Experience Team Lead to guide a dynamic kitchen team, ensuring high-quality dishes for dine-in and take-out while supporting back-of-house operations and collaborating with Guest Experience teams.

The CETL role emphasizes leadership, coaching, and hands-on food preparation across breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner, with a clear path toward Culinary Experience Manager.

Qualifications

• Minimum 1 year of kitchen experience with cooking and cleaning fundamentals.
• 1–5 years of team leadership experience.
• Interest in coaching and developing others.
• Strong understanding of food safety and public health practices.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment.

Responsibilities

• Lead and train the Culinary Experience Team.
• Ensure onboarding excellence for new hires.
• Prepare and ensure food quality per recipes and instructions.
• Operate and maintain dishwashing areas.
• Receive and store deliveries and manage FIFO.
• Maintain sanitation and comply with safety guidelines.

Skills

Kitchen experience

Team leadership

Coaching

Food safety

Time management

Communication

Multitask

Stamina

Work availability

Work permit

Food Handlers Certification

Job description

MAKE YOUR IMPACT

Impact Kitchen is on a mission to empower our community to eat healthy, nutritionally-dense foods with a focus on quality and sustainability. We know that what you eat matters, and we seek to make an impact by choosing local, ethically-sourced ingredients that will nourish you and help you thrive everyday.

Founded in 2015, Impact Kitchen is the brainchild of former personal trainer and nutrition expert, Josh Broun, and Frank Toskan (co-founder of M·A·C Cosmetics).

In addition to our 5 restaurants located within Toronto’s core, Impact Kitchen fuels many of the city’s major sports teams and top athletes through our catering and culinary programs and partnerships.

Impact Kitchen is always looking for enthusiastic, passionate, service oriented team members to join our diverse team. If health and wellness is your passion, if providing wholesome food and empowering others to make healthy choices drives you, and if you are looking for opportunities to grow alongside a dynamic team, then working with Impact might be a great fit for you!

CULINARY EXPERIENCE TEAM LEAD

As a Culinary Experience Team Lead (CETL) at Impact Kitchen you set the culinary standard high and are passionate to ensure guests enjoy their experience through incredible food. You create delectable and consistent dishes for dine-in and take-out guests, support back of house operations and partner with your Guest Experience counterparts on the team. You are an integral team member as you prepare a variety of beverages to high standards and with a quick turn around.

Culinary Experience Team Leads are highly flexible individuals responsible for dishwashing, preparing and working both Hot and Cold line kitchen stations supporting Impact Kitchen’s breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner menu. As proper food handling, food safety, and consistent recipe preparation are all vital to this position, a primary role of the CETL position is to support the leadership of business success through an engaged team while monitoring sanitation, food quality, and food freshness. This position is highly physical; therefore, individuals must possess a strong level of physical stamina. Ideal candidates are efficient, flexible, possess superior time management skills, are team players, and thrive in a fast-paced environment.

As an Impact Kitchen Culinary Experience Team Lead you are a developing expert in your niche and are the teams go-to resource when it comes to all things culinary experience. You are a trainer and facilitate coaching and knowledge transfer instinctually. You aim to see your team succeed and support management with the successful operation of the business. This role has keys to our restaurant and leads by example with every action. The natural progression from this role is to Culinary Experience Manager.

COMPENSATION

Culinary Experience Team Leads earn $21.50/hour, participate in a tip-pooling program (average $3-$7/hr), receive a substantial discount on Impact Kitchen products and have flexible scheduling to accommodate a healthy balanced lifestyle.

TEAM & DEPARTMENT

Culinary Experience Team Leads make an impact everyday through our back-of-house operations and support the leadership of a large portion of our total team population. In this role you will have the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues from multiple levels of the organization while being the main point of food production for our guests. The Culinary Experience Team LEad reports to Culinary Experience Management including the Assistant Culinary Experience Manager, Culinary Experience Manager and General Manager of each Restaurant.

The first entry point for our culinary inclined leaders, the Culinary Experience Team Lead is the perfect knowledge incubator and team coach. Those that excel in their capacity at a CETL have the opportunity to succeed to an Assistant Culinary Experience Manager role where they build on their ability to train and develop top talent for the organization while also learning more about running a successful restaurant.

CORE RESPONSIBILITIES

• Leading and training the Culinary Experience Team.
• Ensuring a best-in-class experience for new hires on their first day and during training.
• Preparation, production and execution of menu items and food quality standards according to detailed recipes and instructions
• Operation and maintenance of dishwashing unit and dish-cleaning areas
• Ability to execute other custodial duties as needed
• Receiving and storage of deliveries as related to the commissary kitchen and 3rd party suppliers
• Effective storage, management, and safe rotation (FIFO) of all products
• Cleaning, sanitation and maintenance of kitchen equipment and food production spaces
• Strict adherence to company, municipal and provincial guidelines as they are related to food safety and safe workplace environments

SKILLS

• Minimum of 1 year of kitchen experience with a general understanding of cooking and cleaning fundamentals and practices
• 1 - 5 years of team leadership experience
• Interest in coaching and developing others
• Strong understanding of food safety and public health practices
• Ability to execute and thrive in a fast-paced environment
• Strong time management and organizational skills with the ability to multitask when required
• Ability to communicate effectively, and respectfully and work well with others in a team-based setting
• Be able to work in a standing position for extended periods
• Availability to work days, evenings, and weekends as business demands.
• A commitment of at least 5 days per week and 30-40 hours per week is required.
• Ability to lift up to 50 LBS
• Work Permit required
• Preferred but not required: Food Handlers Certification

INCLUSIVITY AT IMPACT

Impact Kitchen feeds a diverse community and is made stronger by a diverse team. We welcome and encourage applications from our entire community equally. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, the decision to hire is based solely on business needs, experience and future potential. Hiring is not determined or influenced by any classification of an individual as protected by the laws that govern the region for which the prospective individual would work within. This is true for all practices and policies within the employee journey/lifecycle.

Impact Kitchen supports alternative ways to interview and encourages applications from individuals with disabilities. Should you require a reasonable accommodation, please indicate in your application. Both Impact Kitchen management and the applicant share responsibility to communicate and reasonably accommodate.