Branch Cook, Supermarket Assistant

Waitrose & Partners; Dorchester; On-site; GBP 18,000 - 24,000; Full time

Job summary

Waitrose & Partners in Dorchester is hiring a Supermarket Assistant Branch Cook to work in the Partner Dining Room, preparing hot and cold meals for Partners and supporting the shop floor when needed.

You will help maintain a clean kitchen, ensure portion control and hygiene, and contribute to high‑quality service across the store. The role offers flexible hours and a collaborative, employee‑owned culture.

Qualifications

• Experience of working as a cook in a catering or hospitality environment.
• Passionate about food and serving a varied menu.
• Customer focused with ability to engage partners with the food on offer.
• Demonstrate commercial awareness, driving sales while controlling costs and wastage.
• Flexible and adaptable to work between kitchen and shop floor as required.

Responsibilities

• The smooth running of the kitchen with support from the management team.
• Maintain a clean, tidy, and safe kitchen environment.
• Ensure portion control, preparation and storage methods to avoid wastage.
• Adhere to high food hygiene standards.
• Support shop-floor tasks including stock replenishment and fulfilling orders when needed.

Skills

Cook experience

Passionate about food

Customer focussed

Commercial awareness

Flexible between kitchen and shop

Education

City & Guilds / NVQ equivalent

Job description

About The Role

As a Supermarket Assistant Branch Cook, you'll be working in our back-of-house of one of our shops in the Partner Dining Room, providing hot and cold food for Partners to enjoy during their break times. When not working in the kitchen, you'll support the wider shop floor team as a Supermarket Assistant, providing the distinct service and passion for food that our competitors can't compete with.

Key Responsibilities

When taking on the role of Branch Cook, you'll be responsible for:

• The smooth running of the overall kitchen with support and direction from the management team.
• Maintaining a clean, tidy, and safe kitchen environment.
• Ensuring portion control, preparation, storage methods and due diligence to avoid food wastage. Helping to protect our profits.
• Adhering to high food hygiene standards.

When not working in the kitchen you'll be helping to provide great service to our customers and support with a variety of shop-keeping related tasks including:

• Stock replenishment - ensuring our shelves remain as full as possible and products are in the right place at the right time for our customers.
• Fulfilling online customer orders ready for our drivers to deliver their shopping direct to their doors.
• Reducing wastage by following product due diligence and markdowns to those reaching their sell by dates.
• Working with the wider shop team to support when needed including; checkout support, managing Click & Collect orders, fulfilling on-demand customer orders and more.
• Maintain a safe and tidy working environment with general shopkeeping tasks.

Essential Skills/experience You'll Need

• Experience of working as a cook in a catering or hospitality environment.
• Passionate about food and serving a varied and nutritious menu.
• Customer Focussed with the ability to engage partners with the food on offer.
• Demonstrate commercial awareness, driving sales within the partner dining room, whilst also controlling costs and wastage.
• Flexible and adaptable to be able to work between kitchen and shop floor as required.

Desirable Skills/experience You May Have

• City & Guilds 706 1 and 2 or NVQ equivalent.
• Food Hygiene Certificate Level 2.

About The Partnership

We’re the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We’re not just employees, we’re Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there’s never been a more exciting time to join us.

We’re ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food-lovers in Waitrose.

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect.

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we’re free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective.

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.

Important points to note

It’s important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates). If required, you’ll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays. Any DBS checks required will be carried out by a third-party registered body and financial probity checks may also be required for some of our roles.

We occasionally close vacancies early in the event we receive a high volume of applications, and therefore, we recommend you apply early. If you require a reasonable adjustment due to a disability which means you may need longer to complete your application please contact us as soon as possible.

We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview.