Production Kitchen Manager (CPU)

Dish'd; Uxbridge; On-site; GBP 42,000 - 64,000; Full time

Job summary

Dish’d is seeking a Production Kitchen Manager to ensure the central kitchen delivers safe, efficient, and specification-compliant products. You will convert recipes into production-ready formats and lead the CPU team while collaborating with the Head of Food.

The role combines hands-on kitchen work with management, focusing on process, quality, cost control and continuous improvement to support scale and new product launches.

Qualifications

• 2–4 years’ experience in a production kitchen or batch-cooking environment.
• Strong knowledge of food safety, HACCP, allergens; SALSA certification a bonus.
• Ability to translate recipes into production-ready formats at scale.
• Highly organized with exceptional attention to detail.
• Experience creating training materials and SOPs.

Responsibilities

• Lead day-to-day operations of the production kitchen, ensuring safe, efficient and consistent output.
• Manage production schedules, staffing, batching, yields and throughput.
• Ensure adherence to recipes, SOPs, allergens, HACCP and compliance standards.
• Implement and maintain inventory controls, stock rotation and raw material checks.
• Convert new product development outputs into production documentation (recipe cards, costed ingredient lists, how-to videos, step-by-step process guides).
• Run pilot batches for new items and provide structured feedback to the Head of Food.
• Flag scaling issues early and recommend adjustments for efficiency and consistency.
• Train CPU team on new products, changes to processes and quality expectations.
• Record training videos and visual SOPs for rollout.

Skills

Kitchen operations

Team leadership

Food safety HACCP

Documentation training

Job description

Dish’d is the UK’s fastest-growing franchisor of virtual food brands. We partner with food operators, helping them maximise their kitchen capacity by launching and scaling delivery-only virtual brands across key platforms.

About The Role

The Production Kitchen Manager is responsible for ensuring Dish’d’s central production kitchen consistently delivers every product safely, efficiently and to specification.

Reporting to the Head of Food, this role turns product development into production reality — taking recipes and concepts through recipe cards, batch sheets, training materials, pilot runs and full-scale production.

This is a highly hands‑on role, with an approximate 80:20 split between practical kitchen operations and management. You will be actively involved in production while also leading the day-to-day running of the Central Production Unit (CPU), managing the kitchen team and ensuring new products are successfully embedded into production.

You will be responsible for maintaining high standards across product quality, food safety, consistency, cost control and operational efficiency. This role will suit someone who is practical, organised and process-driven, with a strong focus on getting things right every time.

What You’ll Do

CPU Operations Management

• Lead day-to-day operations of the production kitchen, ensuring safe, efficient and consistent output.
• Manage production schedules, staffing, batching, yields and throughput.
• Ensure adherence to recipes, SOPs, allergens, HACCP and compliance standards.
• Implement and maintain inventory controls, stock rotation and raw material checks.
• Troubleshoot operational issues and troubleshoot?
• Convert new product development outputs into full production documentation:
• Recipe cards
• Costed ingredient lists
• How-to videos
• Step-by-step process guides
• Run pilot batches for all new items and provide structured feedback to the Head of Food.
• Flag scaling issues early and recommend adjustments for efficiency and consistency.

Recipe Accuracy, Documentation & Training

• Maintain a master database of all CPU recipes, specs, allergens and yields.
• Ensure all documentation is exact, version-controlled and communicated to Operations, Onboarding and partner sites.
• Train CPU team members on new products, changes to processes and quality expectations.
• Record training videos and visual SOPs for rollout.

Quality, Standards & Compliance

• Conduct daily quality checks and enforce strict compliance with CCPs, food safety and hygiene.
• Monitor yields, waste, and batch consistency — escalating variances.Work with the Head of Food to introduce structure, repeatability and improvements.
• Maintain kitchen audits, cleaning rotas, equipment logs and compliance paperwork.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work closely with:
• Head of Food – to ensure products are commercially viable and scalable.
• Procurement – for ingredient quality, ordering accuracy and supplier issues.
• Data Team – to provide production insights (waste, yields, batch errors).
• Support with product launches through production readiness, pilots and operator documentation
• Identify opportunities to centralise more components to improve consistency and reduce operator effort.
• Recommend equipment, process flow or layout improvements.
• Drive cost reduction through standardisation, portioning accuracy and waste reduction.
• Support implementation of new systems to streamline production planning and reporting.

What You’ll Bring

• 2–4 years’ experience in a production kitchen, CPU, food manufacturing or batch-cooking environment.
• Strong understanding of food safety, HACCP, allergens and compliance. SALSA certification a bonus.
• Ability to translate recipes into production-ready formats at scale.
• Highly organised and methodical with exceptional attention to detail.
• Comfortable creating visual training materials and recipe/process videos.
• Experience training kitchen teams and enforcing standards.
• Good communication skills across cross-functional teams.
• Problem-solver with a continuous improvement mindset.
• Ability to work at pace and manage multiple concurrent products.

You’ll join a collaborative, forward-thinking team where ideas are valued, initiative is rewarded, and your impact is visible.