R & D Chef

Dil Foods; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 420,000 - 640,000; Full time

Job summary

Dil Brands is seeking an experienced and innovative Process-Driven hands-on Asst R&D Chef to join our culinary team in Bengaluru. The role focuses on multi-cuisine development, cost-aware recipe design, and scalable production—bridging R&D and production for commercially viable products.

You will work with R&D and Production teams to ensure recipes are executable, meet quality standards, and stay within cost targets, while training the production staff on SOPs and best practices.

Qualifications

• Degree or diploma in Hotel Management or Culinary Arts.
• 3–6 years of culinary/R&D experience in QSR, cloud kitchen, frozen food manufacturing, central kitchen, FMCG, or large-scale production.
• Strong hands-on experience in multi-cuisine food development.
• Good understanding of commercial recipe costing and food-cost management.
• Experience scaling recipes from trial quantities to bulk production.
• Strong knowledge of recipe standardization and SOP development.
• Good understanding of yields, portion control, wastage, and production efficiency.
• Strong communication and training skills.

Responsibilities

• Develop new recipes and products across multiple cuisines and food categories as per Brand Curation guidelines.
• Conduct kitchen trials and improve recipes based on taste, texture, yield, and feasibility.
• Standardize recipes with precise ingredient specs, quantities, UOM, cooking methods, steps, yields, and portions.
• Prepare detailed recipe cards and SOPs for finalized products.
• Conduct trials to ensure small-batch vs bulk production consistency.
• Translate R&D-tested recipes into bulk production recipes.
• Determine batch sizes and ingredient ratios for large-scale production.
• Monitor yield, wastage, portion size, and cost to control expenses.
• Handover R&D to production with complete documentation.

Skills

Multi-cuisine cooking

Recipe development

Production processes

Food costing

Yield management

Recipe standardization

Training

Communication

Education

Bachelor's/Diploma in Hotel Management or Culinary Arts

Job description

Dil Brands is a company that creates and operates virtual brands focused on fulfilling daily meal requirements in India. Through its virtual brands, Dil Brands helps small and medium-sized restaurants increase their asset and resources utilization.

We are seeking an experienced and innovative Process-Driven hands-on Asst R&D Chef, to join our culinary team.

The ideal candidate should have strong knowledge of multi-cuisine cooking, recipe development, production processes, food costing, yield management, and recipe standardization. The candidate will work closely with the R&D and Production teams to ensure that every recipe is commercially viable, consistently executable, and meets the defined quality and cost parameters.

Dil Brands is a company that creates and operates virtual brands focused on fulfilling daily meal requirements in India. Through its virtual brands, Dil Brands helps small and medium-sized restaurants increase their asset and resources utilization.

We are seeking an experienced and innovative Process-Driven hands-on Asst R&D Chef, to join our culinary team.

The ideal candidate should have strong knowledge of multi-cuisine cooking, recipe development, production processes, food costing, yield management, and recipe standardization. The candidate will work closely with the R&D and Production teams to ensure that every recipe is commercially viable, consistently executable, and meets the defined quality and cost parameters.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop new recipes and products across multiple cuisines and food categories as per the guidelines shared by the Brand Curation team.
• Conduct kitchen trials and improve recipes based on taste, texture, appearance, yield, and commercial feasibility.
• Standardize recipes with precise ingredient specifications, quantities, UOM, cooking methods, process steps, yields, and portion sizes.
• Prepare detailed recipe cards and SOPs for finalized products.
• Conduct trials to ensure consistency between small-batch and bulk production.
• Convert R and D-tested recipes into bulk-production recipes.
• Determine appropriate batch sizes and ingredient ratios for large-scale production.
• Optimize recipes to ensure consistency, productivity, yield, and operational feasibility.
• Identify potential production challenges during scale-up and develop practical solutions.
• Calculate the complete food cost of every recipe using approved ingredient prices.
• Maintain recipe costs within the defined cost bracket / target food-cost percentage.
• Identify high-cost ingredients and develop suitable alternatives or process improvements without compromising product quality.
• Monitor yield, wastage, portion size, and ingredient utilization to maintain cost control.
• Conduct complete R&D-to-Production handover for all finalized products.
• Train the Production team on recipe, process, batch size, cooking parameters, yield, quality standards, and critical control points.
• Ensure production teams understand and follow the finalized recipe and SOP.
• Support the Production team during initial production batches and resolve process-related issues.
• Ensure all finalized products meet defined standards for taste, texture, appearance, portion size, yield, and cost.
• Conduct sensory evaluation and comparative product trials.
• Identify deviations during trials or production and implement corrective actions.
• Maintain updated recipe cards, costing sheets, trial reports, batch sheets, and production SOPs.
• Ensure all finalized recipes have complete documentation before production handover.

Candidate Profile

• Degree/Diploma in Hotel Management, Culinary Arts, or a related field.
• 3–6 years of relevant culinary/R&D experience, preferably in QSR, cloud kitchen, frozen food manufacturing, central kitchen, FMCG, or large-scale food production.
• Strong hands-on experience in multi-cuisine food development.
• Good understanding of commercial recipe costing and food-cost management.
• Experience in scaling recipes from trial quantities to bulk production.
• Strong knowledge of recipe standardization and SOP development.
• Good understanding of food yields, portion control, wastage, and production efficiency.
• Strong communication and training skills.
• Comfortable working hands-on in a fast-paced R&D and production environment.