Supervisor, Food Services

Kaiser Permanente; Irvine (CA); On-site; USD 65,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Kaiser Permanente in Irvine is seeking an experienced Food Service Supervisor to lead kitchen teams, ensure sanitary and regulatory compliance, and optimize procurement and inventory for patient meals. You will coordinate menu production, vendor relations, and recall management while guiding staff toward high-quality, safe service.

Responsibilities include budgeting, staff development, quality metrics analysis, and collaboration across departments to support patient satisfaction and healthcare

Qualifications

• High School Diploma or GED is required, with 3+ years in food service or related field.
• Minimum 2 years in a leadership role.
• Minimum 1 year using PC-based tools such as Microsoft Office.

Responsibilities

• Recommends developmental opportunities and mentors team members to improve performance.
• Coordinates daily activities and ensures policy adherence.
• Oversees sanitation, maintenance of work areas, and equipment according to standards.
• Maintains vendor relationships and ensures compliance with contracts and regulations.
• Manages procurement, inventory, labeling, storage, and recalls for food items.
• Leads meal preparation and catering support, ensuring safe, compliant service.
• Plans for emergency food supply and crisis response.
• Delivers quality control and performance reporting to improve patient experience.

Skills

Leadership

Team coaching

Quality assurance

Regulatory knowledge

Vendor management

Budgeting

Food safety

Inventory control

SOP adherence

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

High School Diploma or GED

Leadership training or certificate

Tools

PC-based tools

Microsoft Office

Job description

Job Summary:

Ensures work is completed according to cleaning/sanitary logs and reviews company standards to meet regulatory and compliance guidelines; maintains relationships with vendors to ensure vendor contracts are in place, monitors vendor performance metrics, and supervises work to ensure service delivery is safe, sanitary, supports patient satisfaction, and is compliant with vendor agreements and regulatory standards; develops monthly budgets, and oversees procurement, inventory management, labeling, storage, utilization, and recall of perishable and nonperishable food items; supervises the work of teams who prepare menu/items and ensures the safe preparation of food and non-food items according to recipes, production schedules, food preparation standards, and regulatory standards; serves as a resource and helps team address issues concerning the assembly of patient meal trays and delivery/catering of food; actions workplans to ensure food supply, delivery, and services are efficiently maintained during times of crisis or emergency; and analyzes standard patient responses to quality control survey questions with thorough knowledge of quality metrics to support initiatives that improve food service operations and the patient care experience.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Recommends developmental opportunities for others; builds collaborative, cross-functional relationships. Solicits and acts on performance feedback; provides team members with feedback; and mentors and coaches to drive performance improvement. Pursues professional growth; provides training and development to talent for growth opportunities; supports execution of performance management guidelines and expectations . Implements, adapts, and stays up to date with organizational change, challenges, feedback, best practices and processes. Fosters open dialogue, supports, mentors, engages, and motivates team members on collaboration . Delegates tasks and decisions as appropriate; provides appropriate support, guidance and scope.
• Supervises and coordinates daily activities of designated work team or unit by monitoring the execution and completion of tactical action items and work assignments; ensures all policies and procedures are followed. Aligns team efforts and standards, and measures progress in achieving results; determines and carries out processes and methodologies; resolves escalated issues as appropriate. Develops work plans to meet business priorities and deadlines; coordinates, obtains and distributes resources. Removes obstacles that impact performance; identifies and recommends improvement opportunities; influences teams to execute in alignment with operational objectives.
• Contributes to sanitation and maintenance of food services work areas and equipment by: supervising team to ensure cleaning, sanitizing, and maintenance is performed according to company standards, and reviewing reported equipment problems and ordering replacements as needed.
• Contributes to sanitation and maintenance of food services work areas and equipment by: communicating with vendors to ensure vendor contracts are in place; maintaining relationships with vendors to ensure they are providing services consistent with vendor agreements, regulatory compliance standards; and monitoring vendor metrics to ensure service delivery is compliant, safe, sanitary, and supports patient satisfaction.
• Contributes to food procurement, storage, and distribution by: supervising the team receiving, verification, and storing of delivery items, managing inventory usage to ensure it is within established utilization levels; ensuring team is maintaining stock levels at food stations, in work areas, and is updating inventory with out-of-stock items; and supervising the labeling and storage of perishable items and reviewing the loss and decay logs to develop the monthly procurement budget.
• Contributes to food recall management by: identifying and escalating the return of food that has been recalled or is at risk of contamination; and communicating to patients and staff about ongoing updates or actions being taken to resolve food recall issues.
• Contributes to meal preparation and production by: overseeing team preparing menu/meal items, according to standardized recipes and/or directions supporting team members where needed; applying written protocols to ensure food is prepared in a safe manner, according to food preparation standards, and is safe for patients; and serving as a resource helping address issues of teams assembling patient meal trays and cafeteria and/or catering services, along with leading the team through the catering of food and non-food items according to scheduled mealtimes.
• Contributes to emergency planning by: activating workplans that ensure food supply, delivery, and services are efficiently maintained during times of crisis or emergency.
• Serves customers and patients by: supervising team members interacting directly with customers and patients, and acts as first point of contact to address service recovery issues; scheduling and planning the work of a unit based team to support food service and delivery operations that help the business unit deliver quality care; analyzing standard patient responses to quality control survey questions, submits relevant quality control reporting, and demonstrates thorough knowledge of metrics used to assess quality control and quality performance; guiding efforts to reduce critical control points to acceptable levels to acceptable levels and improve the care experience; and implementing quality control initiatives and prioritizing improvement recommendation for customer and patient services.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities: (Core)

• Ambiguity/Uncertainty Management
• Attention to Detail
• Business Knowledge
• Communication
• Constructive Feedback
• Critical Thinking
• Cross-Group Collaboration
• Decision Making
• Dependability
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Support
• Drives Results
• Facilitation Skills
• Health Care Industry
• Influencing Others
• Integrity
• Leadership
• Learning Agility
• Organizational Savvy
• Problem Solving
• Short- and Long-term Learning & Recall
• Strategic Thinking
• Team Building
• Teamwork
• Topic-Specific Communication

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities: (Functional)

• Accountability
• Adaptability
• Clinical Nutrition
• Commercial Customer Quality
• Computer Literacy
• Deadline Oriented
• Delegation
• English Language Proficiency
• Food Service Operations
• Interpersonal Skills
• Mathematical and Statistical Computation
• Organizational Skills
• Service Focus
• Stress Tolerance
• Sustainability
• Time Management

Minimum Qualifications:

• High School Diploma or GED AND minimum three (3) years of experience in food service or a directly related field.
• Minimum two (2) years of experience in a leadership role with or without direct reports.
• Minimum one (1) year of experience with PC based tools, Microsoft Office applications, Web-based applications.

• International Certified Food Safety Manager from National Registry of Food Safety Professionals OR Food Manager Certification from Always Food Safe OR Food Manager Certification from EduClasses OR Food Protection Manager Certification from Responsible Training OR Food Protection Manager Certification from AAA Food Handler OR Food Protection Manager Certification from World Food Safety Organization OR ServSafe Manager Certification OR Food Safety Manager Certification from National Registry of Food Safety Professionals OR Food Protection Manager Certification from Trust20 OR Food Protection Manager Certification from My Food Service License OR Food Protection Manager Certification from Learn 2 Serve OR Food Protection Manager Certification from State Food Safety

Preferred Qualifications:

• One (1) year of supervisory experience with direct reports.
• Two (2) years of institutional experience specializing in high volume food preparation compatible with varying food service models.