Resume template · Updated October 2026
Chef resume template
Short answer
Catalyst suits a working chef: it opens on work experience with no summary, so the kitchens you ran, the menus you wrote and the cost and team results come first. The fictional sample is chef de cuisine at a 120-seat seasonal restaurant who rewrites the menu four times a year and lowered food cost, after hotel banquet work as a sous chef; she holds the ACF Certified Sous Chef credential.
Download the chef sample
Grace is a fictional chef de cuisine. Replace every detail with your own before you send it.
The files are made in your browser by Resumity's own exporters, from this sample. The builder opens it as your own resume: click any line to replace it. Free plan, no watermark.
Why Catalyst suits a chef resume
Catalyst skips the summary and starts on your current kitchen under teal headings, which matches how owners and executive chefs read a chef resume: which kitchen, what volume, what food, how big a brigade. The headline under the large left-aligned name can name your cuisine, and an extra list at the end holds menus and events.
Second choice: Henrietta. Henrietta keeps a summary and prints culinary school straight after the jobs; better for a recent graduate stepping up from cook.
What goes in each section, in Catalyst's order
Catalyst prints its sections in a fixed order, the same in the PDF and the Word file. Here is that order for this sample, and what to put in each section.
- Work Experience. For each kitchen: concept, seats or covers, your title and the size of the brigade. Then menu work (how often it changes, what you created), food cost against target, ordering and suppliers, and the cooks you trained or promoted.
- Skills. Technical holds cooking and kitchen management: cuisines, butchery, sauces, menu costing, banquet production. Tools covers the systems you use for ordering, costing or recipes. List only what you would happily demonstrate in a stage (a working trial shift).
- Education. Culinary school, an apprenticeship or a hospitality degree, one line each. If you learned on the line instead, keep it short and let the kitchens carry the page.
- Certifications. ACF certifications and a food protection manager certificate, with years. ACF certifications are renewed every five years, so keep the date current.
- Menus and events. A short list of menus, dinners and events: seasonal launches, a guest chef dinner, a festival booth, a tasting menu. Give each item a scale or a result.
The sample resume as text
The same content as the files above, so you can copy a line or compare it with your own.
Grace Okonkwo
Chef de Cuisine, Seasonal Pacific Northwest Menus
Portland, OR | grace.okonkwo@example.com | (503) 555-0131 | linkedin.com/in/sample-grace-okonkwo
Experience
Chef de Cuisine, Willamette Hearth, Portland, OR (06/2022 to Present)
- Run the kitchen of a 120-seat seasonal restaurant: 14 cooks, about 1,100 covers a week and a $1.3M annual food budget.
- Rewrite the menu four times a year around six local farms and a whole-animal butchery program.
- Brought food cost from 31% to 27% with costing for every dish, in-house butchery and nightly waste logs.
- Launched weekend brunch, adding about 450 covers a week with no new hires by cross-training the prep team.
- Promoted two line cooks to sous chef in three years.
Sous Chef, Harbor and Pine Hotel, Vancouver, WA (03/2018 to 05/2022)
- Ran banquet production for weddings and conferences of up to 400 guests.
- Placed orders with 12 suppliers and kept the walk-ins rotated and labelled.
- Supervised up to 10 cooks on banquet nights and wrote the prep lists.
Menus and events
- Spring tasting menu, seven courses, 2025: sold out 14 nights.
- Guest chef dinner with a coastal oyster farm, 2024: 90 guests.
- Harvest festival booth, 2023: about 1,500 small plates in one day.
Education
AAS, Culinary Arts, Tualatin Valley Culinary Institute (06/2016)
Certifications
- Certified Sous Chef (CSC), American Culinary Federation (2021)
- ServSafe Food Protection Manager Certification, National Restaurant Association (2024)
Skills
Seasonal menu development, Whole-animal butchery, Recipe costing, Sauces and stocks, Banquet production, Inventory and ordering software, Recipe costing spreadsheets, Kitchen display system, Training cooks, Working with farmers
How to make the sample yours
Name your cuisine in the headline
Catalyst prints no summary, so the line under your name says it: "Chef de Cuisine, Seasonal Pacific Northwest" or "Executive Chef, High-Volume Banquets".
Show food cost with context
The percentage you reached against the target, and how: menu engineering, in-house butchery, waste tracking, supplier changes.
Give the volume
Covers per night, banquets per week, the largest event. A chef cooking for 80 a night and one running 600-cover banquets are hired for different kitchens.
Show the brigade you built
Cooks hired, trained or promoted to sous chef, and how you train: station guides, tastings, cross-training.
Keep plating photos for a portfolio
None of the seven templates prints photos, so link an online portfolio in the contact line and mention press or awards in a single line.
Keywords to keep where they are true
Terms this kind of resume is usually searched for. Use the posting's exact wording, and only for work you have done.
- chef
- menu development
- food cost control
- kitchen management
- recipe costing
- inventory and ordering
- food safety
- staff training
- banquet production
- seasonal menus
- supplier relationships
- butchery
- plating standards
- ServSafe
Mistakes to avoid
- Long lists of dishes with no volume, cost or team information.
- Inflating your title (executive chef for a sous chef job); owners call references.
- Leaving out food cost, the figure owners ask about first.
- A paragraph about your passion for food in place of the kitchens you ran.
How the sample PDF reads in text extractors
We exported this sample with Resumity's PDF exporter in Chrome on 2026-10-29 and read the file back with three open-source text extractors. This shows whether software that turns a PDF into text can recover it; it is not a test of any commercial applicant tracking system. How we test templates.
| Extractor | Name, email, phone | Headings | Bullets intact |
|---|---|---|---|
| pdf.js 4.10.38 | All found | 5 of 5 | 8 of 8 |
| pdftotext (Xpdf) 4.00 | All found | 5 of 5 | 8 of 8 |
| pypdf 6.13.0 | All found | 5 of 5 | 8 of 8 |
Frequently asked questions
Should a chef resume have a summary?
Not necessarily. Many chefs let the first kitchen speak and use the headline for cuisine and level. If your career has a turn to explain, such as hotels to restaurants, a template with a summary (Henrietta or Leslie) gives you two lines for it.
Are ACF certifications worth listing?
Yes. The American Culinary Federation awards them on education, experience and written and practical exams. Its Certified Sous Chef, for example, asks for two years supervising a shift or food station within the past ten years and three 30-hour courses (nutrition, food safety and sanitation, supervisory management). ACF certifications are renewed every five years.
How do I show my cooking style without photos?
Describe the menus: cuisine, season, number of courses, sourcing and techniques. Put a link to your plates in the contact line.
What do owners look for on a chef resume?
The kitchens and volume you have handled, food cost, food safety, the team you built and the menus you created. Press helps, but cost control and a steady kitchen are what get chefs hired.
How do I move from sous chef to chef de cuisine on paper?
Show the parts you already own: ordering, scheduling, specials or a whole menu section, training cooks, running the pass on the chef's nights off.
Will applicant tracking systems read this Catalyst PDF?
The sample PDF read back with its contact details, all 5 section headings and all 8 bullets intact in three open-source text extractors (pdf.js, pdftotext and pypdf). Commercial systems such as Workday, Greenhouse or Taleo were not tested, and each employer configures its own.
Guides and templates for this resume
Sources, checked 29 October 2026
We opened every page below on that date. Pay, rules and requirements change, so check the source before you rely on a detail.
- American Culinary Federation: ACF Certification (certification is based on education, experience and written and practical exams; renewed every 5 years)
- American Culinary Federation: Certified Sous Chef (CSC) (two years supervising a shift or food station within the past ten years; an education and experience path; 30-hour courses in nutrition, food safety and sanitation, and supervisory management; written and practical exams)
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