Sous Chef
Competitive salary, pension and share of generous tips

We are a family run business, work as a team and understand that good, happy people are the life blood to running a successful business. You will also be given the opportunity to expand your career and move up the ladder.

Live-in available

Your role is to assist the GM & Head Chef with the day to day running of a £1-million business. You will take on the responsibility along with the Head Chef of hiring, firing, shift management, the menu, growing the turnover, arranging, and planning events and ultimately, the smooth operation of the business. You will take full control of the Kitchen in the Head Chefs absence.

Shift management:

We use a company called S4Labour for the rostering and staff planning. Its internet based and takes feeds from the till system to guide and help with achieving the correct staff wage percentage. We pay all the crew monthly on the last workday of each month. You sign off your Kitchen rota each week and check the wage preview monthly prior to the company making the payment into the individuals bank accounts. This also includes the TRONC. The TRONC is set up so that all the crew take an equal share based on the day and hours they worked, for example, if the Head Chef and the cleaners both did 8 hours on a Saturday, they would each get the same amount. We add service charge on all food bookings. If customers leave a cash tip on top of the service charge, then these Cash tips are sorted out at site by a TRONC master. The company takes no charge for running the TRONC paid through the wages (the service charge) 100% goes to the crew.

The Menu:

We change the menu daily so we can make great use of suppliers offers and daily catches etc. We expect some seasonal dishes to remain on the menu keeping the feel of the Company ethos in place, however you have carte blanche to develop the menu with the Head Chef to add appropriate dishes you would expect to see in a 'Gastro Pub'. You will work hand in hand with the GM in this role. We look for a minimum of 72% GP on the food. At the moment we are working at around 72-75% GP

Growing the business:

The natural way of growing the business is by getting the above sections spot-on but during the quiet periods of the business, which tends to be the winter months (except December) I'm looking for the Head Chef and Sous Chef to work with the GM to arrange events that will drive the business, this could be an Oktoberfest which would be a large 3-day event to a gourmet evening held on a mid-week November evening. You will help put together (with your HC) a spec for the event with a proposed P&L so we know the breakeven point, arrange the entertainment etc. Make use of offers and support from suppliers of free stock to hold and help with events.

The Business:

We now offer full table service not only inside the pubs but also in the garden. If book the Tikki huts they get a designated server with a call button. We use Tables (Zonal) & Mozrest for our on-line booking system which helps space the bookings on very busy days, this tends to be more of the weekend period, especially Sunday.

Help with the business:

We have a development/production kitchen as back up for the pubs, this allows us to take pressure off the kitchens with mise-en-place. We have invested recently in a burger machine which has removed the time-consuming job of making them on site. They are delivered, vac-packed in a refrigerated van ready to be used. They also produce lots of homemade puddings and are very versatile in helping with what is needed by the kitchen. We have also employed an independent compliance company who will do random visits to the pubs acting as if they are a visit from the local EHO. This is to help with the compliance for the business making sure we are ready when we get the unannounced visit from the EHO. They work for us and what they report back is for our eyes only. We have monthly Manager's meeting and quarterly Manager & Head Chef meetings. We have found that getting together we your peers to share good practices is invaluable, it can also be reassuring to know sometimes we have the same problems and can work on solutions together