How to hire a chef: a step-by-step guide for 2026

Knowing how to hire a chef comes down to one idea: judge candidates on what they can do in your kitchen, not on how well they talk about food. Define the role and budget, source widely, screen skills with a short test, run a paid trial shift with a scorecard, then interview the finalists on leadership and cost control.

Getting it right matters more each year. The National Restaurant Association's 2026 State of the Restaurant Industry report says nearly three quarters of operators plan to hire but expect difficulties finding experienced managers and chefs. When you hire a chef who is wrong for the role, food quality slips, prep slows and good cooks leave.

TL;DR:

• To hire a chef, define the role, set pay, source, screen skills online, run a paid and scored trial shift, interview, check references and onboard with a 90-day plan.
• A chef leads the kitchen, plans menus and controls food and labor cost. A cook executes recipes on a station. Test them differently.
• Chefs and head cooks earned a median of $62,470 a year in May 2025, according to BLS. Cooks earned a median of $36,640.
• Setting changes pay: hotels paid chefs a $74,380 median, restaurants $60,580 and healthcare $59,550.
• Culinary school is optional. Five or more years of kitchen experience and a food safety certificate matter more.
• The trial shift is the best single test. Pay for it and score it on technique, organisation, food safety, speed, taste and teamwork.
• A 15-minute online chef test before the trial shift means only your shortlist ever cooks for you.

How to hire a chef: what are the 8 steps?

The process to hire a chef has eight steps, and each one filters the pool so the expensive steps (a trial shift and senior interviews) only go to people who are likely to succeed.

1. Define the role: Rank, cuisine, service style, covers per service, brigade size and schedule.
2. Set the budget: Base pay, overtime rules, bonus and benefits, checked against market data.
3. Write the job description: Duties, must-have skills, schedule, pay range and how to apply.
4. Source candidates: Internal promotion, referrals, suppliers, culinary schools, recruiters and job boards.
5. Screen skills online: A short chef or cook test plus a few knockout questions.
6. Run a paid trial shift: Score it against a fixed rubric, with your team's input.
7. Interview and check references: Leadership, cost control and food safety, then two or three references.
8. Offer and onboard: A clear offer, then a 30, 60 and 90-day plan.

What does a chef do, and how is a chef different from a cook?

A chef leads the kitchen: plans menus, sets recipes and standards, orders and costs food, schedules and trains staff, and answers for food safety. A cook prepares dishes to the chef's recipes on a station, such as grill, saute or prep, and keeps that station clean, stocked and on time.

The difference shapes how you hire. For a cook, you mainly test speed, technique, consistency and hygiene. For a chef, you test those plus menu costing, leadership and the judgment to run a service when things go wrong. According to the BLS profile of cooks, most cooks learn on the job and no formal education is typically required, so practical tests tell you far more than a resume.

What type of chef do you need to hire?

The type of chef you need depends on your concept, volume and how much of the kitchen you want this person to run. Answer these questions before you write a word of the job post:

• Rank: Do you need someone to lead the kitchen, or a strong pair of hands under an existing head chef?
• Hands-on or managerial: Will they cook every service, or spend most of the week on menus, ordering and people?
• Cuisine and style: Fine dining, high-volume casual, banquets, a hospital or university cafeteria, or a corporate dining room each need different strengths.
• Volume: How many covers per service, and how big is the brigade they will lead?
• Schedule: Full-time, part-time, seasonal or contract? Weekends and holidays?
• Promotion from within: Is there a sous chef or lead cook who could step up with training?

Write the answers down and agree them with the general manager and the owner. Most bad chef hires trace back to a role that was never defined, so the panel judged candidates against different pictures of the job.

What skills should you look for when you hire a chef?

The skills to look for when you hire a chef fall into two groups: kitchen skills you can test in a trial shift, and people and business skills you uncover in interviews and references.

Hard skills:

• Cooking technique: Knife work, searing, braising, roasting, sauces and baking, done the same way every time.
• Ingredient knowledge: Flavor pairing, seasonality and smart substitutions when a delivery is short.
• Menu adaptation: Changing a dish for allergies or diets without losing taste.
• Plating: Presentation that matches your standard on the hundredth plate, not just the first.
• Food safety and hygiene: Temperature control, allergen handling, labeling and cleaning schedules.
• Equipment: Confident use of combi ovens, fryers, slicers and whatever else your kitchen runs on.
• Cost control (chef level): Recipe costing, portion control, ordering, waste tracking and labor scheduling.

Soft skills:

• Leadership: Training cooks, giving feedback during service and keeping morale up. The leadership test gives you a read before the interview.
• Calm under pressure: A full book, a sick cook and a late delivery on the same night.
• Communication: Clear calls on the pass and a working relationship with front of house.
• Time management: Prep lists, timings and priorities. The time management test measures this directly.
• Attention to detail: Seasoning, portions, labels and the small checks that stop complaints.
• Customer focus: Handling a returned plate or a special request well.

What experience and certifications should a chef have?

A chef usually needs five or more years of kitchen experience and a food safety certificate. A culinary degree helps but is not required. The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists a high school diploma plus 5 years or more of related work experience as the typical entry path for chefs and head cooks, and notes that many attend culinary programs or complete apprenticeships.

Food safety is the credential to check first. The CDC study of certified kitchen managers found restaurants with a certified kitchen manager were less likely to have foodborne illness outbreaks. Bare-hand contact with food contributed to 47% of outbreaks in restaurants without one and to none in restaurants with one. Some states and localities also require a food handler card, and the FDA Food Code, the federal model code for retail food safety, was updated in 2026.

What to ask for:

• Food handler card: For every cook, where your state or city requires it.
• Food protection manager certificate: For the head chef or kitchen manager (ServSafe Manager is a common one).
• Allergen training: Increasingly expected wherever menus list allergens.
• Optional: A culinary degree, an apprenticeship, or an American Culinary Federation certification such as Certified Executive Chef.

How much does it cost to hire a chef?

Hiring a chef in the US costs a median of $62,470 a year in base pay ($30.03 an hour), based on May 2025 data from the BLS profile of chefs and head cooks. Cooks cost far less: a median of $36,640 a year ($17.62 an hour). Pay rises with rank, city and setting.

Base pay is only part of the cost. Budget for overtime where the role is not exempt, a bonus tied to food cost or quality targets, benefits, recruiter fees if you use one, and the trial shift itself. Factor in the cost of a wrong hire too: turnover costs include lost sales, waste and the time your team spends covering.

Key takeaway: Price the role from data for your setting and city, then pay at or above the median for a head chef. A bargain hire who leaves in six months costs more.

Where can you find chef candidates?

The best places to find chef candidates are your own kitchen, your network and culinary job boards, in that order. Strong chefs are often not looking, so passive channels matter.

• Internal promotion: A sous chef or lead cook who knows your systems is the fastest, lowest-risk hire. Promotion also tells the rest of the brigade there is a path up.
• Referrals and suppliers: Ask your team and your produce, meat and fish reps who is looking. Suppliers visit many kitchens every week.
• Culinary schools and apprenticeships: Good for cooks and junior chefs. Offer externships and attend job fairs.
• Hospitality recruiters: Useful for executive and head chef roles, or when you need to replace a chef quietly.
• Job boards: General boards for reach, culinary boards for experienced candidates. A blind ad (no restaurant name) keeps a replacement search private.
• Social media and events: Share kitchen photos and team stories, and meet cooks at food festivals and competitions.

Hiring for several sites? Pool roles into one pipeline per region and keep a bench of strong runners-up for the next opening. Our guide to hiring restaurant and hospitality staff covers front-of-house roles with the same approach.

What should a chef job description include?

A chef job description should include the rank and cuisine in the title, a two-line summary of your kitchen, the main duties, must-have skills and certificates, the schedule, the pay range and how to apply. Putting the pay range and schedule up front saves time, since they are among the first things candidates ask about.

Use this template and edit it to your kitchen:

Title: [Head Chef / Sous Chef / Cook], [cuisine or service style]

Location and schedule: [City, State]. [Full-time / Part-time / Seasonal]. [Days and shifts, including weekends].

Pay: [Range], plus [bonus, benefits, meals].

About us: [Two lines on your concept, covers per service and team size.]

What you will do:

• Plan and cost menus with seasonality, dietary needs and food cost targets in mind
• Run service and keep every plate to standard
• Order, receive and rotate stock; track waste
• Train, schedule and supervise the kitchen team
• Keep the kitchen safe, clean and inspection-ready

What you bring:

• [X]+ years in a similar kitchen, [Y] of them leading a team
• A food protection manager certificate or the ability to earn one within [30] days
• Strong technique in [cuisine]; recipe costing and ordering experience
• Calm leadership and clear communication with front of house

How to apply: Send your resume and two or three photos of recent dishes to [email]. Shortlisted candidates take a short online skills test and a paid trial shift.

[Company Name] is an equal opportunity employer.

For ready-made versions, see the kitchen manager job description and the prep cook job description.

How to hire a chef from a big applicant pool: what should you screen first?

Screen chef applicants with a short online skills test and two or three knockout questions before anyone cooks for you. A popular posting for a cook or sous chef can draw dozens of applicants, and a trial shift takes hours of your head chef's time, so it should go only to the shortlist.

A practical screening stage looks like this:

• Knockout questions: Right to work, availability for your shifts, a valid food handler card or willingness to get one.
• Skills test: The Testlify Chef test takes 15 minutes and covers cooking techniques, familiarity with cuisines, recipe creation and adaptation, organisation and time management, and palate for flavor and presentation. For line and prep roles, the Cook test adds food safety and hygiene, and the Cooking Techniques test uses kitchen scenarios on knife skills, cooking methods and plating.
• Short video answer: Ask candidates to record a two-minute answer, such as how they would rescue a split sauce during service. One-way video interviews let your chef review answers between services.

Testlify scores every candidate the same way and ranks them, so a recruiter or general manager can shortlist without tasting a single dish. The platform has 3,500+ tests, so you can add a leadership or attention-to-detail test for senior roles, and 20+ proctoring checks keep results honest. It connects with 100+ ATS and HRIS tools for teams hiring across many sites.

Pro tip: Tell candidates up front that the process is a short test, a paid trial shift and an interview. Clear steps keep good applicants from dropping out.

How should you run a chef trial shift?

A chef trial shift should be paid, run during a real service, and scored on a fixed rubric by the same people for every candidate. A trial shift (often called a stage) is the most reliable test you have, because a chef who interviews well can still struggle with the speed and physical demands of a busy service.

Pay for it: Under the US Fair Labor Standards Act, work an employer suffers or permits counts as paid working time, as the Department of Labor hours worked fact sheet explains. If a candidate preps or cooks food you serve, pay them for those hours. State rules vary, so check yours.

Design it for the rank: A line cook can work a station for three or four hours. A head chef should run the pass, write a prep list and cost a dish. An executive chef is better tested with a menu and costing exercise plus a tasting of three dishes than with a station shift.

Score it the same way every time:

Score each area from 1 to 5 straight after the shift, before the panel talks, then compare notes. Ask your sous chef and two cooks for their view too. If two candidates are close, run a second short trial: one shift in an unfamiliar kitchen can mislead.

What interview questions should you ask a chef?

The interview questions to ask a chef should cover their background, how they lead, how they control cost and how they keep food safe. Use the same questions in the same order for every finalist, a structured interview, and note what a strong answer includes before you start.

Background and craft:

1. Walk us through your kitchen career. Which role taught you the most?
2. Which cuisines and techniques are you strongest in? Where are you still learning?
3. Tell us about a menu or dish you created. How did you develop and cost it?
4. How do you keep up with new techniques and trends?

Leadership and team:

1. How do you train a new cook to your standard?
2. Describe a time a cook on your team kept making the same mistake. What did you do?
3. How do you work with front of house when a table complains?
4. What do you look for when you hire your own kitchen staff?

Cost and operations:

1. How does food cost factor into your menu decisions? What target do you aim for?
2. How do you keep labor in line on quiet and busy nights?
3. Walk us through how you order, receive and rotate stock.
4. How would you change a dish when a key ingredient does not arrive?

Food safety and pressure:

1. How do you handle allergen orders from ticket to table?
2. What does your opening and closing food safety checklist cover?
3. Tell us about your hardest service. What went wrong and how did you recover?
4. Why do you want to run this kitchen, and what would you change in the first 90 days?

Strong answers name specific numbers, dishes and people. Weak answers stay general, blame previous teams, or skip cost and safety.

How do you check references and make the offer?

Reference checks for a chef should confirm what you saw in the trial shift: the candidate's standard, reliability, leadership and how they left. Speak to two or three former head chefs, owners or general managers, not only colleagues. A reference check works best with the same five questions for each referee, for example "Would you hire them again, and in what role?"

Run a background check where the law allows and the role requires it, such as kitchens in hospitals, schools or casinos. Verify any certificate the candidate claims.

Make the offer quickly, ideally within a day or two of the final interview, because good chefs field several offers. Put the base pay, bonus terms, schedule, benefits, start date and any probation period in writing. Beyond pay, chefs weigh creative freedom, a sane schedule, a budget for equipment and a path to a bigger role.

How do you onboard a new chef?

Onboarding a new chef works best as a 90-day plan with clear goals for each month, a named mentor (usually the general manager or executive chef) and weekly check-ins. A structured onboarding plan keeps a new hire from leaving early and lets the team see changes coming.

• First 30 days: Learn the menu, recipes, suppliers, systems and team. Cook every station. Change little.
• Days 31 to 60: Take over ordering and the rota. Agree food cost and quality targets. Propose first menu changes.
• Days 61 to 90: Launch agreed changes, review food cost and waste against targets, and set training plans for each cook.

Keep the conversation going after day 90. A short monthly review and a fair bonus tied to agreed targets do more to keep a good chef than a one-off raise.

Ready to hire your next chef?

The quickest way to put this guide to work is to start with a short skills test. Send the Testlify Chef test or Cook test to your next applicants, and invite only the top scorers to a paid trial shift. Start a 7-day free trial with no credit card, or book a demo if you hire for several kitchens and want to see how ranking and ATS sync work across sites. Explore more hiring tools for the hospitality industry.

Frequently asked questions