Top 12 Chef Manager Skills to Put on Your Resume
Aspiring chef managers who want to stand out need to show both sharp kitchen chops and steady operational command. Hiring managers look for flavor and finesse, yes, but also for calm control of cost, safety, and people. Blend the two, and your resume starts to hum.
Chef Manager Skills
- Menu Development
- Inventory Management
- Cost Control
- Food Safety
- Staff Training
- Culinary Expertise
- Customer Service
- Team Leadership
- Event Planning
- Quality Assurance
- POS Systems
- HACCP Compliance
1. Menu Development
Menu development is the ongoing craft of creating, testing, and refining a set of dishes that fit the concept, speak to your guests, and work within real-world constraints—costs, space, staffing—while keeping the food exciting and consistent.
Why It's Important
It drives sales, shapes brand identity, and keeps operations tight. A smart menu aligns with trends and dietary needs, controls food costs, and turns guest curiosity into repeat business.
How to Improve Menu Development Skills
Think creative, then think practical. Do both.
Study your market: Track trends, compare competitors, and mine your own sales mix to see what truly moves.
Cook with the seasons: Seasonal and local sourcing boosts flavor, reduces cost volatility, and tells a story guests feel.
Listen hard to guests: Comment cards, server notes, online reviews—patterns appear fast. Adjust swiftly.
Cost every recipe: Lock in target food cost, portion precisely, and review prices as suppliers shift.
Design with intention: Use menu layout and naming to spotlight stars and high-margin plates without crowding the page.
Involve the team: Line cooks spot efficiencies; servers hear objections; bartenders spark pairings. Harvest ideas.
Use your systems: Tie menu updates to inventory, prep lists, and POS buttons so changes ripple cleanly through operations.
Pilot, then launch: Run limited tests or specials, gather feedback, and refine before a full rollout.
Offer options: Note clear dietary markers and basic nutrition info where it matters to your guests.
Adapt quickly: Supply hiccup? Sales dip? Swap components, trim SKUs, or rotate features without losing balance.
Do this well and your menu becomes a living, profitable document—not a static list.
How to Display Menu Development Skills on Your Resume
2. Inventory Management
Inventory management is the disciplined tracking of ingredients, supplies, and equipment so the kitchen runs smoothly, waste stays low, and the menu stays in stock without cash sitting on shelves.
Why It's Important
It protects margins, prevents 86s, and keeps quality stable. The right stock, at the right time, in the right amounts.
How to Improve Inventory Management Skills
Count routinely: Schedule regular cycle counts and reconcile records so variances don’t snowball.
Run FIFO: First in, first out. Label, date, and rotate. Perishables demand discipline.
Use the tools you have: Real-time tracking, par levels, automated order guides—connect POS data to purchasing.
Strengthen supplier ties: Negotiate pricing, confirm specs, and align delivery windows to your prep schedule.
Train everyone: Receiving, labeling, storage temperatures, portioning—small slips create big losses.
Analyze the data: Watch usage trends, prep yields, and waste logs. Adjust pars before problems bite.
Good inventory control turns chaos into cadence—and dollars saved into dollars earned.
How to Display Inventory Management Skills on Your Resume
3. Cost Control
Cost control means monitoring food, labor, and overhead so quality stays high while profit stays healthy. It’s math meeting mise en place.
Why It's Important
Margins in foodservice are thin. Tight control keeps the lights on and the talent paid—without shortchanging the guest.
How to Improve Cost Control Skills
Engineer the menu: Build around seasonal, reliable items. Calibrate portions to match price and plate design.
Standardize recipes: Weigh, measure, and document yields so costs aren’t guesswork.
Negotiate and verify: Compare vendors, lock pricing where possible, and verify deliveries by spec.
Track waste daily: Log trims, spoilers, and mistakes. Fix root causes, not just symptoms.
Train for precision: Portion tools, batch prep, and station setup reduce over-portioning and re-fires.
Review often: Weekly flash P&Ls, labor-to-sales ratios, and mix reports keep decisions timely.
How to Display Cost Control Skills on Your Resume
4. Food Safety
Food safety is the set of practices that keep food free from hazards—from receiving to service. For a Chef Manager, it’s culture, systems, and vigilance.
Why It's Important
It protects guests, shields your brand, and satisfies regulators. One lapse can undo years of goodwill.
How to Improve Food Safety Skills
Train relentlessly: Handwashing, time and temperature, allergen awareness, cross-contamination prevention—make it muscle memory.
Run HACCP thinking: Identify hazards, set critical limits, monitor, document, and correct quickly when something drifts.
Follow current codes: Align procedures with the FDA Food Code (2022 edition) and local health requirements.
Document everything: Receiving logs, temperature checks, cleaning schedules, calibration records—write it down and keep it tidy.
Clean like you mean it: Sanitize high-touch surfaces, verify concentration levels, and deep-clean on a schedule.
Vet suppliers: Confirm specs, storage, and transport conditions. Safe inputs make safe outputs.
Make safety the habit, not the exception.
How to Display Food Safety Skills on Your Resume
5. Staff Training
Staff training builds a team that cooks well, moves as one, and serves with care. It’s technique, timing, and teamwork—delivered over time.
Why It's Important
Training lifts quality, consistency, and morale. Lower turnover follows. So does smoother service.
How to Improve Staff Training Skills
Teach by doing: Stationside demos, shadow shifts, and progressive responsibilities beat binders alone.
Create clear standards: SOPs, photos, and checklists make expectations visible and replicable.
Develop leaders: Train leads on coaching, feedback, and conflict resolution so knowledge spreads.
Embed food safety: Certify key staff and refresh everyone often—brief huddles go far.
Train on tech: POS flows, inventory apps, label printers—tools are part of the craft now.
Build the team: Pre-shift tastings, cross-training, and recognition rituals forge trust.
Skilled teams make busy nights look easy.
How to Display Staff Training Skills on Your Resume
6. Culinary Expertise
Culinary expertise blends technique, palate, and discipline. A Chef Manager uses it to craft dishes, guide a brigade, and uphold standards plate after plate.
Why It's Important
Great food is the point. Expertise powers innovation, consistency, and a reputation that fills seats.
How to Improve Culinary Expertise Skills
Study and taste widely: Read, watch, mis en place, repeat. New cuisines and methods sharpen instincts.
Practice fundamentals: Knife work, sauces, butchery, pastry basics—precision here unlocks creativity later.
Seek feedback: Invite critique from peers, mentors, and guests. Adjust seasoning, texture, and technique with intent.
Experiment often: Pilot components, swap garnishes, trial new gear. Curiosity pays dividends.
Teach others: Teaching cements knowledge and reveals gaps you can close.
How to Display Culinary Expertise Skills on Your Resume
7. Customer Service
Customer service, from a Chef Manager’s seat, means stewarding each guest’s experience through good food, clear communication, and nimble problem-solving.
Why It's Important
Happy guests return, tell friends, and leave reviews that matter. Service is memory-making.
How to Improve Customer Service Skills
Communicate clearly: Share wait times, dish details, and substitutions without fuss. Keep the front and back synced.
Personalize where you can: Remember regulars, note preferences, and flag allergies carefully.
Chase feedback: Ask, listen, act. Close the loop so guests feel heard.
Train the floor and the pass: Warm greetings, crisp pacing, and consistent plating make service feel seamless.
Guard consistency: Every plate, every shift. Reliability earns loyalty.
How to Display Customer Service Skills on Your Resume
8. Team Leadership
Team leadership is the art of setting standards, modeling behavior, and steering a kitchen through rushes without losing the thread.
Why It's Important
Strong leaders keep quality high, morale steady, and communication open. The kitchen breathes as one.
How to Improve Team Leadership Skills
Set the tone: Be punctual, prepared, and composed. Your example writes the culture.
Communicate often: Pre-shifts, checkbacks, and direct feedback prevent small issues from flaring.
Build trust: Share context, delegate real responsibility, and honor good work openly.
Develop people: Map growth paths, cross-train, and coach for both craft and soft skills.
Adapt fast: Menu change? Staff shortage? Reassign, simplify, and keep standards intact.
Recognize wins: Celebrate clean tickets, zero comp nights, and smart saves. Momentum matters.
How to Display Team Leadership Skills on Your Resume
9. Event Planning
Event planning for a Chef Manager means translating a client’s vision into a menu, a timeline, and an execution plan that lands on the dot.
Why It's Important
Events amplify your brand. Smooth planning prevents surprises, protects costs, and delivers moments guests remember.
How to Improve Event Planning Skills
Clarify the brief: Theme, budget, headcount, venue constraints—lock details early.
Design a flexible menu: Offer options for dietary needs and build with seasonal products for freshness and pricing stability.
Map the timeline: Back-time prep, deliveries, staffing, and service flows. Use simple project boards to keep everyone aligned.
Coordinate vendors: Confirm specs, rentals, and drop windows in writing. One conductor, many sections.
Drill the team: Assign roles, run-through service steps, and prep contingencies.
Debrief after: Capture client and staff feedback, note bottlenecks, and refine the playbook.
How to Display Event Planning Skills on Your Resume
10. Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance ensures every bite meets your standards and regulatory requirements, from sourcing to service.
Why It's Important
Consistency builds trust. QA protects guests, reputation, and revenue through repeatable excellence.
How to Improve Quality Assurance Skills
Write rock-solid SOPs: Receiving, storage, prep, cooking, plating, cleaning—clear steps and checkpoints.
Train and retrain: Bake standards into onboarding and refreshers. Verify, don’t assume.
Collect feedback: Plate checks, mystery shops, and guest comments reveal drift before it spreads.
Audit routinely: Spot-check temperatures, sanitation logs, and recipe adherence. Fix gaps promptly.
Champion a quality culture: Reward precision, invite ideas to improve, and treat “almost right” as not yet right.
How to Display Quality Assurance Skills on Your Resume
11. POS Systems
POS systems process orders and payments, track inventory, and surface reports that inform smarter decisions across the kitchen and the floor.
Why It's Important
They connect sales, stock, and staffing. Less guessing, fewer errors, faster service.
How to Improve POS Systems Skills
Link to inventory: Map menu items to ingredients so depletions are real-time and pars stay accurate.
Simplify the interface: Clean, logical buttons speed training and reduce keystroke mistakes.
Go mobile where it helps: Tableside ordering and payment can tighten ticket times and reduce bottlenecks.
Use custom reports: Track item mix, voids, comps, and hourly sales to tune staffing and menus.
Integrate the stack: Connect online ordering, reservations, and loyalty so data flows one way, cleanly.
Support the team: Provide quick guides and refreshers; escalate issues fast to keep service moving.
How to Display POS Systems Skills on Your Resume
12. HACCP Compliance
HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) compliance means building a system that identifies hazards, sets controls, monitors them, and documents outcomes to keep food safe every day.
Why It's Important
It’s the backbone of food safety—preventive, measurable, and recognized by regulators and industry alike.
How to Improve HACCP Compliance Skills
Train the crew: Ensure everyone knows the plan, the critical limits, and their role in monitoring.
Audit the plan: Review flow diagrams, hazard analyses, and CCPs regularly; update when menus or processes change.
Document thoroughly: Keep monitoring logs, corrective actions, and verification records organized and accessible.
Act fast on deviations: When a limit is missed, correct, document, and prevent recurrence.
Stay current: Track updates to regulations and local enforcement priorities; tune your program accordingly.
How to Display HACCP Compliance Skills on Your Resume
