Executive Chef
Company: gategroup
Location: Inwood
Posted on: June 15, 2026
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Job Description:
We're looking for motivated, engaged people to help make
everyone's journeys better.
Reporting to the General Manager of the unit, the Executive Chef,
Operations is responsible for daily monitoring of the preparation
of the pre-designed meals for multiple customer accounts with
culinary expertise through the management of all Chefs, Sous Chefs
and Cooks at the unit, and promoting and providing quality food
services to airline clients. Executive Chef - Airline
Catering
Salary Range: 115-130K
Location: 30 Inip Dr, Inwood NY 11096
Benefits
The Executive Chef is the senior culinary and production leader
responsible for overseeing a high-volume, complex airline catering
operation functioning as an industrial-scale food manufacturing
production department. This role ensures the safe, compliant,
efficient, and cost-effective production of high-quality meals
across multiple airline customers, while leading teams, enforcing
strict process controls, and driving continuous improvement through
data, standardization, and advanced production techniques.
The Executive Chef operates at the intersection of culinary
excellence, industrial engineering, food safety, and operational
leadership, ensuring all outputs meet regulatory requirements,
airline specifications, and internal "gold standard" quality
benchmarks.
Key Responsibilities
1. Safety, Sanitation & Compliance
The Executive Chef serves as the ultimate champion of a
zero-compromise culture around food safety, employee safety, and
sanitation. This role requires unwavering commitment to ensuring
that every aspect of the operation consistently meets or exceeds
regulatory and industry standards, including Health Department
requirements, USDA and FDA regulations, as well as HACCP, GMP, and
stringent airline-specific protocols.
Beyond compliance, the Executive Chef partners with the QA Support
teams in the design, execution, and continuous improvement of
robust sanitation programs, ensuring that cleaning schedules,
validation processes, and verification mechanisms are rigorously
followed. A strong focus is placed on allergen management and the
prevention of cross-contamination, safeguarding both product
integrity and consumer well-being.
Through proactive audits, inspections, and disciplined follow-up on
corrective actions, the Executive Chef ensures full traceability
and control throughout the production lifecycle, embedding food
safety and operational discipline into the DNA of the kitchen
organization.
2. Production Leadership
In this role, the Executive Chef operates as the senior production
leader of a high-volume, industrialized food manufacturing
environment. They are responsible for orchestrating complex,
multi-line, multi-shift operations, ensuring that production flows
seamlessly across kitchens and assembly lines.
Success in this position requires absolute discipline in
execution-ensuring that production schedules, batch sheets, and
product specifications are followed with precision. The Executive
Chef establishes and reinforces standardized processes, driving
consistency and eliminating variability. At the same time, they are
accountable for optimizing kitchen throughput, maximizing
efficiency, and ensuring on-time and in-full delivery to assembly
(ie Make & Pack) in a fast-paced and demanding operational
environment.
3. Production Planning, ERP/MRP & Process Control
The Executive Chef owns the end-to-end food production planning
process, including the Master Production Schedule (MPS) for the
kitchen and detailed production sequencing required to meet dynamic
customer demand. Leveraging ERP and MRP systems, they ensure
accurate material planning, capacity alignment, and real-time
execution tracking.
This role demands rigorous control over batch sheets and work
orders, ensuring data accuracy and operational discipline at every
stage. The Executive Chef implements structured process control
mechanisms to reduce variability, enhance predictability, and
improve overall system performance. Close collaboration with
planning, procurement, and logistics functions is essential to
ensure a synchronized and efficient supply chain, from raw
materials to finished product.
4. Quality Management
The Executive Chef is a driving force behind the implementation of
Total Quality Management (TQM) principles across the entire food
production and assembly operation. They establish and enforce "gold
standard", recipes accuracy, specifications, and procedures that
define excellence in product quality and consistency.
Through structured meal tasting and batch validation programs,
combined with clearly defined quality checkpoints, the Executive
Chef ensures that every product meets rigorous standards before
reaching the customer. Strong emphasis is placed on portion control
and uniformity, critical in a high-volume airline catering
context.
Continuous improvement is a core expectation, with the Executive
Chef actively leveraging customer feedback, operational data, and
quality metrics to refine processes, elevate standards, and foster
a culture of culinary excellence.
5. Business Performance & KPI Management
The Executive Chef is fully accountable for operational
performance, owning a comprehensive set of KPIs that reflect both
efficiency and effectiveness. These include food cost percentage,
labor cost and productivity, food waste, yield accuracy, portion
consistency, and on-time delivery.
Through rigorous analysis of performance data, the Executive Chef
identifies trends, gaps, and improvement opportunities, driving
both corrective and preventive actions. They play a key role in
building a culture where decisions are grounded in data and
performance management is embedded at every level of the
operation.
Maintaining tight control over cooked food inventory, food cost
performance and labor productivity is central to the role. The
Executive Chef ensures strict adherence to FIFO principles,
safeguarding product freshness while minimizing waste and
obsolescence.
They actively monitor and manage key cost drivers, including food
cost (COGS), waste levels, recipes yield accuracy and inventory
variances, taking corrective action where necessary.
6. Team Leadership, Training & Development
At the core of this role is the ability to lead, inspire, and
develop a large and diverse team, including chefs, supervisors, and
production staff. The Executive Chef fosters a high-performance
culture characterized by accountability, discipline, and continuous
improvement.
They are responsible for designing and implementing comprehensive
training programs that reinforce food safety, process adherence,
and operational excellence. Beyond immediate performance, the
Executive Chef invests in long-term capability building, developing
future leaders and establishing robust succession pipelines to
sustain organizational success.
7. Advanced Food Production Techniques
The Executive Chef brings a strong understanding of modern food
processing technologies and their application in a large-scale
production environment. This includes methods such as sous-vide,
hot-fill processing, pasteurization, and other shelf-life extension
techniques.
They ensure that these methods are properly implemented, validated,
and controlled, delivering products that meet the highest standards
of safety, consistency, and quality. A key responsibility is
balancing technological advancement with culinary integrity,
ensuring that extended shelf life does not come at the expense of
product excellence.
8. Cross-Functional Collaboration
Operating at the center of a complex organization, the Executive
Chef works closely with multiple stakeholders, including Supply
Chain Planning, Buyers, Quality Assurance, process engineering,
Maintenance, and Commercial teams.
They ensure alignment between production capabilities and customer
requirements, navigating operational constraints while maintaining
service excellence. Additionally, the Executive Chef partners
with corporate functions to drive strategic initiatives,
innovation, and transformation efforts, contributing to the
long-term success and competitiveness of the organization
Qualifications
Education:
Work Experience:
Technical Skills: (Certification, Licenses and
Registration)
Deep knowledge of:
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Keywords: gategroup, Lower Merion , Executive Chef, Hospitality & Tourism , Inwood, Pennsylvania
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