A kitchen supervisor has two main responsibilities, regardless of whether she works in a restaurant, hotel, school, sports arena, or any other environment with a commercial kitchen: promoting health and safety in her kitchen and keeping her kitchen on budget. A kitchen supervisor’s health and safety responsibilities typically include ensuring proper food storage and handling, as well as kitchen cleanliness. A kitchen supervisor is usually involved in determining portion sizes, contributing to menu creation, and minimizing waste in order to ensure that her kitchen stays within its budget. To work as a kitchen supervisor, you’ll need to complete some culinary schooling, obtain health and safety certifications, and gain some practical experience.
Maintaining proper health and safety standards in a kitchen is one of a kitchen supervisor’s primary responsibilities. This goal is usually broken down into several smaller tasks. The kitchen supervisor, for example, must ensure that all food is stored in a way that reduces the risk of foodborne illness and that foods are used or discarded before their expiration date. She must also supervise the kitchen staff, ensuring that they handle food safely and keep their personal hygiene up to par. She is also in charge of overseeing the ongoing sanitation of all aspects of her kitchen, from the preparation surfaces to the dishware to the refrigeration units to the floors.
Another important aspect of a kitchen supervisor’s job is ensuring that her kitchen stays within its budget. She may help determine portion sizes for each dish and menu pricing in order to achieve this goal. She may also assist in the creation of menus, determining which dishes are most profitable based on factors such as delivery costs and ingredient seasonality. Furthermore, she will usually try to avoid financial losses due to waste dictating how much of each ingredient to order and offering daily specials to use up ingredients that are about to expire.
A person who wants to work as a kitchen supervisor should go to culinary school or at the very least take some food service and hospitality classes. She’ll also need to get all of the health and safety certifications that her state or country requires. Finally, in most cases, a supervisor candidate must have worked in a commercial kitchen for one or more years.