Chef
3 days p/w, £18,024, 1-year role
This is an exciting opportunity for a passionate and organised Chef to
join our growing Social Enterprise and support our mission to
transform our local food culture and people’s lives through food
education and free meals and provide excellent catering to people
using local produce.
Our passion is for educating and equipping young people and
communities, with the skills and knowledge to feed themselves well.
Scotland is full of amazing produce and here at Edinburgh Food Social
we want to make sure that not only everyone has access to it but knows
what to do with it.
About you and the Chef role
This role will form an integral part of the roll-out of an ambitious
programme to transform the food culture in Craigmillar while also
supporting our catering chef.
Our community food work is an intensive programme of food education,
free community dinners, free recipe kits and ready-to-reheat meals,
training for young people to become Chefs, pop-ups in our food truck,
classes in local schools and trips to farms…
We are looking for a dedicated and excellent Chef to become part of
our team and help us achieve our mission. It is integral that this
person has very strong people skills and is able to work with people
from all different backgrounds with no prejudice or judgment.
As a Chef with EFS, you will help plan and deliver classes to a whole
host of different individuals and organisations. The role will be
flexible with doing community work and catering work - sometimes it
will be making community meals to be boxed up and sometimes lunches or
hot buffets for events. The split will be something like 2 days of
community and 1 day of catering.
You will need to be able to inspire and motivate the local community
to get cooking and train people who leave school with no
qualifications to work in the industry.
We’re only a small organisation and so the this role has to slot into
the wider organisation and be able to be a strong team player as well
as an independent worker. They will need to be responsible for
maintaining and keeping the kitchen clean.
The responsibilities, skills and experience listed below are intended
to give you an idea of what we need for this role. If you don’t meet
every requirement but feel you would be able to work with us to
deliver the majority of them, we urge you to apply anyway. We are
dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, and for us,
the most important ‘experience’ is a passion for our mission.
Key responsibilities include, but are not limited to:
Deliver in-person training sessions to individuals and groups of all
ages and backgrounds
Maintain, update and develop relevant training materials to keep our
programme up to date and identify areas to develop new programmes that
complement our organisational strategy
Develop additional training resources, where necessary, to support the
delivery of project objectives
Cook for and at catering events - including being the only Chef at an event
Gather feedback to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the
training programme
Maintain partner and community relationships to ensure smooth delivery
of training programmes and events
Create recipes and menus based on the ever-changing ingredients we
have available to us
Develop recipe kits
Cook for community dinners and pop-up events
Some flexibility with working times and days to work evenings and
weekends for events.
Skills & experience
Excellent verbal communication skills
Experience working in a catering or kitchen environment
Able to create user-friendly and engaging recipes
Great people skills to build rapport with learners and strike a
balance between being supportive and challenging
Excellent presentation and facilitation skills to deliver engaging
training sessions and experience in doing this
Excellent scheduling and time management skills to manage workload
Experience delivering training to a kitchen workforce or adult learners
An understanding of hospitality, especially how to deliver quality
food and service
A background in training
An understanding of economic or nutritional deprivation and the
challenges these pose for people
Our team
You would be joining a dedicated, friendly, supportive team that work
hard but believes in a healthy work/life balance. Any overtime hours
will be replaced with TOIL or paid. Joining a small, collaborative
team means you’ll be able to contribute to our projects. You’ll be
part of the wider organisation's work and everyone works together to
do what needs to be done to help the organisation succeed.
Chef application process
We ask you to please send a cover letter explaining why you meet the
criteria for the job and are passionate about the issue along with
your CV to
kirsty.haigh@edinburghfoodsocial.org
If you are shortlisted then we will ask you to come in for half a day.
This will consist of a short chat/interview and you will be asked to
do a short cookery class for our Head. This portion will last 2 hours.
You will then cook (potentially with some of the team) so we can gain
an understanding of your skills in the kitchen. This section will last
2 hours and you will be paid for this as we are putting you to work.
The deadline for applications is 10/01/25