The executive chef: the job above the head chef, and when a business needs one

An executive chef is responsible for food across more than one kitchen, or across one operation so large that it contains several. The defining feature of the job is that somebody else runs each pass. The executive chef runs the people who run the passes.

That is the whole distinction from a head chef, and it is the one people search for. A head chef owns a single kitchen: its menu, its rota, its ordering, its hygiene record, and usually the pass on a Saturday. An executive chef owns the standard that several head chefs are held to, and spends far more of the week in tastings, supplier meetings and spreadsheets than in whites on a section.

Where the title actually appears

• A restaurant group with several sites. The group executive chef writes or signs off the menus, sets the specs, and visits each kitchen to check they are being cooked as written.
• A large hotel. The executive head chef sits over a restaurant kitchen, banqueting, room service, breakfast and sometimes a bar menu, each with its own head chef or senior sous.
• A venue with a production kitchen feeding satellite outlets, such as a stadium, a members’ club with several dining rooms, or a caterer supplying cafés.

A single independent restaurant sometimes gives its head chef the executive title. It costs nothing and it flatters, but it describes the same job, and a candidate reading the advert should look at how many kitchens are actually involved before assuming the scope.

The week, rather than the shift

Executive chefs rarely work a shift pattern in the way the rest of the brigade does. The week is built around a calendar: a menu change being tested in one kitchen, a site visit at another during lunch service, a supplier review, a costing meeting with the finance side, an interview for a head chef vacancy. Weekends are often spent where trade is heaviest, standing at a pass watching rather than calling.

The pressure points are different too. A head chef’s worst night is a broken combi oven and two chefs off sick. An executive chef’s worst week is a dish that works in the flagship kitchen and falls apart everywhere else, because the smaller sites do not have the same equipment, the same skill on the section, or the same time for prep.

The problem an executive chef solves

Businesses rarely hire one because they want better food. They hire one because consistency has broken down and no one in the business is placed to fix it. The signs are recognisable:

• The same dish looks and tastes different at each site, and customers who visit more than one notice.
• Each head chef buys from their own suppliers, so the group pays several prices for the same produce and has no leverage with any of them.
• Gross profit on food varies between kitchens for reasons nobody can explain.
• Opening a new site means borrowing the best head chef from an existing one, and the existing one suffers.
• Head chefs report to an operations manager who cannot judge a sauce, so food problems are only noticed when reviews mention them.

A business with one kitchen almost never needs this. It needs a strong head chef and, as it grows, a sous chef who can hold the kitchen when the head chef is away. The executive role becomes worth its cost at the point where the owner or the operations team is making food decisions they are not equipped to make, usually around the second or third site.

Some groups solve the same problem with a development chef instead: somebody who writes and tests the dishes and trains the kitchens on each launch, while head chefs keep full control of their own sites. It suits a group whose menu changes a few times a year and whose head chefs are strong. It suits it less when the trouble is discipline rather than recipes.

Who reports to whom

Above the executive chef is usually a managing director, an operations director or, in a hotel, the general manager. Below sit the head chefs of each kitchen, plus any development or pastry lead working across sites. The executive chef should rarely be giving instructions directly to a chef de partie. When they do, it undermines the head chef, and good head chefs leave over it.

Adequate and good

An adequate executive chef writes good menus. A good one writes menus that the weakest kitchen in the group can cook on its worst night. The difference shows in the specs: every dish with a photograph, a weight, a yield, a holding time and a note on what can go wrong.

Good ones are also comfortable with a profit and loss account without needing it explained, negotiate with suppliers, and hire head chefs well, which is the single decision that matters most in the job. They visit kitchens to find out what is going wrong, not to be seen. And they know when to leave a head chef alone.

How people get there

Almost always through a head chef job first, often more than one, and frequently through opening a new site for a group. Some arrive from hotel kitchens, where the executive head chef of a large property has already been managing several head chefs under one roof. From here the moves are into food director roles, operations, consultancy, or a business of their own.

What the listing should cover

Give the salary and, if there is a bonus, the targets it pays out against. Say how many kitchens, where they are, and how much travel that means in a normal week. Name the person this job answers to, and whether the executive chef hires the head chefs or merely advises on it. Candidates at this level turn down jobs where the title is large and the authority is not.

Salaries advertised for the top of the kitchen: head chef and executive pay

The job one level down, which runs a single kitchen: what a head chef does

Senior and junior kitchen roles, with the pay on each: chef jobs