About Bakehouse Café & Kitchen
Bakehouse is a coastal French bakery-café opening in Palm Beach Gardens this December. Our line is "Farm Fresh. Chef Crafted." We serve viennoiserie and scratch desserts, a serious breakfast and lunch counter, and a prepared-foods case of heat-and-serve family meals, compound salads and sides. We're also adding catering and retail. A second location is planned soon after we open.
The role
This is the opening chef of a high-volume daytime kitchen. You'll report directly to the COO, and you'll run the food side of the business: savory production, pastry production and the team that does both.
You won't be starting from a blank page. Every recipe is written, tested and costed. We have production manuals, a HACCP plan, prep and par sheets, and a two-week training program ready to go. Your job is to cook every dish from those manuals before we open, lead the team through training, then run the kitchen and make it better. That includes the rotating muffin of the week, the prepared-meal rotation and seasonal specials.
What you'll run:
- Breakfast: egg sandwiches, benedicts and avocado toasts at counter-service pace.
- Lunch: pressed sandwiches, made-to-order salads and a mini sandwich program.
- Prepared foods: cook-chill production of braises, roasts, pot pies, lasagna, compound salads and sides, packed and labeled for the retail case.
- Pastry: croissants and a cinnamon bun baked off in-house, scratch muffins, and cookies, brownies, cheesecake, tarts and cakes.
- The business side: ordering, receiving, inventory, food cost, prep lists, scheduling, food safety and allergen control, and training a kitchen team of line cooks, prep cooks and dish/utility.
The kitchen:
Stacked 6- and 10-pan RATIONAL iCombi Pro ovens, TurboChef, Alphatech rapid cook, Berkel slicer, and Toast with xtraCHEF for recipe costing and inventory.
What we're looking for
- 3+ years as a sous chef, chef de cuisine or kitchen manager in a high-volume breakfast/lunch, café, bakery-café, hotel or production kitchen
- Strong savory skills. This is required, not a nice-to-have.
- Pastry or bakery production experience, strongly preferred.
- You've owned the numbers: food cost, ordering and inventory.
- Cook-chill or batch production experience; combi oven experience a plus.
- Certified Food Protection Manager, or able to certify before opening.
- A calm, organized leader who trains people well and wants systems that work.
Why this job?
- Daytime hours. Early mornings, done by mid-afternoon, no nights.
- Closed on Easter, the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas.
- An opening-chef role with room to grow as we add locations, path to culinary director.
- Paid time off that grows with tenure: two weeks after your first year, three after three years, four after five.
- A brand-new kitchen with the equipment and documentation already done right.
- Health benefits / bonus / meal policy / knife stipend / uniforms paid for.
Start date: 11-1-2026.