Corporate R&D Chef

Description

Starbird is a Bay Area born company and the nation's first super-premium fast-food concept. Starbird is blazing trails in the fast-food industry by challenging industry conventions and serving feel good crispy chicken. While on a relentless pursuit of deliciousness, Starbird creates food people can feel good about eating. All the food is fresh, scratch-made, created with trustworthy ingredients and served by passionate team members. Starbird makes accessing their five-star flavor easy with an omni-channel technology experience and seamless online and in-store ordering. Starbird's hospitality mission is to create a positive, memorable experience and connection with every single guest. Our service standards match our food, super-premium. We are growing rapidly, and we'll be adding additional locations in both the Bay Area and Southern California this year. To help fuel this growth, we are looking for amazing people who have the passion for the work we do here and to join our movement.

Our Culture

Our team members are the lifeblood of our organization. We select team members that exhibit our company values and have a positive attitude and disposition. We believe in promoting from within our organization and helping our employees to build their skills. To encourage self-growth within our organization, Starbird provides an educational enrichment program and a language learning program for all our employees. Whereas many companies give generously to worthy community-focused organizations, we focus our philanthropic efforts on the development and futures of all our beloved team members.

Position Purpose:

Manages all food, product and SOP development projects. Collaborates with cross-functional team members to prepare food products for field testing. Creates and maintains the related documentation, product builds and photos for training purposes. Conducts on-going product improvement, identifying and testing products that minimize and improve operational complexity.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Manages food and product development projects in cooperation with Marketing, Operations, Quality Assurance and Purchasing. Works closely with Purchasing, Operations, R&D and Marketing as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) to organize and manage item development from point of concept to Guest fulfillment.
• Sources, evaluates and provides development direction for new products and ingredients, communicating next steps to internal departments and vendors.
• Assists with the generation of bench top recipes of new products for introduction.
• Conducts culinary testing of products to deliver on the concept, validating the viability of the new product’s ingredients and yield.
• Collaborates cross-functionally with teams to prepare food products for field testing, documents builds along with product photos for training purposes. Delivers new product and SOP training to Operations, providing details of product development to support the creation of training materials. Participates with Ops and Training in system implementation of products and programs.
• Coordinates in-store training of new menu items, recipes and promotions for market testing and full roll-out.
• Assists Training and Ops with New Restaurant Openings, travel is required. Regular store visits to all locations is required.
• Partners with Supply Chain in the sourcing of non-food products for LTO’s.
• Collaborates with IT for POS material to ensure order accuracy and defines theoretical food costs.
• Maintains recipe database, with intricate knowledge of prep recipes, yields and inventory management software.
• Interacts professionally and ethically, constructively participating as a collaborative team member or leader in pursuit of common goals.

Non-Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• The job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee and may include other duties as assigned.
• Logs samples and stores them in the designated area.

Supervisory Responsibilities:

The Corporate R&D Chef has no oversight or accountability for others.

Qualifications – Education, Experience, License/Certifications:

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to satisfactorily perform the essential functions of the job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions of the job. The requirements listed below are representative of the education and/or experience required.

Education and/or Experience:

• Bachelor’s Degree preferred.
• 2+ years of experience in multi-unit chain restaurant R&D, managing food and product development projects is required, 3+ years is preferred.
• Must possess an active Food Handler’s Certification, Manager Certification preferred.

Travel:

• Ability to travel 25%.
• Must possess a car and Driver’s License.

Other Skills/Knowledge/Abilities:

• Ability to read, write, and interpret routine reports, documents and correspondence.
• Ability to effectively speak with internal customers, vendors and team members.
• Ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide in all units of measure, using whole numbers, common fractions, and decimals.
• Ability to compute rate, ratio, and percent and to interpret bar graphs.
• Ability to solve practical and abstract problems and deal with a variety of known variables and unknown variables in situations where only limited standardization exists.
• Ability to interpret a variety of instructions furnished in written, oral, diagram, or schedule form.
• Ability to prioritize and plan work assignments and work under pressure of frequent and tight deadlines.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and G Suite required.
• Inventory Management software experience preferred.

Other Skills:

• Must possess culinary skills; ability to read recipes, measure products and be skilled with cutlery.
• Must possess a positive attitude, be flexible and self-directed, and work well without supervision.
  

Physical Demands:

• This position regularly stands, sits, reaches/handles/feels/grasps, tastes/smells and hears.
• Occasional talking, repetitive motion, walking, close vision to view objects and lifting up to 20 lbs. is required.
• The position seldom lifts up to 50 lbs.
• The work environment is a kitchen environment with occasional exposure to fumes, exposure to burn hazards and the exposure to heat from the Test Kitchen. The position is seldom exposed to noise, to humidity and/or wet, and to cold from the walk-in refrigerator.