Executive Chef - Longhorn

JOB OVERVIEW:

The Executive Chef is instrumental in the creation and development of compelling new menu items as well as the improvement of current menu items in support of a competitively superior dining experience, with minimal supervision. The Executive Chef partners with Culinary Operations to ensure menu items can be executed with excellence in the restaurants.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

Guest

• Interacts with the media, employees, vendor-partners, thought leaders and the community in representing the brand.
• Converts brand strategies into compelling core and promotional menu offerings that drive guest satisfaction, guest traffic and brand equity.
• Remains current on industry and consumer trends and knowledge; supports others in defining areas for brand-building opportunities to serve competitively superior food and deliver food news.

Employee

• Coaches others on sharing and teaching professional culinary techniques and terminology.
• Develops and nurtures relationships with other Restaurant Support Center teams to remain informed of initiatives and disseminate applicable guest feedback.
• Develops team members by seeking out and supporting training, development, and other professional growth opportunities; manages individual and team performance through coaching, feedback and PMP discussions.

Financial

• Manages resources, tasks, scope, and budgets for projects; supports and manages budgeting, and invoice payment for vendor-related work.
• Develops food within specified cost parameters to enable achievement of business targets (guest count, margin, menu mix and sales) while delivering on flavor requirements.
• Manages the budget and oversees the product order process for food development, tests, recipes, merchandising materials and food shots.
• Develops and leverages Darden purchasing and supplier networks to achieve cost efficiencies while procuring quality ingredients and introducing new food; maximizes supplier insights and chef resources.

Process Excellence

• Partners with our Operations Excellence team to understand the importance of continuity within our restaurants in regard to operating standards and procedures.
• Oversees testing, refining, evaluation, and implementation of preparation techniques, processes, or tools for existing or new product development.
• Explores new and exciting culinary techniques and presentations; seeks and leverages inspiration from industry trends, ethnic and international cuisine, and searches for opportunities to infuse creativity into the development process; evolves cooking styles.
• Manages the concept and product ideation processes and develops a pipeline of new concepts.
• Plans, organizes, monitors, and controls all aspects of a project and ensures engagement, commitment, and risk management; provides ongoing communications support on project status to ensure senior management alignment.
• Ensures the consistent application of culinary development standards, processes and established methodologies.
• Create a range of dishes from a creative brief; manages all or a portion of the alignment process.
• Executes the preparation and plating of food for marketing communications.
• Oversees the documentation of recipes and collaborates with Culinary Operations in the translation of the development recipes to simplify steps for executional replication.
• Manages all food related functions for the culinary center and off-premise events.

REQUIRED TECHNICAL SKILLS:

• Restaurant Operations and Systems: Displays knowledge of and empathy for operations priorities, systems, methods and processes.
• Training Design and Deployment: Demonstrates the capability to design and deploy food or beverage training to restaurant operations.
• Culinary Skill and Technique: Demonstrates competence in the fundamentals of cooking and professional terminology.
• Culinary Creation and Development: Leverages culinary knowledge and insights to generate compelling food concepts.
• Brand Activation: Demonstrates an understanding and capability in executing the brand strategy.
• Consumer Knowledge: Demonstrates knowledge of current consumer and industry behaviors, trends, attitudes, preferences, and needs.
• Project Management: Demonstrates the capability to achieve desired outcomes on time and within budget through the application of project management principles and techniques.
• Nutritional Knowledge: Understanding of basic nutritional values and allergen guidance used in product development.
• Vendor relations: Understands the importance and the role they play in our day-to-day business.
• Culinary Operations: Demonstrates the ability to operationalize culinary concepts.

REQUIRED EDUCATION:

• Culinary Arts degree required.
• High school diploma or equivalent required.

OTHER KEY QUALIFICATIONS:

• Some travel required.
• Passion for food and hospitality.

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• 8+ years progressively responsible in culinary development preferred.
• Bachelor’s degree.
• Or equivalent combination of education, training and experience.
• 3+ years progressively responsible experience leading a culinary team preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to drive innovation into the product development process preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to lead, coach and hold team members accountable for performance preferred.
• Experience developing vendor relationships preferred.