Culinary Operations Director

Description

Title: Culinary Operations Director Job Group Category: exempt Type: Full-Time

Unit: Nutrition Schedule: Mon – Fri, some weekends and evenings Hours: 40/week

Direct Reports: Kitchen Managers, volunteers, interns Reports to: VP of Nutrition

Location: Jacksonville, FL 

About Feeding Northeast Florida

Feeding Northeast Florida (FNEFL) is the regional Feeding America food bank serving a 12-county area across Northeast Florida. Through food distribution, nutrition programs, and strategic partnerships, FNEFL works to strengthen lives and communities by ensuring access to nutritious food for all.

Feeding Northeast Florida is building a commercial kitchen designed to increase access to nutritious prepared meals across Northeast Florida communities. This kitchen will support high-volume meal production, medically supportive meal initiatives, small events, catering, and other mission-driven culinary operations.

This role offers a unique opportunity to help build and shape a growing culinary operation from the ground up while working in a collaborative, mission-driven environment focused on innovation, operational excellence, and community impact.

Position Summary:

The Culinary Operations Director is a hands-on culinary leadership role responsible for overseeing daily operations within Feeding Northeast Florida’s high-volume commercial production kitchen. This position works closely with the VP of Nutrition and Director of Nutrition Programs to support production planning, medically supportive meal initiatives, operational growth, and cross-functional collaboration across nutrition and culinary operations programs.

In addition to daily production leadership, this role is responsible for supporting and developing operational systems related to menu planning, recipe implementation, purchasing, inventory management, cost management, production planning, kitchen software administration, and workflow coordination.

This is a working kitchen role, not a traditional office-based management position. The Culinary Operations Director is expected to actively cook, prep, package, clean, organize workflows, and problem-solve alongside the team throughout the shift while also leading kitchen operations, supervising kitchen leadership staff, and supporting the continued growth of the commercial kitchen program.

The ideal candidate is calm under pressure, adaptable, highly organized, mission-driven, and able to maintain professional kitchen standards without contributing to toxic kitchen culture. Candidates who enjoy building systems and adapting in a startup-style environment will thrive in this role.

Principal Duties and Responsibilities:

Kitchen Operations and Food Production
· Lead and participate in daily food production including high-volume meal production, batch cooking, catering, small events, and medically supportive meal initiatives.
· Work alongside Kitchen Managers and kitchen staff to execute production plans and maintain efficient workflow throughout production shifts.
· Collaborate with nutrition leadership on menu implementation, recipe development, medically supportive meal production, and operational planning.
· Maintain consistency, quality, organization, and operational standards across culinary operations.
· Adapt production plans and workflows in response to changing operational priorities and donated product availability.

Operational Leadership and Systems Development
· Develop, implement, and refine culinary operations systems, workflows, standard operating procedures, and operational documentation.
· Support launch and scaling of Feeding Northeast Florida’s commercial kitchen operations.
· Manage and maintain foodservice software systems including production planning, recipe management, inventory functions, labeling systems, and operational workflows.
· Utilize operational data and foodservice systems to support production efficiency and kitchen organization.
· Assist with purchasing, inventory oversight, vendor coordination, and operational decision-making in collaboration with leadership.
· Support implementation of scalable operational systems that can grow alongside the organization’s culinary operations programs.

Leadership and Volunteer Coordination
· Supervise and support Kitchen Managers, volunteers, and interns.
· Provide day-to-day operational leadership and volunteer coordination within the kitchen environment.
· Assist with onboarding, training, scheduling coordination, coaching, and performance management with leadership approval and collaboration