Executive Chef at gategroup

We're looking for motivated, engaged people to help make everyone's journeys better. Reporting to the General Manager of the unit, the Executive Chef, Operations is responsible for daily monitoring of the preparation of the pre-designed meals for multiple customer accounts with culinary expertise through the management of all Chefs, Sous Chefs and Cooks at the unit, and promoting and providing quality food services to airline clients.Executive Chef - Airline Catering Salary Range: 115-130K Location: 30 Inip Dr, Inwood NY 11096 Benefits Paid time off 401k, with company match Company sponsored life insurance Medical, dental, vision plans Voluntary short-term/long-term disability insurance Voluntary life, accident, and hospital plans Employee Assistance Program Employee Discounts Free hot healthy meals for unit operations roles The Executive Chef is the senior culinary and production leader responsible for overseeing a high-volume, complex airline catering operation functioning as an industrial-scale food manufacturing production department. This role ensures the safe, compliant, efficient, and cost-effective production of high-quality meals across multiple airline customers, while leading teams, enforcing strict process controls, and driving continuous improvement through data, standardization, and advanced production techniques. The Executive Chef operates at the intersection of culinary excellence, industrial engineering, food safety, and operational leadership, ensuring all outputs meet regulatory requirements, airline specifications, and internal "gold standard" quality benchmarks. Key Responsibilities 1. Safety, Sanitation & Compliance The Executive Chef serves as the ultimate champion of a zero-compromise culture around food safety, employee safety, and sanitation. This role requires unwavering commitment to ensuring that every aspect of the operation consistently meets or exceeds regulatory and industry standards, including Health Department requirements, USDA and FDA regulations, as well as HACCP, GMP, and stringent airline-specific protocols. Beyond compliance, the Executive Chef partners with the QA Support teams in the design, execution, and continuous improvement of robust sanitation programs, ensuring that cleaning schedules, validation processes, and verification mechanisms are rigorously followed. A strong focus is placed on allergen management and the prevention of cross-contamination, safeguarding both product integrity and consumer well-being. Through proactive audits, inspections, and disciplined follow-up on corrective actions, the Executive Chef ensures full traceability and control throughout the production lifecycle, embedding food safety and operational discipline into the DNA of the kitchen organization. 2. Production Leadership In this role, the Executive Chef operates as the senior production leader of a high-volume, industrialized food manufacturing environment. They are responsible for orchestrating complex, multi-line, multi-shift operations, ensuring that production flows seamlessly across kitchens and assembly lines. Success in this position requires absolute discipline in execution-ensuring that production schedules, batch sheets, and product specifications are followed with precision. The Executive Chef establishes and reinforces standardized processes, driving consistency and eliminating variability. At the same time, they are accountable for optimizing kitchen throughput, maximizing efficiency, and ensuring on-time and in-full delivery to assembly (ie Make & Pack) in a fast-paced and demanding operational environment. 3. Production Planning, ERP/MRP & Process Control The Executive Chef owns the end-to-end food production planning process, including the Master Production Schedule (MPS) for the kitchen and detailed production sequencing required to meet dynamic customer demand. Leveraging ERP and MRP systems, they ensure accurate material planning, capacity alignment, and real-time execution tracking. This role demands rigorous control over batch sheets and work orders, ensuring data accuracy and operational discipline at every stage. The Executive Chef implements structured process control mechanisms to reduce variability, enhance predictability, and improve overall system performance. Close collaboration with planning, procurement, and logistics functions is essential to ensure a synchronized and efficient supply chain, from raw materials to finished product. 4. Quality Management The Executive Chef is a driving force behind the implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM) principles across the entire food production and assembly operation. They establish and enforce "gold standard", recipes accuracy, specifications, and procedures that define excellence in product quality and consistency. Through structured meal tasting and batch validation programs, combined with clearly defined quality checkpoints, the Executive Chef ensures that every product meets rigorous standards before reaching the customer. Strong emphasis is placed on portion control and uniformity, critical in a high-volume airline catering context. Continuous improvement is a core expectation, with the Executive Chef actively leveraging customer feedback, operational data, and quality metrics to refine processes, elevate standards, and foster a culture of culinary excellence. 5. Business Performance & KPI Management The Executive Chef is fully accountable for operational performance, owning a comprehensive set of KPIs that reflect both efficiency and effectiveness. These include food cost percentage, labor cost and productivity, food waste, yield accuracy, portion consistency, and on-time delivery. Through rigorous analysis of performance data, the Executive Chef identifies trends, gaps, and improvement opportunities, driving both corrective and preventive actions. They play a key role in building a culture where decisions are grounded in data and performance management is embedded at every level of the operation. Maintaining tight control over cooked food inventory, food cost performance and labor productivity is central to the role. The Executive Chef ensures strict adherence to FIFO principles, safeguarding product freshness while minimizing waste and obsolescence. They actively monitor and manage key cost drivers, including food cost (COGS), waste levels, recipes yield accuracy and inventory variances, taking corrective action where necessary. 6. Team Leadership, Training & Development At the core of this role is the ability to lead, inspire, and develop a large and diverse team, including chefs, supervisors, and production staff. The Executive Chef fosters a high-performance culture characterized by accountability, discipline, and continuous improvement. They are responsible for designing and implementing comprehensive training programs that reinforce food safety, process adherence, and operational excellence. Beyond immediate performance, the Executive Chef invests in long-term capability building, developing future leaders and establishing robust succession pipelines to sustain organizational success. 7. Advanced Food Production Techniques The Executive Chef brings a strong understanding of modern food processing technologies and their application in a large-scale production environment. This includes methods such as sous-vide, hot-fill processing, pasteurization, and other shelf-life extension techniques. They ensure that these methods are properly implemented, validated, and controlled, delivering products that meet the highest standards of safety, consistency, and quality. A key responsibility is balancing technological advancement with culinary integrity, ensuring that extended shelf life does not come at the expense of product excellence. 8. Cross-Functional Collaboration Operating at the center of a complex organization, the Executive Chef works closely with multiple stakeholders, including Supply Chain Planning, Buyers, Quality Assurance, process engineering, Maintenance, and Commercial teams. They ensure alignment between production capabilities and customer requirements, navigating operational constraints while maintaining service excellence. Additionally, the Executive Chef partners with corporate functions to drive strategic initiatives, innovation, and transformation efforts, contributing to the long-term success and competitiveness of the organization Qualifications Education: Bachelor's degree in: Industrial Engineering, Process Engineering, Food Engineering, or related field (preferred). Culinary qualifications are a plus but not mandatory Work Experience: Minimum 10+ years of hands-on leadership experience in: Large-scale food manufacturing / production environments (strongly preferred) Airline catering or high-volume institutional catering Proven experience as Production Manager / Culinary Operations Leader Experience implementing Lean food production/manufacturing & Continuous Improvement methodologies Demonstrated experience with ERP/MRP systems (MPS, production planning) Technical Skills: (Certification, Licenses and Registration) Deep knowledge of: Food safety systems (HACCP, GMP, FDA/USDA compliance) Industrial-scale food production processes Production planning and scheduling Strong understanding of: KPIs and operational financial drivers Inventory and cost control Hands-on capability with batch control, process standardization, and quality systems Leadership & Behavioral Competencies Strong leadership and people development skills Analytical mindset with structured problem-solving approach Ability to operate calmly and effectively under high pressure and complexity High level of discipline, rigor, and attention to detail Strong collaboration and stakeholder management capabilities Change agent with continuous improvement mindset Technical Skills: (Certificates . click apply for full job details