Chef de Cuisine, Precision Nutrition Production Kitchen

Chef de Cuisine

Track: Executive Chef

Reports To Exec Chef / COO (dotted)

Schedule Mon–Fri, Early Production 5AM - 3PM & 3AM-1PM shifts

About

Methodology is a clinical nutrition company producing personalized meal programs out of our East Bay facility. Every meal is gluten-free, dairy-free, refined-sugar-free, and free of inflammatory oils. Grass-fed beef, heritage pork, wild seafood, and wild game including elk, venison, and bison. Produce from a partner farm, two days from harvest. Meals ship nationally in reusable glass jars and bowls, with a California recovery program retrieving packaging from the prior week's delivery.

Eleven years in, Methodology holds the registered trademark on Food is Medicine®. A study published with Stanford in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition proved our meals drive measurable changes in biomarkers. That research is not a marketing credential. It is the foundation the culinary program is built on, and it is what separates Methodology from every other prepared food company. A precision nutrition engine is rolling out that matches every meal to each client's biomarkers and health goals. The menu, the team, the facility, and the guest experience are all upgrading at once.

At less than two thousand clients, we are not a mass market service. We are closer to a Blackberry Farm with 68 rooms, an Aman, or a Michelin-starred restaurant for healthy meal delivery. 52 box deliveries a year per client. 52 hospitality moments on a kitchen counter. No restaurant gets that kind of access to someone's life.

We are looking for a Chef de Cuisine who is ready to lead a culinary program, and who wants the title to reflect what they have already become.

Who You Would Be Leading With

• Michael Phan, Executive Chef Michael comes from the ownership group of The Slanted Door, the James Beard Award-winning restaurant that redefined modern Vietnamese cuisine in America. Two decades at the highest levels of the restaurant world, and the decision to walk away from it for something harder. He is looking for a co-leader, not a deputy. Someone who challenges the food, raises the standard, and builds something with him that neither could build alone. If you are the kind of cook who makes everyone around them better, that is the dynamic this role is designed around.

The Role

The Chef de Cuisine is the culinary and operational leader of this kitchen. You own the floor, the team, the food cost, the quality standard, and the creative output. You are the bridge between vision and execution, and you are accountable for both. The CDC is being brought in to co-lead the culinary program alongside Michael Phan. The goal is a partnership where the sum is greater than the parts: two culinary leaders who push each other and the food further than either could alone.

The kitchen operates with Rational combi-ovens, tilt-skillets, and the full range of high-volume production equipment. Monday through Friday with some weekend production as needed. In the kitchen, not above it.

What You Own

Culinary Direction

• Co-lead the weekly R&D call with the co-founders and culinary team. Not attending to report. There to drive the creative agenda, push dishes forward, and make the call on what goes to production.
• Own recipe development and the translation of concepts into production-ready dishes at large-batch volume. Every dish must hit nutritional targets, margin requirements, and the taste standard of a restaurant worth cooking in.
• Develop recipes within the constraints: no gluten, dairy, refined sugar, or canola oil. The constraint is the design brief. The food still has to be crave-worthy as if the constraints were not there.
• Lead the full translation from concept through production: yield testing, batch sizing, portioning documentation, plating standards, and team training. When a dish is approved, this role makes it real at volume.
• Taste everything. If something is off, find the root cause and fix it. The kitchen does not wait for someone else to act.

Production and Operations

• Own the aircraft controller function of day-to-day culinary production: quality, throughput, productivity, and food cost. All four, all the time.
• Manage the full cook team with clear expectations, real-time coaching, and direct accountability. Build the culture of the kitchen. Soft-pedaling performance problems is not a fit here.
• Enforce portioning protocols to the gram. The nutritional data on a customer’s app has to match what is in their container. Ultimate responsibility lives here.
• Manage scheduling, timekeeping, and recruiting. Build a bench of people who can work smart, effectively, and efficiently.

Cost, Systems, and Sourcing

• Analyze and own the culinary operating budget. Control food, labor, and purchasing costs in line with overall operating targets. Menu decisions are business decisions and get treated that way.
• Own food purchasing, inventory management, and production scheduling. Connect the sourcing workflow to kitchen execution with no gaps.
• Equipment ROI is the only ceiling on the equipment budget. Present and defend spending at the management meeting. It is expected and encouraged.
• Build and maintain SOPs, portioning guides, and prep protocols. The kitchen runs on documentation and process, not institutional memory.
• Collaborate with procurement on ingredient quality, sourcing standards, and vendor relationships. A better product surfaces with a spec, not just a recommendation.

The Facility

A 12,000-square-foot commissary facility in Concord, CA: 4,000 square feet of kitchen and prep space, 8,000 square feet of warehouse and order fulfillment. Methodology has been producing here since the beginning and knows it well. Active investment is ongoing: remodel aligned to the brand identity, with improved workflow between prep, cook, and portioning stations, added cold storage, and an optimized layout for how the team actually cooks, chills, and plates.

Non-Negotiable

• 5+ years in professional kitchens with at least 2 years at the CDC, Executive Sous Chef, or Executive Chef level. This is a leadership role, not a development one.
• Proven high-volume production experience: commissary, catering, CPG, or meal production at meaningful scale. Fine dining background required alongside it.
• Deep recipe development experience including allergen-free, specialty diet, and nutritionally constrained programs. If you have not cooked seriously within dietary restrictions, this is not the right fit.
• Strong culinary point of view. A perspective on food, flavor, and technique that you can defend and that makes the people around you better.
• Proven ability to build and lead teams. Direct reports would rave about working for you.
• Proficient in Google Suite (Docs and Sheets). Experience with payroll and timekeeping systems.

First 60 Days

• Own at least one full production run end-to-end within the first week. Learn the operation by running it, not observing it.
• Cook through the entire current menu and master each position.
• Meet every member of the team. Understand their strengths, and where the kitchen has room to grow.
• Audit food cost, purchasing workflows, and scheduling. Identify the top three opportunities and bring a plan.
• Own the culinary R&D agenda for at least one full menu cycle. The dishes developed should elevate, not just meet, what the kitchen has been doing.
• Measurably improve production consistency: fewer errors, tighter portioning, cleaner handoffs to fulfillment.

Compensation & Benefits

• $90,000 to $125,000, commensurate with experience
• Co-lead the culinary program from day one, with increasing ownership as the company scales.
• Health insurance: Medical, Vision, Dental
• Proprietary Methodology Chef and AI tools that eliminate administrative busywork. Focus stays on cooking, leading, and building.

How to Apply

Complete the application and send a message via email, View email address on click.appcast.io, answering these questions with specific details. The company's EA will field the answers and assess before delivering the top answers directly to the management team. Generalized answers without specifics and/or AI-generated answers will not be further reviewed:

1. Name three dishes you have created that you would put in front of a food writer from Eater or The James Beard Foundation today. For each: what is on the plate, what makes it different from how 99% of other chefs would prepare it, and what is the one sentence a journalist would write about it?
2. Walk us through a technique you have spent more than 100 hours mastering, that most chefs at your level do not have in their toolkit. Why did you go that deep on it, what does it unlock on the plate, and where have you used it in a dish that landed?
3. Methodology cooks without gluten, dairy, refined sugar, or seed oils. Most chefs treat that as a limitation. A small number treat it as a creative brief that produces dishes a Michelin-trained palate would still crave. Describe a dish or a body of work that demonstrates you are in the second category, not the first. What did the constraint force you to invent, technique-wise, that a conventional kitchen would never have pushed you to?
4. Tell us about a cook on your team who was talented but inconsistent on portioning, timing, or quality. What did you try first, what did you try next, and what was the outcome? Include how long the whole arc took.
5. Methodology's only real competitor is a private chef and high-end restaurant takeout. Methodology has the chance to deliver that experience, and surpass it, across thousands of households at once. What would you bring into Methodology in your first 90 days that lets us beat out private chefs at what they do best and how would you create an unfair advantage in your role leading our culinary program?
6. Walk us through one specific prompt you used with AI this week in your culinary work. What tool did you use, what was the input, what was the output, and what did you actually ship as a result?