Culinary Director

Court Street Grocers is looking for an experienced Culinary Director (“CD”). The CD is primarily responsible for ensuring quality across all locations of Court Street Grocers.

Court Street Grocers is a small but growing group of sandwich shops and the CD will, through staff training and continuous development and auditing, work to find ways to forever increase the quality of the food we share, and the culture of the places in which we make it. The CD will rely on the store managers to do the day to day work necessary to meet our goals, and will need to work at each store weekly to make sure those goals are being met. The CD will also be responsible for managing our commissary staff, working to ensure that the commissary produces the best sandwich ingredients possible within our means.

There will also be recipe development and scaling work done in collaboration with Matt and Eric, the businesses owners/founders, and our special projects/ R&D chef.

Staff Interviewing, Training and Development

The CD is responsible for interviewing (in conjunction with the store managers), hiring and training BOH staff. Once hired, the CD ensures that the new hire is trained, completes Opus and is consistently audited for quality control. They are also responsible for implementing and training staff on any new dishes or specials or adjustments to existing dishes.

The CD is responsible for designing and maintaining training programs, mentoring kitchen staff, ensuring staff is cross trained and creating pathways for career advancement within the organization. Their goal is to build a strong culinary team capable of delivering fun, high-quality experiences, and which will be poised to take on leadership roles.

Budgeting and Cost Management

The CD is responsible for monitoring COGS and culinary labor costs and working to ensure that these numbers are within the budget set by leadership. The CD is primarily responsible for communicating and implementing back of house schedule changes made by leadership.

The CD monitors stocks of standard and custom paper goods and ensures that they are always available.

Repair & Maintenance

The CD also oversees and coordinates repair and maintenance for kitchen equipment and facilities, builds and maintains relationships with repair people, directs their team to keep logs and establishes consistent standards for when equipment needs to be repaired or replaced. They are directly responsible for supervising the Special Projects Porter, publishing their schedule and coordinating the same with individual Store Managers.

Quality Control and Standards

The CD enforces Department of Health and internal standards for food preparation and presentation. This includes frequent site visits to audit kitchen operations, provide feedback, and implement changes as needed. The CD is responsible for maintaining the highest standards of health and cleanliness in all operational spaces.