Executive Chef

About Always Fishing

Always Fishing Hospitality Group is a Bay Area hospitality platform operating four brands: Culinary Eye (bespoke catering and events), Spirited Beverage Co. (beverage programs and venue partnerships), Bar Car (mobile bar activations), and Metal & Match (institutional meal systems). Our work spans one-of-a-kind weddings and corporate events, contracted venue programs, co-packing production, and recurring institutional feeding. We believe the dinner table is the place that brings people together and holds us accountable to being better to each other, and we build every menu with our clients, our farmers, our mongers, and our artisan producers.

The Role

This is an operator's kitchen job, not a stage. The Executive Chef owns the production engine behind every brand: the systems, the documentation, the budgets, and the team that turn a signed contract into food delivered on spec, on time, and on margin, hundreds of times a year. Great cooking is the price of admission here. What sets this role apart is the ability to build a kitchen that performs at a consistently high standard whether or not you are standing in it.

You will inherit a talented team, an established client base, and multiple distinct production streams: bespoke event catering, high-volume institutional production, co-packing, and venue support. Your mandate is to bring these under one documented, costed, repeatable production system, and to develop the kitchen leadership beneath you so the operation scales.

The Executive Chef reports directly to the CEO and works in close daily partnership with the Director of Operations.

What You Will Own

Production Systems and Documentation

• Build and maintain the production system of record: costed recipes, batch and scaling specs, prep sheets, par levels, and ordering systems for every menu across all brands. These are company assets, documented and current, not knowledge held in one person's head.
• Run event production end to end: translate signed menus into prep plans, production schedules, and pack-out specs that execute cleanly onsite without heroics.
• Own institutional and co-packing production: consistency, portioning, yield management, and food safety documentation at volume, where discipline and repeatability matter more than flair.

Financial Ownership

• Hit the numbers: the Executive Chef is accountable to company food cost and kitchen labor targets, set by revenue segment. Specific targets and their definitions are shared during the offer process.
• Own the kitchen budget cycle: prepare the recurring kitchen prep budget for approval before each cycle, and manage purchasing, receiving, and inventory to plan.
• Report on performance: deliver food cost and labor performance reporting on a set cadence, with variances explained and corrected, not discovered at month end.

Team Leadership and Development

• Lead through your leadership team: the Executive Sous Chef is your second and runs the day-to-day line. Your job is to develop that role and the leads beneath it so authority holds when you are not in the building.
• Recruit, train, and retain: build hiring pipelines, onboarding, and cross-training so the kitchen is never one resignation away from crisis.
• Hold the standard: safety, sanitation, and an "A" health rating are the floor. You own the food safety program, allergen protocols, and required workplace training completion for kitchen staff.

Culinary Standards and Menu Architecture

• Design menus that sell and execute: seasonal, on-trend, and built for the realities of offsite execution, institutional volume, and margin, in collaboration with the sales and events team.
• Protect quality at scale: taste, presentation, and portion consistency across every production stream, verified through tastings and onsite spot checks rather than assumed.

Your First 90 Days

• Days 1 to 30: Learn the operation. Shadow production across all brands, audit existing recipes and costing, meet the team, and deliver a written assessment of the kitchen's systems gaps.
• Days 31 to 60: Stand up the core systems: costed recipe library underway, prep budget cycle running on cadence, purchasing and receiving controls in place, reporting rhythm established.
• Days 61 to 90: Prove the numbers. Food cost and labor tracking to target by segment, first full institutional production cycle run to spec, and a development plan in place for your kitchen leadership team.

Who We Are Looking For

• 7+ years of progressive kitchen leadership, with at least 3 years running multi-stream or high-volume production (catering commissary, institutional feeding, contract production, or comparable)
• A documented track record of building kitchen systems: costed recipes, production planning, purchasing controls, and labor management, with numbers you can speak to specifically
• Experience managing to explicit food cost and labor targets and reporting on them to ownership or senior leadership
• Demonstrated success developing sous chefs and kitchen leads into people who can run the operation independently
• ServSafe Manager certification, or ability to obtain immediately, and deep working knowledge of California food safety and labor compliance in a kitchen environment
• Comfortable in a founder-led, fast-moving company where you build the structure rather than inherit it
• Spanish language proficiency is a very strong plus

Compensation and Benefits

• Base salary of $110,000 to $130,000, depending on experience
• Performance bonus tied to kitchen margin performance against segment targets, paid quarterly. Structure and targets shared during the offer process
• Health insurance contribution, dental and vision coverage, paid time off, and cell phone reimbursement
• Full-time, in person, based in Oakland, CA with regular onsite presence at event and venue locations across the Bay Area

Pay: $110,000.00 - $130,000.00 per year

Work Location: In person