Job Description

Lead a scratch kitchen in its first season, with daytime hours and room to make the menu your own.

If you love cooking with the seasons, care about doing things properly and want a kitchen where your ideas genuinely shape the food, Dee could be your place. No late nights, a brand new kitchen, and a chance to be there from the very start.

Who we are

Dee is an independent neighbourhood cafe opening in Barnes this autumn, built to feel like a second home: warm, unhurried and rooted in good food and the community around it. We cook from scratch with natural ingredients, source over 60% of our food from UK farms and roast our coffee on site. We're not a corporate operation. We're two people, Olessia and Antonio, opening something we believe in.

What we offer

Daytime hours, with shifts between 6:00am and 6:00pm and no late nights
A brand new kitchen with new equipment and modern systems, including recipe management in Kafoodle
Real creative freedom over seasonal variations, specials and how the menu grows from here
A clear framework for sourcing and minimising waste already in place, so you can focus on the cooking
Direct relationships with the UK farms and suppliers behind our ingredients
A small, friendly team where everyone eats together and your ideas are heard
Staff meals, a staff discount and tips

The role

The foundations are set. Our menu is built around signature Dee bowls, with recipes documented and suppliers in place. We follow a framework that keeps waste to a minimum, from sourcing and seasonality through to batch cooking and portioning. Within that, there's plenty of room for creativity: as the seasons change, you'll shape new combinations, specials and the direction of the menu going forward.

Day to day, you will:

Cook from scratch with natural, seasonal ingredients, adapting dishes as produce changes through the year
Develop and grow our plant-based cooking
Run our batch cooking and prep, keeping quality consistent and waste down
Lead, train and support a small kitchen team
Work directly with our suppliers on ordering and stock, within our sourcing commitments
Build a shared way of working with our cafe manager, so kitchen and front of house run as one
Keep food safety, hygiene and allergen standards high

The details

Hours: Full-time, 40 hours a week across the week including weekends, with shifts between 6:00am and 6:00pm. Expect a few more hours while we settle in after opening
Pay: From £18 per hour, based on experience, plus tips
Reporting to: Olessia, co-founder
Start: As soon as possible, ahead of opening

How to apply

If Dee sounds like your kind of place, we'd love to hear from you. Please include a short note telling us about a kitchen you've led, and what cooking with the seasons means to you.

We're a small team opening something new, and every application will be read by one of us personally.

Job Requirements

Essential

Experience as a Head Chef, running a kitchen and leading a small team
Confidence working directly with suppliers on ordering, stock and costs
Confidence cooking from scratch, including batch cooking and careful prep
Attention to detail in a fast-paced environment
A solid grasp of food safety, allergens, costing and stock control

Nice to have

Experience with plant-based cooking and seasonal menus
Hands-on experience minimising waste in a kitchen. If you haven't worked in a sustainability-focused kitchen before, that's fine, as long as it genuinely matters to you
Experience of opening a new kitchen, or of Kafoodle or a similar recipe system

Who you are