What are the responsibilities and job description for the Culinary Lead position at Aureate Group?
Role Overview
Totum Market and Cafe is seeking a Culinary Operations Lead to oversee all prepared foods, café production and back of house kitchen systems for our flagship Tampa location.
This role is designed for a chef operator who combines strong culinary instincts with operational discipline across inventory planning, labor management, forecasting and retail food production.
The Culinary Operations Lead will be responsible for building a scalable prepared foods program spanning grab and go, deli, fresh prepared foods, café offerings, smoothies, juices and seasonal menu rotations aligned with a natural grocery environment.
This position works closely with store leadership and the grocery buying team to ensure efficient production, strong margins and high product quality.
Key Responsibilities
Team Leadership and Kitchen Culture
Requirements
Experience
Compensation
Totum Market and Cafe is seeking a Culinary Operations Lead to oversee all prepared foods, café production and back of house kitchen systems for our flagship Tampa location.
This role is designed for a chef operator who combines strong culinary instincts with operational discipline across inventory planning, labor management, forecasting and retail food production.
The Culinary Operations Lead will be responsible for building a scalable prepared foods program spanning grab and go, deli, fresh prepared foods, café offerings, smoothies, juices and seasonal menu rotations aligned with a natural grocery environment.
This position works closely with store leadership and the grocery buying team to ensure efficient production, strong margins and high product quality.
Key Responsibilities
- Oversee all back of house production including prep workflows, packaging systems and daily output scheduling across prepared foods stations
- Align prepared foods production with store inventory to reduce shrink and improve margin performance
- Maintain portion control standards, waste reduction systems and recipe costing discipline
- Optimize back kitchen layout and workflow for efficient production in a compact footprint along with labor allocation
- Oversee cafe food execution including smoothies, cold pressed juice program, baked goods, light cafe meals and prepared retail snacks
- Train cafe staff on product knowledge and upselling
- Coordinate production timing between kitchen and cafe teams
- Manage ordering
- Adjust output dynamically based on demand trends
- Maintain strong inventory accuracy across perishables and production ingredients
- Monitor food cost targets and contribution margins work with management team
Team Leadership and Kitchen Culture
- Recruit and develop the prepared foods and cafe production team
- Build a structured staffing model aligned with production demand
- Implement training systems for consistency across stations
- Foster a collaborative kitchen culture balancing creativity and operational discipline
- Lead seasonal menu development across kitchen and cafe platforms
- Monitor Tampa Bay food trends and competitor positioning
- Collaborate with marketing on launches and product storytelling
- Introduce limited time offerings tied to seasonal produce and local vendors
Requirements
Experience
- Four to seven plus years in a culinary leadership role within grocery prepared foods, cafe production or fast casual scratch environments
- Managing ordering
- Managing labor scheduling and food cost targets
- Producing grab and go retail food programs
- Operating in a grocery environment strongly preferred
- Launching or scaling a prepared foods program highly desirable
- ServSafe Manager Certification required
- Florida DBPR Food Manager Certification required
- Wine or beverage certification such as WSET or Cicerone is a plus
- Strong production planning and kitchen workflow design
- Retail food margin awareness
- Menu costing and portion control discipline
- Comfort forecasting demand and adjusting output
- Cross functional collaboration with store leadership and buyers
- Interest in seasonal sourcing and natural food systems
Compensation
- Base salary expected range $70,000 - $80,000
- Performance bonus tied to food cost control, labor productivity, prepared foods sales growth and shrink reduction. 5-10% benefits (Health, Dental, Vision, Retirement, PTO and etc)
- Retention bonus available following twelve months of successful program execution
- This role offers the opportunity to design and scale a prepared foods platform that will become a core driver of customer frequency and store identity within Totum Market and Cafe's flagship location
Salary : $70,000 - $80,000