About the role

Bo Gurks is an established independent hospitality venue in Edithvale with an existing tapas and pizza-led dinner trade. The business is preparing to add Wednesday-Sunday breakfast and lunch service. The Head Chef will turn the agreed concept and menu direction into a workable, costed and repeatable day operation while assuming management oversight of the existing dinner kitchen. The successful candidate will be a capable chef and an experienced kitchen manager, with their major implementation task being breakfast and lunch. Across dinner, they will take responsibility for oversight of ordering, stock, food cost, labour planning, food safety, standards and performance while preserving the capable team and established practices that are already working.

Key responsibilities

- Audit the kitchen, storage, refrigeration, equipment, service flow and production capacity before finalising the launch plan

- Review the menu brief and develop a focused launch menu suited to local demand, available equipment, kitchen capacity, preparation load and target margins

- Cost every menu item and produce controlled recipe cards covering ingredients, yield, portion, plating, preparation, allergens and required equipment

- Run timed production and service trials; identify bottlenecks and correct them before opening

- Establish suppliers, order cycles, par levels, storage allocation and stock-separation rules for the new day trade

- Define the additional breakfast and lunch BOH structure, recruit or select the required team, prepare the draft day roster with the Venue Manager and complete practical training and sign-off

- Provide the Owner with a clear go/no-go recommendation against the agreed readiness gates before a public opening date is announced

- Lead the first 12 weeks of stabilisation, using actual sales, labour, food cost, waste and guest feedback to refine the operation





- Take responsibility for oversight of ordering, stock, food cost, labour planning, food safety, standards and performance

- Complete BOH rostering in collaboration with the Venue Manager so kitchen coverage aligns with the whole venue

About you

- Demonstrated experience as a Head Chef or Senior Sous Chef with real management ownership - not only shift supervision

- A proven example of personally leading the opening, implementation or substantial rebuild of a breakfast and/or lunch service

- Strong working knowledge of menu development, recipe costing, gross profit, portion and yield control, ordering, stocktake and waste management

- Experience coordinating BOH rosters and labour forecasts with venue management, recruiting additional staff where required and managing an established team across multiple service periods

- The practical ability to design kitchen workflow, preparation systems, handovers and service standards, then train others to follow them

- Commercial cookery qualification or equivalent substantial industry experience

- Current Food Safety Supervisor qualification, or the ability to obtain the required qualification before commencement

- Strong food-safety and allergen-management knowledge with a record of maintaining reliable documentation

- Comfort using POS sales reports, rostering tools, inventory records and spreadsheets to make operational decisions

- Full Australian working rights

Highly regarded

- Breakfast, brunch or high-volume daytime service experience

- Experience implementing a new day trade while taking respectful oversight of an established, capable dinner team in the same kitchen

- Pizza, wood-fired cooking or pizza-dough product experience

- Experience in an independent, licensed, casual-dining venue

- Established supplier knowledge within Melbourne's south-east or Bayside hospitality market

- Experience implementing a current menu, kitchen system or venue opening against a defined timeline and budget

📌 Head Chef (Edithvale)
🏢 Bo Gurks
📍 Edithvale