Kitchen Manager / Head Chef

5 days per week | 4:30am–12:30pm | Casual to start | $45 weekday / $55 weekend

Opportunity to move to a permanent salaried position | Salary based on experience

This isn't your typical kitchen.

We're a family-owned Northern Rivers food and convenience business, with a growing fresh food offer that is an important part of what we do.

Our kitchen produces a fresh hot and cold food range every day, with a set menu designed around quality, consistency, speed and volume. This is a food retail operation rather than a traditional restaurant kitchen — there is no made-to-order service.

We're looking for an experienced Kitchen Manager / Head Chef to take ownership of the day-to-day kitchen operation, lead the team and ensure our food offer is consistently produced to a high standard.

What you'll be responsible for

You'll have genuine ownership of the day-to-day kitchen operation, including:

- Leading the kitchen and coordinating the daily production
- Preparing and overseeing our fresh hot and cold food range
- Ensuring food is consistently produced to a high standard
- Managing food safety, hygiene and compliance
- Ordering stock and managing inventory
- Monitoring food usage, waste and stock levels
- Ensuring recipes, portion sizes and presentation are consistent
- Planning daily production around expected sales and demand
- Training, supporting and guiding kitchen team members
- Keeping the kitchen organised, clean and running efficiently
- Identifying opportunities to improve the food offer and kitchen operation
- Working hands-on with the team — this is a role for someone who likes to be on the floor, not sitting in an office

What we're looking for





We're interested in chefs who have real commercial kitchen experience and are ready to take ownership.

You might currently be a:

- Head Chef
- Sous Chef ready for the next step
- Kitchen Manager
- Chef with experience running a small kitchen or food operation
- Experienced chef who enjoys the operational side of food production

You'll need to be confident with food safety, ordering, stock control, production planning and leading a team.

What matters is that you're organised, efficient, understand food quality and safety, and can take responsibility for making sure the kitchen gets the job done properly every day.

The food is prepared fresh for our customers to grab and go throughout the day. It's a quick-moving retail environment, so consistency, efficiency and production planning are just as important as cooking ability.

About The Station Grocer

We're a family-owned Northern Rivers business with multiple stores across the region. Our stores combine fuel, convenience, fresh food, coffee and grab-and-go — and our food offer is an important part of the customer experience.

- If you're a chef who enjoys leading people, producing good food, keeping things organised and having genuine ownership of a kitchen, we'd love to hear from you.

Pay: $45.00 – $55.00 per hour

Expected hours: 40.0 per week

Benefits

- Employee discount

Application Question(s):
- This role starts at 4:30am and works 5 days per week across Monday–Sunday. Are you able to consistently work these hours and days?
- Why does this role appeal to you?

Experience:
- commercial kitchen: 1 year (Preferred)
- ordering stock, managing inventory: 1 year (Preferred)

Licence/Certification:
- Food Safety Certificate (Preferred)

Work Authorisation:
- Australia (Preferred)

Location:
- Northern Rivers NSW (Preferred)

Work Location: In person

📌 Kitchen Manager/Head Chef (Northern Rivers)
🏢 The Station Grocer
📍 Northern Rivers