Build the kitchen. Build the menu. Build the brand. Make tofu famous.

Who we are

Tofu Monkey is a café, bakery and tofu bar built on a QSR engine: rapid, crave-able, repeatable, and made to go global. Bowls, burgers, baked goods, barista coffee and soy smoothies, all for people who've never thought twice about tofu. We're not the tofu version of anything. We're the real thing, and tofu makes it better.

Our first store opens in Darlinghurst in December. Every morning, we'll make our own soy milk in small batches on site and turn it into warm, silky tofu fa. Our firm tofu, silken tofu and nuggets come through an industry-leading tofu partner. And everything the soy leaves behind, we cook with. Sydney first. Then the world.

The job

We've got a head start. You make it famous. The founders have built strong menu ideas and put them in front of a focus group. We know what landed and what didn't. That's your starting point, not your ceiling. You take full ownership of the food product, working shoulder to shoulder with the founders. We make big calls together, and when we disagree, customers settle it.

The sprint (4–6 weeks, starting ASAP). An intensive menu development period to get us launch-ready:

- Lock every recipe, specced to the gram and costed to target.
- Set-up our soy milk production and dial in our tofu fa.
- Build okara into the menu as a hero ingredient, not a waste stream.
- Make every dish batch-ready, so a line cook can nail it on a busy Saturday morning.

Then, own it:

- The food. Keep developing, refining and innovating: new products, seasonal drops, and better ways to use every part of the soybean.
- Suppliers. Build and run our supplier relationships, starting with our tofu partner. You set the specs, check the quality and drive the cost.
- Menu systems. Own the specs, costings, batch sheets, prep lists and kitchen SOP. If it's not written down, it doesn't exist.



This store is the blueprint for every store after it.
- Kitchen operations. Lead a lean kitchen team, run daily soy milk and fa production, and keep us food-safe and audit-ready. This is hands-on. You'll be running service everyday until we are ready to scale up to 7-days and a larger team.
- Profit. You run food COGS, kitchen labour and waste to target (we're aiming for 22% blended food cost), and you share accountability for store profit with our venue manager, who runs the floor.

You are

What we screen hardest on:

- A systems chef. You love specs, costing and consistency as much as flavour. Same dish, every time, whoever's cooking.
- A collaborator. You take ideas and feedback without ego, and push back with evidence when something won't work at volume or at margin.
- A soy person, or desperate to become one. Experience making soy milk in small batches is a big plus. You know what tofu fa is, and you know what good fa should taste like.
- Excited about okara. The pulp left over from soy milk is a beautiful ingredient: in bakes, patties, crumbs, stocks and more. If that sentence made you hungry, keep reading.
- Commercially sharp. You can tell us the food cost percentage of a dish you've built, and how you'd get it down without making it worse.

Big pluses:

- Experience in a kitchen working towards zero waste.
- Experience in a high-volume café or fast-casual kitchen run to cost and speed targets.
- Baking or pastry experience - think sausage rolls, pies, brownies and doughnuts.
- Plant-based or Asian-technique credibility.



Our food must never taste like health food.
- Existing Sydney supplier relationships.

And you show up the Tofu Monkey way:

- Attack It. If it's in front of you, it's yours.
- Bring It. Energy is the job. No passengers.
- Care Hard. About the food, the people, the details.

No ego. No shortcuts. No average.

The essentials

- Based in Sydney, available full time, on site and on the tools.
- Current right to work in Australia. We can't offer visa sponsorship.
- Food Safety Supervisor certificate, or able to get it before we open.

The deal

- Salary: $85,000–$105,000 plus super, full time and permanent. The top of the range is for proven soy milk, okara or menu-systems experience.
- Profit share and equity: Both are part of our plan for this role as we grow from one Darlinghurst store towards a global brand. We're finalising the mechanics now, and you'll have them in writing before you sign.
- Real ownership: You own the food product, working directly with the founders. No incumbent chef above you, no layers, fast decisions.
- A business built to last: We build to B Corp standards and commit 1% of revenue to the planet from day one. Profit matters. Impact matters more.

All recipes, specs and systems developed in the role belong to Tofu Monkey. That's how we build a brand that scales, and how your stake in it stays worth something.

Sounds like you?

Tell us three things:

1. A dish you've built and costed: what it cost per serve, and its food cost percentage.
2. Your experience with soy milk, tofu or zero-waste cooking (or why you're itching to get stuck in).
3. One thing you'd make with okara.

Send that and your CV to [email protected]. You don't need to love tofu yet. You just need to love great food, hate waste, and be able to prove it, to the gram, every single time.

GOOD FOR THE JUNGLE ?

📌 Head Chef (Darlinghurst)
🏢 Tofu Monkey Australia
📍 Darlinghurst