Kitchen/Chef Assistant
Work during school days & hours. In a small, friendly team environment, you will help prepare, pack and deliver food on a daily basis for students and staff at local schools. Each school day, we prepare fresh meals for customers at several schools in Santa Cruz. Meal preparation starts in the morning and continues up through lunch time. Shortly before lunch, we load up individual lunch boxes with the prepared food. Lunches are delivered directly to each school on planned delivery routes. After lunch, boxes are collected and returned to the kitchen for cleaning and sanitizing. The daily routine includes: pulling lunch boxes for clients with orders, preparing fruit and vegetable side dishes, following recipes to assemble and cook vegetarian and meat entrees, deliveries to schools, cleaning and emptying lunch boxes and the kitchen. Training will be provided.
You should be able to:
- Work well with others and take direction
- Understand and follow recipes with minimal oversight
- Lift heavy objects (20 – 40 #)
- Have basic knife skills (chopping, slicing, dicing, …)
- Stand for long periods of time
- Bend and lift heavy pots and pans from storage, ovens and cook tops
- Experience in a commercial kitchen is desired, but optional
- Have your own vehicle and valid driver’s license
In addition, you should have a clean DMV driving record as well as current insurance and registration for your own vehicle. We reimburse standard rates for miles driven and time spent based on the delivery route. We plan on most staff members making deliveries.
Our work year closely matches the school year, with time off for school holidays and breaks. Work hours are flexible, but typically fall within a school day, with start times as early as 8:30 and end times between 2:00 and 3:00. We try to arrange consistent work schedules week to week, but will vary hours based on meals ordered and schools being served. Flexible scheduling will allow for personal days to be taken with advance notice. We are looking for at least two days / week of employment. Work days are Monday – Friday. Extra days & hours may be available through other tenants of our kitchen if desired.
If you are interested, please contact us at: employment@ohlsenfoods.com. We can answer any questions you may have and arrange a time to meet at our kitchen to fill out an application, have a brief interview and skills test.