K-12 Development Chef- Philadelphia Culinary Center

Job description

Do you have a passion for culinary creativity, recipe innovation, and building menus that delight and nourish students? Join Whitsons as an R&D Chef and play a key role in shaping the future of K–12 school nutrition across the Northeast. This is a unique opportunity to work in our state-of-the-art R&D kitchen with access to a vast supply chain, multi-departmental collaboration, and the support of our Nutrition, Production, and Sourcing teams. You’ll design menus that meet nutritional guidelines, cost targets, and production capabilities —while delivering unique, seasonal, and culturally diverse offerings that keep students engaged and excited about healthy eating. What You’ll Do: Create innovative menu items that align with cost, nutritional, and crediting parameters. Collaborate with production kitchens to commercialize recipes from concept to large-scale execution. Document and maintain yield analyses, routing details, and product specifications for golden sample runs. Input and verify recipes in our MRP system, apply routings, and run cost analyses. Conduct taste tests with customers, students, and district partners. Lead roving chef demonstrations, special events, and seasonal...