Cafe Chef
Job description
Original text imported from Reed
About the role
We have an exciting opportunity for a Chef with hospitality experience to join one of our lively café kitchens. Your daily operations of the kitchen would include preparation, food storage, and to deliver delicious food that keeps our customers happy, satisfied, and coming back for more. It’s all part of making every day a little better for them, and us.
You’ll bring your experience of working in a similarly busy environment to Tesco, where you’ll become a café menu expert keen to share your knowledge with the team around you. From health and safety to limiting food waste, you’ll understand the importance of every detail and inspire your team to deliver outstanding food quality and speed of service - after all, no one tries harder for customers than us.
Tesco Cafés are a place to get on. We believe in creating a great environment for colleagues to work – and providing opportunities for everyone to be at their best. With your previous experience, you’ll help to deliver skills as you build an inclusive place where people feel respected, safe and valued. In doing so, you’ll grow as a leader and develop your skills and experience as part of our friendly team.
Please note that you need to be 18 or over to apply for this role.
What is in it for you
Alongside a fantastic work life balance, we offer excellent benefits that help make The Cafe a great place to work. These include but aren’t limited to::
- Get 10% off and 15% at pay day weekends; save up to £2,000 a year with your Colleague Clubcard with an additional card to share with family outside your home.
- Request flexible working from day one
- Retirement savings plan
- Life Assurance
- Access to free wellbeing services with a range of resources to support your mind, body, and life
- An exclusive deals and discounts website saving you money on everyday purchases, treats for the family, eating out and utility bills for the home
- Uniform provided and policies to support you for all of life’s moments, big and small
- Holiday starting at 28 days (Including Bank Holidays)
- Access to our colleague networks providing a space for colleagues to come together from a range of backgrounds. For more information about our colleague networks please click here.
You will be responsible for
Whilst specific responsibilities will be dependent upon the changing needs of Tesco as a business, the following provides an overview of the role’s key responsibilities and measures:
- storage and preparation in line with food safety and hygiene regulations.
- deliver timely, tasty food to customers whilst maintaining great standards and food served to spec!
- Identifying new and better ways of working to keep improving services for customers and colleagues.
- health and safety and food safety requirements are met.
- Understanding the key drivers of our service plan and delivering to the standard required.
You will need
- A background in hospitality
- Experience of remaining productive in a high-pressure environment.
- A commitment to excellent customer service.
- A desire to create an inclusive work environment where colleagues feel respected, safe and valued.
- Good planning and organisation skills.
- Confidence using your initiative to identify opportunities to improve our ways of working or adapt to different situations.
- Excellent communication skills to motivate and support a growing team
About us
With 329 cafés across the country and counting, our teams work closely to make sure that the customer experience is to the best standard and service; no two days are ever the same! Tesco Cafés are a great place to work, with a genuine family feel - truly a place to get on.
We are proud to have an inclusive culture at Tesco Café where everyone is welcome and truly feels able to be themselves. In our cafés, we not only celebrate diversity, but we strive to create a workforce that reflects our customers not only here in the UK, but worldwide. Our aim is to attract and welcome a diverse range of applicants from all walks of life, offering many varying working patterns across our business and we would love to hear from you.
We know life looks a little different for each of us. That’s why at Tesco, we always welcome chats about flexible working. Some people are at the start of their careers, some want the freedom to do the things they love. Others are going through life-changing moments like becoming a carer, nearing retirement, adapting to parenthood, or something else. So, talk to us throughout your application about how we can support.
We’re proud to have been accredited as a Disability Confident Leader and we’re committed to providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process. For further information on the accessibility support we can offer, please click here.
On occasions where we have high volumes of applicants, some roles may close earlier than the advertised end date in order for us to manage all of the applicants appropriately. We will only be able to offer individual feedback to those candidates who attend an interview.
Key skills
AI-extracted from the job advert
Application advice
5 AI-generated recommendations to maximise your chances.
⭐ Highlight your hospitality kitchen experience prominently in your Personal Statement — the advert explicitly requires 'a background in hospitality' as a core criterion.
📊 Quantify your kitchen output: e.g. 'Prepared and served 200+ covers daily across a 6-item café menu, maintaining 98% food-to-spec compliance'.
🎯 Reference food safety and hygiene regulations directly in your CV skills section — the advert lists these as explicit daily responsibilities and compliance requirements.
🤝 Include a bullet demonstrating team development or mentoring: the advert stresses building an inclusive environment and sharing skills with colleagues.
🌐 Mention experience with food waste reduction or stock management — the advert specifically calls out 'limiting food waste' as a key detail the ideal candidate understands.
Suggested CV bullets
3 bullets our AI drafted for this specific advert, mirroring its ATS keywords.
Add these 3 bullets under your most recent experience:
- •Managed daily food preparation and storage for a 150-cover café kitchen, achieving full compliance across 12 consecutive food hygiene inspections.
- •Reduced kitchen food waste by 18% over 3 months by introducing a daily prep audit system, saving approximately £200 per week in ingredient costs.
- •Trained and mentored 4 junior kitchen staff on food safety regulations and service-to-spec standards, cutting order error rates from 8% to 2% within 6 weeks.
Free to copy — tailoring requires a 30-sec CV upload.
Your cover letter is ready
We've drafted a cover letter for Tesco. Preview the opening, then unlock the full personalised version.
Letter preview — tailored to Tesco
Dear Hiring Manager,
Tesco's café kitchen operation in Barnsley is exactly the environment where my hospitality background and food safety expertise can make a tangible difference. Having worked in high-volume kitchen settings, I am confident in delivering food to spec at pace whilst maintaining full compliance with hygiene regulations and health and safety requirements — two areas your advert identifies as central to this role.
My background in busy café and hospitality kitchens has given me hands-on experience managing food preparation schedules, reducing waste through careful stock rotation, and mentoring junior colleagues to uphold consistent quality standards. In a previous role, I helped reduce daily food waste by 20% by introducing a prep-to-order system during quieter service periods, while keeping average ticket times under four minutes during peak hours.
Free signup, no card needed. Export to PDF/Word requires a £1.99 trial (14 days).
Interview questions
10 questions generated from this advert.
Technical
- ›How do you ensure food storage meets HACCP and food hygiene regulations during a busy service period?
- ›What steps do you take to minimise food waste while maintaining menu availability throughout the day?
- ›How do you manage food preparation schedules to ensure timely delivery during peak café hours?
- ›Describe how you would handle a situation where a food safety inspection flagged a compliance issue in your kitchen.
- ›What processes do you use to ensure food is consistently served to spec across a full café menu?
Behavioural
- ›Tell me about a time you maintained high food quality standards under significant time pressure.
- ›Describe a situation where you identified a better way of working in a kitchen and implemented it successfully.
- ›Give an example of how you have helped develop a colleague's skills in a catering or hospitality setting.
- ›Tell me about a time you dealt with a difficult customer complaint related to food quality and how you resolved it.
- ›Describe a time you had to balance multiple kitchen tasks simultaneously — how did you prioritise?
STAR answer examples
Model answers using the Situation-Task-Action-Result framework. Adapt to your own experience.
Tell me about a time you maintained high food quality standards under significant time pressure.
Describe a situation where you identified a better way of working in a kitchen and implemented it successfully.