Development Chef in Sittingbourne

This is a hands‑on culinary role for an experienced Development Chef who lives and breathes food. You’ll be at the heart of crafting, testing and refining recipes from the earliest spark of an idea through to fully scaled, production‑ready batches. You’ll bring strong cooking skills, a creative palate and a solid understanding of how flavour, texture and technique translate from a small pan to full scale. This role blends creativity, curiosity and precision to ensure every dish tastes exceptional whether cooked for 2 or 2,000.

Main responsibilities

• New Product Development / Existing Product Development
• Creating, cooking and refining new dishes to clear briefs, with a strong focus on innovation, quality and flavour.
• Developing recipes from scratch, capturing accurate yields, methods, timings and quality points to support successful scale‑up.
• Considering the impact freezing has on texture, taste and quality when developing frozen meals.
• Managing your own workload and timelines, ensuring projects progress smoothly from concept to launch.
• Recipe writing, costing creation and cooking time validation.
• Leading cooking for tastings, reviews and sign‑off sessions, confidently presenting dishes and culinary decisions.
• Working closely with the Lead Development Chef, Junior Development Chef and wider Food Team.
• Scale‑Up
• Scaling dishes from bench‑top trials to full‑batch production while maintaining consistency of taste, texture and appearance.
• Hands‑on cooking of full batch recipes from prepping, cooking and dishing the finished product, with a final train out to production.
• Problem solving and adapting recipes to overcome scale‑up challenges.
• Verifying manufacturing methods to create robust, repeatable recipes.
• Capturing yield data and key information from trials to support costing and recipe updates.
• Working collaboratively with Food, Technical, Supply Chain and Operations teams to ensure products can be successfully replicated at scale while maintaining quality and margin.
• Quality, Food Safety & Standards
• Ensuring all development work meets COOK’s food safety and quality standards.
• Maintaining clear, accurate documentation and records.
• Following operational processes and safety standards when working within the manufacturing kitchens.
• Applying excellent attention to detail throughout every stage of development.
• Collaboration & Continuous Improvement
• Bringing fresh culinary ideas and inspiration to help evolve dishes and processes.
• Supporting smooth, well‑documented handovers into production following scale‑up trials.
• Participating in tastings, reviews and post‑launch evaluations to continuously improve products and ways of working.

Good to Have

• Experience as a chef in a professional kitchen, with exposure to development and manufacturing environments.
• Strong cooking skills, excellent food knowledge and curiosity around ingredients, cuisines and trends.
• Excellent attention to detail with the ability to document work clearly and accurately.
• Organised, proactive and comfortable managing multiple projects at once, in a fast‑paced environment.
• A collaborative approach, with clear communication and a willingness to share knowledge.
• Understanding of process control and confidence with basic maths.
• Experience within frozen meal manufacturing is desirable.

If you tick most of these boxes but not all—don’t stress. We’re all about potential.

Excellent Benefits

• Paid leave on your birthdays, moving house, becoming a grandparent or your child starts school for the first time.
• Staff profit share.
• Wellbeing program.
• 30% staff discount.
• Access to CookieJar Smart Spending discounts and free food perks.
• Team meals, events & away days.
• Be part of a B-Corp-certified business that values sustainability, people, and the community.
• Life Insurance.
• Free Lunch.

What Cook is About

We’re a proudly independent, family‑owned B Corp, which basically means we care. A lot. About our food. About our people. And about doing the right thing—even when it’s not the easy thing. Our vision for COOK has always been that we are a place where EVERYONE is welcome. We want everyone to feel like they belong at COOK. We all have different roles, different abilities and different personalities. By collaborating we can do remarkable things. Whatever your story, if you would like to grow with COOK please apply.

Benefits

• Company pension.
• Discounted or free food.
• Employee discount.
• Profit sharing.

Work Location: In person.