Kitchen Manager in Newcastle upon Tyne

Talbot House Children’s Charity are looking to appoint a term-time, permanent, Kitchen Manager

The successful candidate will lead and manage the day to day operations of the school kitchen, ensuring high quality healthy meals for our pupils and staff. The role requires hands on food preparation with effective kitchen team leadership and management. Maintain high standards of health and hygiene, food safety and food service.

Implementing successful processes, procedures and checking systems to monitor and maintain high quality healthy food. Manage the ordering processes, ensuring orders are accurate. Overall responsibility to ensure sufficient food is available for the number of covers required each day, and that every meal is served to meet the requirements of each individual. Take ownership of the kitchen, menu planning, ensuring meals meet dietary, allergen and nutritional requirements, while creating and an engaging and positive experience for our pupils.

Be creative, work with the children to find out their views on menus options, think outside of the box, introduce theme days and be creative with food choices.

To apply, you must have at least 2 years’ previous experience of kitchen manager experience, ideally within a school kitchen, although this is not essential. You must also hold a Level 2 certificate in Food Preparation or equivalent plus a Level 3 Food Hygiene certificate.

Our school is a non-maintained specialist school with a roll of 70 pupils, all with Education Health Care Plans (EHCPs) and complex needs. We have approximately 8 acres of land, and we are excited to continue to offer the best environment for our pupils to be successful.

Starting date: September 2026, to be confirmed during interview.

Hours of work are: Monday to Friday, 7:00am to 2.30pm, working 35 hours per week term-time, plus deep clean days.

Salary: Competitive, pending experience (salary includes term time working hours, plus 5.6 weeks holidays, which are taken during the school holiday periods only).

Working at the Charity you will:

• receive death in service benefit, equal to 4 x basic salary.
• receive many additional benefits such as employer assist program (EAP), GP and physio access and more.
• have the option of joining the Charity’s competitive pension scheme, matching contributions up to 6.75%.
• work in a bright and modern environment, with ample parking and grounds.
• be provided with meals while at work (during term time).
• be added to the DBS update service, paid for by the Charity.
• be offered opportunities to undertake training and gain qualifications relevant to the role.
• paid membership to Blue Light and membership to Charity Workers Discount.

Closing Date: Midnight, Sunday, 5 July 2026 (please note: we reserve the right to short list, interview and close this vacancy early, or extend the deadline, depending on the level of response)

Shortlisting: w/c Monday, 6 July 2026

Interview Date: w/c Monday, 13 July 2026

Note: The Charity is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and expect all staff to share this commitment. We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, young people and vulnerable adults and expect all staff to share this commitment (see full policy details on our website). This post is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and therefore applicants should be aware that the post will only be offered to successful candidates subject to an Enhanced DBS check as well as other employment clearances and continued subscription to the DBS Update Service.