Find your place in the field of good food

Our goal is to connect good people with good food. We advertise sustainable food jobs and training opportunities to help jobseekers and employers find each other.

Roots to Work is a project of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming.

Lead Catering Chef

Edinburgh Food Social
Craigmillar, Edinburgh

Posted: 14 Apr 2026

Deadline: 10 May 2026

Compensation: £33,920 per annum

Living Wage employer

Paid Full-time Fixed term / contract

Job description

3-year fixed-term role, £33,920 per annum.

This role can be offered on a part-time (4 days) or full-time (5 days) basis, depending on the candidate.

This is an exciting opportunity for a passionate, organised and experienced chef to join our social enterprise by leading our catering work and supporting our mission to transform our people’s lives through food.

We are seeking an experienced and passionate Lead Catering Chef to oversee and drive our catering operations. This role combines creative menu development, kitchen leadership, and operational management with a strong commitment to sustainability and community values.

The details

This role is 4 or 5 days per week. Some evening and weekend work is required. The candidate will need the ability to shift/add days and work weekends for events with advance notice. For example, in the summer, there are more Saturdays for weddings. 

Our catering operation not only helps fund our social enterprise but also serves as a learning experience for the people we teach and ensures we are spreading the joy of food to events across the city.

We’re only a small organisation, and so the candidate has to slot into the wider organisation and be able to be a strong team player as well as an independent worker. They will need to help maintain and keep clean the kitchen, and there will be times when they may need to teach classes or help out with our wider community work. 

You will be responsible for prepping and planning for our catering work and leading the team at events. We tend not to operate off fixed menus to reduce food waste and make the most of seasonal produce, so you will need to enjoy being creative and thinking on your feet. Sometimes you will be making rolls and finger food for office lunches, sometimes you will be doing a wedding, and sometimes you will be doing a supper club/collaboration with another restaurant. 

Essential skills required: 

• Experience working in a professional kitchen 
• Excellent at delivering events 
• Excellent scheduling and time management skills to manage workload 
• Experience delivering training to a kitchen workforce 
• Experience in leading and managing other staff at events 
• Experience working independently and as part of a team
• Ability to create dishes and menus 

Our team

You would be joining a dedicated, friendly, supportive team that works hard but believes in a healthy work/life balance. Any overtime hours will be replaced with TOIL or paid. Joining a small, collaborative team means you’ll be able to contribute to projects and the organisation’s overall work but you’ll also need to chip in and us all work together to do what needs to be done to help the organisation succeed. 

Application information

We ask you to please send a cover letter explaining why you meet the criteria for the job and are passionate about the issue, along with your CV to kirsty.haigh@edinburghfoodsocial.org

If you are shortlisted, then we will ask you to come in for half a day. This will consist of a short chat/interview and then you will be asked to cook for 3 hours so we can gain an understanding of your skills in the kitchen. For this latter section, you are welcome to invoice us and be paid £40.50 as we will be putting you to work.

Please mention Roots to Work when applying for these jobs