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 Community Chef Trainer

Edinburgh Food Social
Craigmillar, Edinburgh

Posted: 14 Apr 2026

Deadline: 21 Apr 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 growing social enterprise and support our mission to transform our local food culture and people’s lives through food education and meals for people in food poverty. 

About you and the Lead Chef Trainer role

This role will form an integral part of an ambitious programme to transform the food culture in Craigmillar and build community through food. 

We’re in particular going to be doing lots of work with young people to try and keep them out of crime and show them their potential. We’ll be hosting cookery projects ending in community meals, putting on food at the local football pitch on Friday night, projects with the local high school, community events and 1-1 work training young people to become Chefs. 

We are looking for a dedicated and experienced Chef Trainer to become part of our team to help lead another Chef trainer and our volunteers to help us achieve our mission. It is integral that this person has very strong people skills and is able to work with people from all different backgrounds with no prejudice or judgment. 

Alongside our Head, you will plan and deliver our programme to a whole host of different individuals and organisations. Some will be short 1-day courses, some 6-month schemes. 

The role is more than just cooking and teaching. You will also need to do all the necessary reporting – recording information from classes, gathering feedback and helping pull together funding reports. 

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 the kitchen clean and organised, and you will also need to help with the catering, and there will be times you have to help with catering for weddings and bigger events. 

The responsibilities, skills and experience listed below are intended to give you an idea of what we need for this role. If you don’t meet every requirement but feel you would be able to work with us to deliver the majority of them, we urge you to apply anyway. 

There will have to be flexibility around working hours, and some early morning, evening and weekend work is required. For example, you will be required to work a Friday night roughly every month. 

Key Lead Community Chef Trainer responsibilities include, but are not limited to:*

• Deliver in-person training sessions to individuals and groups of all ages and backgrounds
• Maintain, update and develop relevant training materials to keep our programme up to date. 
• Identify areas to develop new programmes that complement our organisational strategy
• Develop additional training resources, where necessary, to support the delivery of project objectives 
• Gather feedback to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the training programme
• Along with the Head, plan and schedule the delivery of programmes, working with internal and external parties
• Manage partner and community relationships to ensure the smooth delivery of training programmes
• Develop recipe kits
• Cook for and lead a team to cook for community dinners and pop-up events  
• Some flexibility with working times and days to work evenings and weekends for events. 
• Oversee the Community Chef Trainer job and ensure the programme is being appropriately delivered 
• Manage volunteers in the kitchen and at events 

Skills & experience

• Excellent verbal communication skills 

• Experience working in a catering or kitchen environment

• Able to create user-friendly and engaging recipes

• Great people skills to build rapport with learners and strike a balance between being supportive and challenging 

• Excellent presentation and facilitation skills to deliver engaging training sessions, and experience in doing this 

• Excellent scheduling and time management skills to manage workload 

• Experience delivering training to a kitchen workforce or adult learners 

• Experience working with/teaching children and young people

• An understanding of hospitality, especially how to deliver quality food and service 

• An understanding of economic or nutritional deprivation and the challenges these pose for people 

• Culinary training 

• Experience in leading and managing other staff

Any overtime hours will be replaced with TOIL or paid. 

PVG - Anyone hired will have to be allowed to work with children and vulnerable adults. The job is dependent on this always being the case.

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 you will be asked to do a short cookery class for staff. This portion will last 2 hours. You will then cook with some of the team so we can gain an understanding of your skills in the kitchen. This section will last 2 hours, and you will be paid for this as we are putting you to work.

Please mention Roots to Work when applying for these jobs