Chef Trainer

Full time salaried position

100% employer funded health & dental benefits

Location 

San Francisco, CA

Reports to 

Operations Director

Compensation

Salaried, $50,000-55,000 based on years of experience

Application Deadline

November 20, 2020

Job Overview

Farming Hope is a transitional employment nonprofit. We manage a 12-week, paid, on-the-job training program. We help job trainees, or Apprentices, learn the hard skills of working in a kitchen and garden, and the soft skills of sustainable employment, particularly confidence, curiosity and empathy. 

The Chef Trainer is responsible for overseeing Apprentice success, literally “training chefs.” As such, the role will emphasize Apprentice recruitment, partnerships with Referral Partners and Employment Partners, on-the-job educational support, in-kitchen training, data tracking, meeting with program partners, and learning how best to support each Apprentice as an individual.

The Chef Trainer is the #1 advocate for our Apprentices. Those not interested in fighting for people to get tangible opportunities need not apply. 

We are a safe, supportive, transitional workplace for our Apprentices, but we do not offer wraparound services beyond the job and job training. Instead we rely on external Referral Partners for ongoing support like traditional case management for Apprentices.

The Chef Trainer role will be responsible for a relatively low number of Apprentices, on average 5-7 simultaneously. Our organization focuses on depth of impact and opportunity, not quantity. 

In kitchen speak, the Chef Trainer role is similar to a Tournant: the applicant must be familiar with many roles in a working kitchen, but will not be the primary culinary manager. Personnel management in the kitchen and directly communicating with case workers and Apprentices outside of the kitchen is more important than food production in this job. We expect the role to be approximately 60% in kitchen training, 40% out-of-kitchen work like meetings, phone calls, and paperwork done with Apprentices and Referral Partners.

Candidate Qualifications

• Food service experience
  • 3+ years experience cooking as Lead Line Cook or higher level role
• Data entry and computer literacy 
• Self-starter
• Multi-tasker
• Highly organized
• Comfortable with ambiguity
• Commitment to systemic transformation

Other beneficial qualifications: Spanish fluency; lived experience of barriers to employment; urban agriculture experience; nonprofit management experience; customer service experience.

Relevant Experiences (Applicants should have some of the following but need not have all)

• Lived experience, professional coaching, training, and/or case management experience directly working with folks experiencing major barriers to employment (i.e. homelessness, incarceration)
• Managing teams, clients, and program partners
• Hands-on training and teaching
• Employment placement and workforce development 
• Knowledge of trauma-informed care
• Balancing culinary (in kitchen) and back office (out-of-kitchen/admin) roles

About Farming Hope

Farming Hope is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We are a farm-to-table culinary job training program that fosters community leaders in the food system. We offer transitional employment and on-the-job training in gardening and cooking through our social enterprise restaurant at Manny’s in San Francisco’s Mission District, our Community Meals commissary kitchen in the Dogpatch neighborhood, and our urban training garden in the Western Addition neighborhood. Our Apprentices overcome major barriers to employment, primarily experiencing homelessness or being formerly incarcerated.

Farming Hope is an equal opportunity employer. We enthusiastically accept our responsibility to make employment decisions without regard to race, religious creed, color, age, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, religion, marital status, medical condition as defined under State law, disability, military service, pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions or any other classification protected by federal, state, and/or local laws and ordinances.

At Farming Hope we have a clear vision to be a place where a diverse mix of talented people are able to learn, teach, and grow. Diversity is more than a commitment at Farming Hope—it is necessary to advance equity and inclusion for the Apprentices in our training program and our diners in the community.