Lead, Chef Development & Operations

This position is on – site in our Royal Caribbean Headquarters 1050

Journey with us! Combine your career goals and sense of adventure by joining our exciting team of employees. Royal Caribbean Group is pleased to offer competitive compensation and benefits package, and excellent career development opportunities, each offering unique ways to explore the world.

The Royal Caribbean Group’s Celebrity F&B team has an exciting career opportunity for a full-time Lead, Chef Development & Operations reporting to our Director, Culinary Development.

Position Summary

This position is responsible for providing functional leadership and support in the Celebrity onboard culinary operation to ensure the highest level of guest satisfaction in all areas. This includes supporting the development of all company standards and ensuring they are being adhered to in daily operations as well as concept development, culinary strategy and input of all culinary design, innovation and food cost control. 

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

• Collaborate on all culinary creation, culinary concept development, recipe costing, and ideation.
• Support implementation efforts for new concepts across the fleet while partnering with Product Development and Culinary Leadership.
• Reinforce efforts for upcoming waste management program, all aspects including but not limited to data upkeep, tracking and waste reduction solutions and guidelines.  
• Collaborate on upcoming projects such as Project Frontier, Nirvana, XC1 EU, XC2, Revites, and other future brand endeavors.
• Participates in the identification, design, development, creation, and testing of product prototypes.
• Collaborate with culinary team to create recipes that can scale up for both limited introductions and fleet product launches for celebrity brand operations support.
• Develop rapid prototypes to explore with consumers in real time environments.
• Help support the development of raw materials with procurement and finished goods.
• Lead scale-up trials of products and partner with ship leadership to train on any new processes.
• Work closely with Culinary Leadership on new products and technical characteristics and troubleshoot ingredient performance through gold standard evaluations.
• Involvement in numerous projects simultaneously.
• Creatively solve technical problems in a rapid, efficient manner.
• Assist in pipeline prioritization and technical assessment of future innovation projects and ideas.
• Collaborate with Product Development, Food & Beverage, and Operations in the innovative product development process of all types of products and cuisines.
• Develop menu items to eliminate slow moving inventory and other continuous improvement projects.
• Ensure to project manage all projects to accurately report product development activities and timelines to key team members.
• Plays a key role with Gold Standard evaluations and look for non-conformities and alert procurement.
• Perform other duties as required or assigned which are reasonably within the scope of this role.
• Write detailed recipes and SOPs, documents, and perform costing analysis with all new recipes.
• Assists and develops recommendations and leads to change efforts for new items and continuous improvement of current menu/items.
• Conducts the day-to-day activities in the Test Kitchen along with coordinating any food tastings and product reviews.
• Responsible for all culinary photography, media and video
• Responsible for USPH scores and upholding food safety standards
• All onboard culinary training and SOP creation. 
• Supervises and offers guidance on all culinary components for groups and charters.    
• Creation an oversight of special menus implementation within the fleet  
• New culinary initiative and concept development  
• Oversees crew food program.  
• Attends designated food and equipment shows as approved by VP of Food and Beverage.  
• Conducts culinary taskforce assignments as needed.   
• Leads and manages the Global Culinary Demonstrations and Activations in Designated Marketing events. Traveling as requested by VP, FB ops.  
• Is responsible for any fleet galley design-related equipment.  

Performs other duties as required. This job description in no way states or implies that these are the only duties to be performed by the employee occupying this position. Employees will be required to perform any other job-related duties assigned by their supervisor or management.  

Qualifications and Education

• 5-7 years of culinary management experience, preferably in a high volume, 4- or 5-star resort, cruise line, hotel or restaurant.
• 2 years’ multi-unit experience culinary management experience is preferred.
• Bachelor’s degree in culinary arts or related education and/or certification is preferable but not necessary. To successfully adhere to the responsibilities stated, this individual must be prepared to travel as needed, appx 15-25% of the time.  

Knowledge and Skills

• Must be highly motivated, accomplishing tasks quickly and accurately. Ability to write reports which are clear and concise, outlining solutions and recommendation of actions.   
• Must have excellent business acumen, and excellent organization skills.   
• Must possess excellent interpersonal skills to communicate with all levels of employees. Analytical thinking is a plus.

Financial Responsibilities

• Direct responsibility for leading new concepts creation and menu development that achieve targeted profitability as well as the full fleet food cost of over 250M+ annually.  

Working Conditions 

The physical demands described here are representative of those requirements employees must meet to perform the essential functions of this job with or without reasonable accommodation.  While performing job functions the employee is regularly required to sit, stand, write, review and type reports, compile data, operate a pc, communicate, listen, and assess information. The employee may move about the office complex, may travel to other office locations and may lift, push, pull or move 10 - 15 pounds. Visual requirements include distant, close and color vision, and ability to adjust focus. Work Environment: The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of the job. The environment includes work inside/outside the office. 

Working Conditions

Ability to read and comprehend instructions, correspondence and memos. Ability to communicate effectively with various departments within the organization, both shipboard and shore side. Excellent interpersonal skills.  Ability to build, challenge and develop a high caliber team both shoreside and shipboard.

Travel up to 25% of the time. The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of the job. The environment includes work inside/outside the office, travel to other offices, possibly travel domestic and international, and work in shipboard functions. A high noise level is possible if visiting shipboard.

We know there's a lot to consider. As you go through the application process, our recruiters will be glad to provide guidance, and more relevant details to answer any additional questions. Thank you again for your interest in Royal Caribbean Group.  

It is the policy of the Company to ensure equal employment and promotion opportunity to qualified candidates without discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, sexuality, gender identity or expression, marital status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Royal Caribbean Group and each of its subsidiaries prohibit and will not tolerate discrimination or harassment.