About the Company
We are a premium, high-volume specialty food market focused on exceptional products, elevated hospitality, health and wellness, and an outstanding customer experience.
Our markets combine the quality and creativity of a best-in-class bakery and pastry operation with the standards, merchandising, and operational discipline of a luxury food retailer.
We are seeking experienced Pastry Chefs who are passionate about exceptional ingredients, beautiful presentation, innovation, consistency, and producing premium products at volume.
Previous pastry experience with Erewhon Market is strongly preferred.
The Position
The Pastry Chef is responsible for leading daily pastry and bakery production while maintaining exceptional standards for quality, consistency, presentation, food safety, and execution.
This is a hands-on leadership position for a chef who is equally comfortable developing products, leading production, managing a team, and maintaining strong operational and financial controls.
The ideal candidate understands how to create elevated, highly marketable pastry products while successfully operating within a fast-paced, high-volume production environment.
Responsibilities
- Lead all aspects of daily pastry and bakery production.
- Produce and oversee a wide range of premium pastries, cakes, cookies, breads, desserts, breakfast items, and seasonal specialties.
- Maintain exceptional standards for flavor, texture, consistency, freshness, and presentation.
- Develop innovative products that align with current food, wellness, lifestyle, and consumer trends.
- Create visually compelling products that perform well in a premium retail environment.
- Maintain a hands-on presence throughout production and ensure recipes and standards are followed consistently.
- Recruit, train, coach, and develop pastry cooks, bakers, and production employees.
- Build a culture of accountability, urgency, teamwork, craftsmanship, and continuous improvement.
- Establish clear production systems, prep lists, pars, timelines, and quality-control procedures.
- Manage daily production levels based on sales, business volume, seasonality, and customer demand.
- Analyze sales performance and identify opportunities for new products, improved merchandising, and increased revenue.
- Manage food cost, labor, purchasing, inventory, waste, and production efficiency.
- Maintain accurate recipe costing, portion controls, and production standards.
- Monitor ingredient quality, ordering, receiving, storage, rotation, and availability.
- Minimize overproduction, spoilage, and waste while maintaining strong in-stock conditions.
- Partner with culinary, prepared foods, grocery, merchandising, and operations teams.
- Collaborate on product launches, seasonal menus, special events, promotions, and new initiatives.
- Maintain a clean, organized, safe, and highly efficient pastry kitchen.
- Ensure all food safety, sanitation, allergen, labeling, and regulatory standards are followed.
- Stay current on pastry, bakery, wellness, ingredient, and consumer trends.
- Take full ownership of product quality and pastry department performance.
Qualifications
- 3+ years of pastry leadership experience in a premium bakery, specialty food market, high-end restaurant, luxury hotel, high-volume production kitchen, or comparable operation.
- Previous pastry experience with Erewhon Market is strongly preferred.
- Experience with premium grocery and specialty food concepts will also be considered.
- Strong technical foundation in pastry and baking.
- Experience producing high-quality products at significant volume.
- Proven ability to lead, train, motivate, and develop pastry teams.
- Strong understanding of production planning, pars, ordering, inventory, food cost, labor, waste, and operational efficiency.
- Experience creating products that are both visually compelling and commercially successful.
- Strong recipe development, standardization, and costing skills.
- Excellent attention to detail and consistency.
- Genuine passion for premium ingredients, pastry, baking, health, wellness, and emerging food trends.
- Strong communication, organizational, and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to remain calm, organized, and productive in a fast-paced environment.
- Comfortable working early mornings, weekends, and holidays as required.
The Ideal Candidate
You are equal parts pastry chef, creative developer, and production leader.
You understand that an exceptional product has to do more than look beautiful. It has to taste great, remain consistent, be produced efficiently, and perform commercially.
You notice when a dough is slightly off, when presentation is inconsistent, when production is falling behind, or when a product has the potential to become a customer favorite.
You are creative, but you also understand structure, systems, and numbers.
You can develop an exciting new pastry item and then build the recipe, training, production process, costing, and quality controls required to execute it consistently at volume.
You bring high standards without unnecessary ego and understand how to create a positive, disciplined, and inspiring kitchen culture.
Most importantly, you love making exceptional products and developing a team that takes genuine pride in its work.
Preferred Background
Previous pastry experience with Erewhon Market is strongly preferred.
We are especially interested in chefs who understand the quality, presentation, production volume, wellness focus, merchandising, and customer expectations of a premium specialty market.
Relevant backgrounds may also include:
- Erewhon Market
- Whole Foods Market
- Bristol Farms
- Lazy Acres
- Citarella
- Eataly
- Gelson’s Markets
- Central Market
- High-end bakeries
- Luxury hotels
- Premium restaurant groups
- Large-scale artisan production bakeries
- Hospitality-driven specialty retailers
Exceptional pastry chefs from high-end restaurants, bakeries, hotels, and commissary operations may also be considered if they have strong experience managing teams, production volume, quality control, food cost, and product development.
Pay: $80,000.00 - $100,000.00 per year
Benefits:
Work Location: In person
