Company description

Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, widely recognized as one of New York’s premier human services providers, is a 123-year-old settlement house that provides an extensive array of effective and integrated services – social, educational, legal, health, housing, mental health, nutritional and fitness –which significantly improve the lives of 15,000 people in need each year on the East Side of Manhattan. Our clients range in age from 3 to 103 and include older adults, homeless and formerly homeless adults, children and families, recent immigrants, disabled persons, adult learners and thousands more. For more information on Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, please visit our website at www.lenoxhill.org.

Lenox Hill Neighborhood House’s model farm-to-institution program serves 350,000 fresh, healthy and delicious meals a year to thousands of low-income New Yorkers. We use more than 90% fresh produce and serve 70,000 pounds of locally-sourced produce and grains each year. For many of our clients, Lenox Hill Neighborhood House is their primary source for meals. Our kitchen is open 365 days a year, preparing and serving breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks to the 3-5 years olds in our Early Childhood Center, the 5-11 year olds in our after school program and summer camp, the women in our shelter and the older adults that we serve in our two senior centers.

Our food services have generated significant interest. We have been featured in The New York Times and regularly present at conferences and provide tours to food policy makers, funders and peers. To expand the impact of our farm-to-institution work, in 2015 we launched The Teaching Kitchen at Lenox Hill Neighborhood House (http://www.lenoxhill.org/teachingkitchen). This nonprofit food business course and training and technical assistance program works to share our model and help other nonprofit organizations to convert their institutional food programs program to a farm-to-institution model – without raising costs. Our goals are to improve low-income New Yorkers’ access to and use of fresh, healthy and local food and to localize New York’s institutional food systems to improve the regions’ health, economy and sustainability.

We have come a long way, but now want to do even more.

Job description

We are looking for an innovative, ambitious, and mission-conscious Executive Chef to help take our program to the next level – to implement even more innovations in our menus and our methods, to expand our use of fresh, healthy and local food and to design more creative and diverse menus to improve our client’s lives and support their health. We seek a leader with vision, creativity, experience and drive to lead a talented food services staff of 11, including a Sous Chef, to interact with a wide-range of stakeholders and to function as one the public faces of our program to expand our leadership role through partnerships and presentations, sharing our model and best practices.

The Executive Chef will oversee all food ordering, as well as preparation and delivery of all meals. The ideal candidate will be comfortable with technology and utilizing data systems to track food costs and quantity. The Executive Chef must also evaluate costs, negotiate prices with vendors and develop relationships with potential new sourcing opportunities. The Executive Chef must be able to comply with all government requirements relating to the making and distribution of food and be certified, or become certified, to make and serve food in New York City.

The new Executive Chef will also lead and organize regular professional development workshops for food services staff, work with the Deputy Chief Program Officer and The Teaching Kitchen Chef to train other nonprofit organizations on our model and develop and provide nutritional programming and healthy food workshops for our clients. The Executive Chef will also collaborate with staff from the Early Childhood Center in utilizing our Green Roof and Garden to help our children learn about healthy food and science.

The Executive Chef will report to the Deputy Chief Program Officer and the Chief Operating Officer and will also work closely with The Teaching Kitchen Chef to further integrate the food services and training programs. S/he must be effective at analyzing existing programs, assessing the quality of the delivery of the work and be able to implement recommended improvements to improve our work.   The Executive Chef will report on outcomes and information needed both by Lenox Hill Neighborhood House as well as for outside funders (public and private), and must be comfortable communicating and advocating for relevant concerns. In addition, the Executive Chef should be skilled at working closely with funders, researchers, community organizations and other outside stakeholders to best meet the needs of our clients and to expand the impact of our program.  

We are interested in talking with candidates with a commitment and passion for healthy, local, sustainable food and significant experience in food production – ideally with some time as a chef. Demonstrated ability to lead existing teams and to work in a complex environment is key. The Executive Chef must be a charismatic professional with strong management skills, as well as excellent organizational and interpersonal skills to work effectively with many of diverse backgrounds to bring Lenox Hill Neighborhood House to its next level of excellence. A very competitive compensation package will be provided to the successful candidate.

Compensation

this position is: salaried, 50k to 100k

Application instructions

Deadline

no deadline