A kitchen cook is someone who works in a kitchen and prepares delicious food to feed hungry customers. While most kitchen cooks work in restaurants, they can also work in school cafeterias, hospitals, or other places where people need to be fed. They usually follow the direction of a chef, who is the head of a kitchen and creates the menu.
It goes without saying that kitchen cooks need to be good at cooking food. However, cooking in a busy kitchen requires some additional skills than when you're just whipping up a tasty sauce at home. Kitchen cooks need to be able to work quickly in a confined, crowded space to serve many customers. They also need to follow strict safety regulations so that their kitchen doesn't get shut down by government inspectors.
There are many paths to becoming a kitchen cook. Some cooks choose to get a bachelor's degree or go to culinary school. However, most work their way up to this position with practical restaurant experience alone. Cooks only earn an average salary of $26,674 and spend many long hours working on their feet, but for many, the satisfaction of preparing good food for customers is worth the work.
What is a Kitchen Cook?
What Does a Kitchen Cook Do
There are certain skills that many kitchen cooks have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed sense of taste and smell, dexterity and physical stamina.
How To Become a Kitchen Cook
If you're interested in becoming a kitchen cook, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 20.5% of kitchen cooks have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 1.8% of kitchen cooks have master's degrees. Even though some kitchen cooks have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Kitchen Cook Career Paths
In addition to switching up your job search, it might prove helpful to look at a career path for your specific job. Now, what's a career path you ask? Well, it's practically a map that shows how you might advance from one job title to another. Our career paths are especially detailed with salary changes. So, for example, if you started out with the role of cook you might progress to a role such as sous chef eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title general manager.
Average Salary for a Kitchen Cook
What Am I Worth?
Roles and Types of Kitchen Cook
The role of a kitchen cook includes a wide range of responsibilities. These responsibilities can vary based on an individual's specific job, company, or industry.Here are some general kitchen cook responsibilities:
- Provides fast, friendly, professional and responsive customer service to culinary team members
- Sets up and breaks down work stations maintains a clean
- Trains employees; plans, assigns and directs work; appraises performance; rewards
There are several types of kitchen cook, including:
Cook
Role:
So, get this - as a cook, you'll spend a lot of your time cooking. Crazy, we know. But that's not all you'll be doing. In addition to the food actually being cooked properly, most people like it to be seasoned. Between the preparation and seasoning, this is where you get to be creative.
When you think of a cook, you probably think of a restaurant setting but in actuality, cooks are needed in a lot of different places, this includes schools, hospitals, and even private households. One thing that is consistent is the inconsistent schedule.
Sometimes you'll work a night shift, other times you'll work super early in the morning. You may even have to work on a holiday. And don't be surprised with a weekend shift. The good news is that formal education isn't really necessary. Sometimes culinary creativity comes naturally.
- Average Salary: $31,803
- Degree: High School Diploma
Line Cook
Role:
As a sort of in-charge person, line cooks definitely have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders. While you might think the head chef does most of the heavy lifting, think again. The majority of the food is prepared by the line cook.
Now, the head chef, or even the sous chef, give line cooks the direction they need to make the food. Typically, as a line cook, you'll have a particular place in the kitchen that you'll look after. Like, maybe you'll get assigned to the grill, and then you'll be in charge of everything at the grill. Or you might be assigned to the veggie prep area.
Wherever you are assigned, you should be prepared to work some crazy hours. Since you're preparing the food, you'll need at least an hour, if not two, to get everything ready. Once your line is prepped, then you're ready to take on your shift. With that extra 1-2 hours, you'll probably be working around 8-10 hours a shift.
- Average Salary: $32,894
- Degree: High School Diploma
Prep Cook
Role:
Under the direction of a head chef, you'll know exactly what to prepare for as a prep cook. It is essentially your job to make sure the food and kitchen area is prepped for the creation of delicious meals.
Typically, this is a part-time job. But you might be able to find a full-time position somewhere. In your position, you'll be working in a restaurant, hotel, or another establishment that serves food.
As a prep cook, you won't need much education to get by. In fact, the position doesn't require any formal education, but you will need to go through some training, once you're hired. And when we say training, we mean several weeks of on-the-job training. By the end of it, you'll be a sharp prep cook, ready to slice and dice.
- Average Salary: $32,292
- Degree: High School Diploma
States With The Most Kitchen Cook Jobs
Mouse over a state to see the number of active kitchen cook jobs in each state. The darker areas on the map show where kitchen cooks earn the highest salaries across all 50 states.
Number Of Kitchen Cook Jobs By State
| Rank | State | Number of Jobs | Average Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas | 6,329 | $26,597 |
| 2 | Florida | 5,157 | $26,089 |
| 3 | California | 4,641 | $33,143 |
| 4 | Ohio | 2,760 | $31,796 |
| 5 | Illinois | 2,637 | $35,317 |
| 6 | Pennsylvania | 2,490 | $25,462 |
| 7 | Georgia | 2,456 | $23,767 |
| 8 | North Carolina | 2,426 | $24,746 |
| 9 | New York | 2,044 | $33,345 |
| 10 | Tennessee | 1,942 | $26,139 |
| 11 | Michigan | 1,871 | $27,600 |
| 12 | Indiana | 1,782 | $29,127 |
| 13 | Virginia | 1,713 | $25,760 |
| 14 | Missouri | 1,692 | $30,227 |
| 15 | Arizona | 1,550 | $34,449 |
| 16 | Colorado | 1,445 | $31,824 |
| 17 | Minnesota | 1,406 | $31,834 |
| 18 | New Jersey | 1,286 | $37,536 |
| 19 | Maryland | 1,220 | $29,506 |
| 20 | Massachusetts | 1,218 | $40,182 |
| 21 | South Carolina | 1,155 | $26,856 |
| 22 | Kentucky | 1,102 | $23,494 |
| 23 | Wisconsin | 1,056 | $33,876 |
| 24 | Oklahoma | 1,036 | $24,287 |
| 25 | Louisiana | 977 | $23,045 |
| 26 | Alabama | 976 | $23,591 |
| 27 | Washington | 919 | $38,697 |
| 28 | Kansas | 865 | $29,428 |
| 29 | Arkansas | 770 | $25,215 |
| 30 | Iowa | 767 | $27,865 |
| 31 | Utah | 706 | $31,393 |
| 32 | Mississippi | 668 | $21,797 |
| 33 | Oregon | 595 | $36,561 |
| 34 | Connecticut | 589 | $39,264 |
| 35 | Nevada | 488 | $32,506 |
| 36 | New Mexico | 426 | $26,830 |
| 37 | Nebraska | 415 | $28,853 |
| 38 | Idaho | 318 | $34,042 |
| 39 | West Virginia | 318 | $23,336 |
| 40 | New Hampshire | 260 | $30,881 |
| 41 | Maine | 227 | $32,837 |
| 42 | Montana | 227 | $28,403 |
| 43 | Delaware | 185 | $30,892 |
| 44 | Rhode Island | 161 | $31,790 |
| 45 | North Dakota | 158 | $33,344 |
| 46 | Alaska | 150 | $33,927 |
| 47 | Wyoming | 135 | $28,597 |
| 48 | South Dakota | 125 | $29,728 |
| 49 | Hawaii | 103 | $36,726 |
| 50 | Vermont | 93 | $33,797 |
Top Skills For a Kitchen Cook
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 12.8% of kitchen cooks listed dishes on their resume, but soft skills such as sense of taste and smell and dexterity are important as well.
Choose From 10+ Customizable Kitchen Cook Resume templates
Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Kitchen Cook templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Kitchen Cook resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.
Kitchen Cook diversity
Kitchen Cook Gender Distribution
After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
- Among kitchen cooks, 34.2% of them are women, while 65.8% are men.
- The most common race/ethnicity among kitchen cooks is White, which makes up 58.8% of all kitchen cooks.
- The most common foreign language among kitchen cooks is Spanish at 58.4%.
Online Courses For Kitchen Cook That You May Like
1. Cooking for Busy Healthy People
Cooking is one of the most powerful ways in which we can optimize our enjoyment of great quality food while protecting our health. Even on a tight budget, cooking can be a cost-effective, joyful and rewarding way to love the food that will love us back for a lifetime. In this course, you’ll learn some basic recipes from a home cook and two professional chefs who prioritize healthful eating. You’ll also learn some of the fundamentals of principle-based cooking that can help you break free from...
2. Introduction to Food and Our Environment
This course is designed to help learners around the world become more sustainable eaters. Course videos can be watched in any order. Feel free to explore special areas of interest by skipping ahead and coming back to less familiar topics at a later stage. Together, we’ll explore key topics, like how food production impacts the environment and why meat production and protein consumption are often at the center of the debate around sustainability. We’ll introduce the pros and cons of different...
3. Fun food safety and sanitation course
The food safety course will help prepare you for safely working in a kitchen and food handler tests like Servesafe...
Best States For a Kitchen Cook
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a kitchen cook. The best states for people in this position are Massachusetts, Connecticut, Washington, and New Jersey. Kitchen cooks make the most in Massachusetts with an average salary of $40,182. Whereas in Connecticut and Washington, they would average $39,264 and $38,697, respectively. While kitchen cooks would only make an average of $37,536 in New Jersey, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. Arizona
$34,449
Avg. Salary
2. Connecticut
$39,264
Avg. Salary
3. Massachusetts
$40,182
Avg. Salary
How Do Kitchen Cooks Rate Their Jobs?
Top Kitchen Cook Employers
Most Common Employers For Kitchen Cook
| Rank | Company | Average Salary | Hourly Rate | Job Openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hy-Vee | $34,210 | $16.45 | 24 |
| 2 | PeaceHealth | $33,186 | $15.95 | 23 |
| 3 | Bob Evans Restaurants | $31,260 | $15.03 | 36 |
| 4 | Mother's Market & Kitchen | $30,884 | $14.85 | 12 |
| 5 | The Ritz-Carlton Hotel | $30,776 | $14.80 | 12 |
| 6 | Chuck E. Cheese | $29,302 | $14.09 | 38 |
| 7 | Casey's | $28,916 | $13.90 | 29 |
| 8 | Dairy Queen | $28,157 | $13.54 | 27 |
| 9 | Burger King | $27,950 | $13.44 | 89 |
| 10 | Culver's | $27,936 | $13.43 | 13 |
Kitchen Cook Videos
