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.
Kitchen Cook Overview
Kitchen Cook Careers
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a kitchen cook. For example, did you know that they make an average of $12.79 an hour? That's $26,595 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 11% and produce 282,000 job opportunities across the U.S.
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.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a kitchen cook, we found that a lot of resumes listed 30.7% of kitchen cooks included menu items, while 14.9% of resumes included dishes, and 9.5% of resumes included kitchen equipment. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the kitchen cook job title. But what industry to start with? Most kitchen cooks actually find jobs in the hospitality and retail industries.
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 15.7% of kitchen cooks have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 1.4% 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.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a kitchen cook. When we researched the most common majors for a kitchen cook, we found that they most commonly earn high school diploma degrees or associate degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on kitchen cook resumes include bachelor's degree degrees or diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a kitchen cook. In fact, many kitchen cook jobs require experience in a role such as cashier. Meanwhile, many kitchen cooks also have previous career experience in roles such as cook or sales associate.
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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.
Kitchen Cook Jobs You Might Like
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Average Salary for a Kitchen Cook
Best Paying Cities
Recently Added Salaries
Job TitleCompany  | Company | Start Date | Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
Mother's Market & Kitchen Kitchen Cook Kitchen Cook | Mother's Market & Kitchen Mother's Market & Kitchen | 05/31/2021 05/31/2021 | $31,30505/31/2021 $31,305 |
Buffalo Wild Wings Kitchen Team Member/Cook Kitchen Team Member/Cook | Buffalo Wild Wings Buffalo Wild Wings | 05/28/2021 05/28/2021 | $29,21805/28/2021 $29,218 |
Mother's Market & Kitchen Kitchen Cook Kitchen Cook | Mother's Market & Kitchen Mother's Market & Kitchen | 05/26/2021 05/26/2021 | $31,30505/26/2021 $31,305 |
Joy Hill Denver Pizza Kitchen Cooks Pizza Kitchen Cooks | Joy Hill Denver Joy Hill Denver | 05/26/2021 05/26/2021 | $37,56605/26/2021 $37,566 |
Portillo's Cook/Kitchen Cook/Kitchen | Portillo's Portillo's | 05/25/2021 05/25/2021 | $27,13105/25/2021 $27,131 |
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Kitchen Cook Resumes
Designing and figuring out what to include on your resume can be tough, not to mention time-consuming. That's why we put together a guide that is designed to help you craft the perfect resume for becoming a Kitchen Cook. If you're needing extra inspiration, take a look through our selection of templates that are specific to your job.
Learn How To Write a Kitchen Cook Resume
At Zippia, we went through countless Kitchen Cook resumes and compiled some information about how best to optimize them. Here are some suggestions based on what we found, divided by the individual sections of the resume itself.
View Detailed InformationOnline Courses For Kitchen Cook That You May Like
Food and Customer Service Skills Training...
Everyday reports of food scandals and recalls are published. One day it’s scary bacteria in meat, and another day it’s dangerous pesticides in fruits. According to some, meat needs to be cooked well to prevent food-borne illness while others warn not to heat food to prevent the formation of poisonous substances. Many consumers worry about the conflicting and confusing messages about food hazards. This nutrition and health course will teach you about the risk factors associated with food and...
What’s living in your food? Many of the foods that we consume daily owe their distinct characteristics and flavors to microbes, specifically through a biochemical process of fermentation (using bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms to produce diverse foods). Gourmands and everyday consumers can quickly name some of the most popular fermented foods we consume—beer, yogurt, pickles—but, what about that coffee you drank this morning, or the chocolate bar you are saving for later? Through...
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, 30.7% of kitchen cooks listed menu items on their resume, but soft skills such as sense of taste and smell and dexterity are important as well.
- Menu Items, 30.7%
- Dishes, 14.9%
- Kitchen Equipment, 9.5%
- Customer Service, 7.8%
- Food Products, 7.3%
- Other Skills, 29.8% See All Kitchen Cook Skills
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 Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, and California. Kitchen cooks make the most in Hawaii with an average salary of $40,254. Whereas in Alaska and Washington, they would average $36,834 and $34,801, respectively. While kitchen cooks would only make an average of $32,669 in California, 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. Alaska
$36,834
Avg. Salary
2. Nevada
$28,768
Avg. Salary
3. Hawaii
$40,254
Avg. Salary
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