A lead cook is an essential member of the kitchen staff. Working under the supervision of a Head Chef, lead cooks prepare simple dishes such as soups, salads, sauces, and entrees. Just like any other kitchen staff, the lead cook also contributes to keeping a clean working area and adheres to the kitchen's safety regulations.
Cleaning and preparing ingredients, plating and garnishing meals is also the privilege of the lead cook, as well as supervising the work of line cooks who are below them in the kitchen hierarchy. Keeping cooking stations stocked with ingredients and clean equipment is also the lead cook's task.
This is a full-time job with long hours that desperately needs your passion in order to keep at it for long. Working over the weekends and nights will be a regular thing, and the job is high-paced and stressful. If you are in love with food; however, and wish to dedicate your life to preparing it, this is an excellent position to learn all the secrets you need.
How to Become a Lead Cook
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a lead cook. For example, did you know that they make an average of $16.36 an hour? That's $34,031 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 Lead Cook Do
There are certain skills that many lead 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 comprehension, dexterity and physical stamina.
How To Become a Lead Cook
If you're interested in becoming a lead cook, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 17.4% of lead cooks have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 1.2% of lead cooks have master's degrees. Even though some lead 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 lead cook. When we researched the most common majors for a lead cook, we found that they most commonly earn associate degree degrees or high school diploma degrees. Other degrees that we often see on lead cook resumes include bachelor's degree degrees or diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a lead cook. In fact, many lead cook jobs require experience in a role such as cook. Meanwhile, many lead cooks also have previous career experience in roles such as line cook or sous chef.
Lead 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 kitchen manager you might progress to a role such as general manager eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title district manager.
Average Salary for a Lead Cook
What Am I Worth?
Top Skills For a Lead 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, 17.7% of lead cooks listed customer service on their resume, but soft skills such as comprehension and dexterity are important as well.
Choose From 10+ Customizable Lead Cook Resume templates
Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Lead Cook templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Lead Cook resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.
Lead Cook Demographics
Lead Cook Gender Distribution
After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
- Among lead cooks, 27.4% of them are women, while 72.6% are men.
- The most common race/ethnicity among lead cooks is White, which makes up 60.7% of all lead cooks.
- The most common foreign language among lead cooks is Spanish at 60.6%.
Online Courses For Lead Cook That You May Like
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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 th...
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Best States For a Lead Cook
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a lead cook. The best states for people in this position are Massachusetts, Hawaii, Alaska, and Connecticut. Lead cooks make the most in Massachusetts with an average salary of $47,573. Whereas in Hawaii and Alaska, they would average $46,690 and $46,363, respectively. While lead cooks would only make an average of $46,072 in Connecticut, 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
$46,363
Avg. Salary
2. Pennsylvania
$37,861
Avg. Salary
3. Hawaii
$46,690
Avg. Salary
How Do Lead Cook Rate Their Jobs?
Top Lead Cook Employers
Most Common Employers For Lead Cook
| Rank | Company | Average Salary | Hourly Rate | Job Openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aramark | $38,960 | $18.73 | 359 |
| 2 | Marriott International | $34,679 | $16.67 | 86 |
| 3 | Pizza Hut | $34,031 | $16.36 | 323 |
| 4 | SAGE Dining Services | $31,189 | $14.99 | 82 |
| 5 | Compass Group USA | $30,872 | $14.84 | 64 |
| 6 | Panda Express | $30,328 | $14.58 | 70 |
| 7 | Cracker Barrel | $30,018 | $14.43 | 94 |
| 8 | Applebee's Canada | $29,584 | $14.22 | 98 |
| 9 | Ruby Tuesday | $29,574 | $14.22 | 90 |
| 10 | IHOP | $29,421 | $14.14 | 61 |
Lead Cook Videos
