Glossary

Executive Chef (Chef de Cuisine) (Head Chef) is in charge of all things related to the kitchen usually including menu creation, management, scheduling, and payroll of entire kitchen staff, ordering, and plating design. Chef de Cuisine is the traditional French term from which the English word chef comes, and is more common in European kitchens. Executive Chef is more common in the U.S. and England. Head Chef is often used to designate someone with the same duties as an executive chef, but there is usually someone in charge of them, possibly making the larger executive decisions such as direction of menu, final authority in staff management decisions, etc. This is often the case for chefs with several restaurants.

Sous Chef is the direct assistant of the Executive Chef and is second in command. They may be responsible for scheduling, and filling in when the executive chef is off-duty. The Sous Chef will also fill in for, or assist the Chef de Partie (line cook) when needed. Smaller operations may not have a Sous Chef, while larger operations may have multiple.

Chef de Partie, also known as a Station Chef or Line Cook, is in charge of a particular area of production. In large kitchens, each station chef might have several cooks and/or assistants. In most kitchens however, the station chef is the only worker in that department. Line cooks are often divided into a hierarchy of their own, starting with “First Cook”, then “Second Cook”, and so on as needed.

Station Chefs are part of the brigade system and may include the following:

Sauté Chef, (Saucier) is responsible for all sautéed items and their sauce. This is usually the highest position of all the stations.

Fish Chef, (Poissonier) prepares fish dishes and often does all fish butchering as well as appropriate sauces. This station may be combined with the saucier position.

Roast Chef, (Rotisseur) prepares roasted and braised meats and their appropriate sauce.

Grill Chef (Grillardin) prepares all grilled foods, this position may be combined with the rotisseur.

Fry Chef (Friturier) prepares all fried items, position may be combined with the rotisseur position.

Vegetable Chef (Entremetier) prepares hot appetizers and often prepares the soups, vegetables, pastas and starches. In a full brigade system a Potager would prepare soups and a Legumier would prepare vegetables.

Roundsman (Tournant) also referred to as a Swing Cook, fills in as needed on station in kitchen.

Pantry Chef (Garde Manger) is responsible for preparing cold foods, including salads, cold appetizers, pâtés and other charcuterie items.

Butcher (Boucher) butchers meats, poultry and sometimes fish. May also be responsible for breading meats and fish.

Pastry Chef (Pâtissier) prepares baked goods, pastries and desserts. In larger establishments, the Pastry Chef often supervises a separate team in their own kitchen or separate shop.

Commis is an Apprentice in larger kitchens that works under a Chef de Partie in order to learn the station’s responsibilities and operation.  This may be a Chef who has recently completed formal culinary training or is still undergoing training.

Restaurateur – a restaurant owner.  The wordsderives from the French verb restaurer, meaning “to restore”.

Hotel Manager. The Hotel Manager or hotelier is a person who handles the everyday function and management of a hotel. Larger hotels often have management teams, instead of individual managers, where each member of the group begins to specialize on a certain area of interest.

Restaurant Manager is responsible for: 1. Floor Management, 2. Kitchen Management and 3. Administration in a restaurant business.

1. ‘Floor Management’ includes managing staff who give services to customers and allocate the duties of opening and closing restaurant. The manager is responsible for making sure his or her staff is following the service standards and health and safety regulations. The manager is the most important person in the front-of-the-house environment, since it is up to him or her to motivate the staff and give them job satisfaction. The manager also looks after and guides the personal well-being of the staff, since it makes the work force stronger and more profitable.

2. ‘Kitchen Management’ includes the managing staff working in the kitchen, especially the head chef. The kitchen is the most important part of the business and the main reason customers patronize the restaurant. Managing the kitchen staff helps to control food quality. As most commercial kitchens are a closed environment, the staff may become bored or tired from the work. Without proper management, this often results in an inconsistent food product.

3. ‘Administration’ includes stock controlling, scheduling rotations, budgeting the labor costs, balancing cost and profit according to seasonality, surveying and hiring staff, and maintenance of the commercial kitchen equipment.

Maître d’ (short for maître d’hôtel, in the original French, literally “master of the hotel”) in a suitably staffed restaurant or hotel is the person in charge of assigning customers to tables in the establishment and dividing the dining area into areas of responsibility for the various servers on duty. He or she may also be the person who receives and records reservations for dining, as well as dealing with any customer complaints. It is also their duty to make sure that all the servers are completing their tasks in an efficient manner. In small restaurants, the post is also known as the headwaiter or host. This term originated from medieval courts, where the holder was an important courtier, like Olivier de la Marche in 15th century Burgundy.

Sommelier, or wine steward, is a trained and knowledgeable wine professional, commonly working in fine restaurants, who specializes in all aspects of wine service. The role is more specialized and informed than that of a wine waiter.  The principal work of a sommelier is in the area of wine procurement, storage, wine cellar rotation, and to provide expert advice to customers.  A sommelier may also be responsible for the development of wine lists and for the delivery of wine service and training for the other restaurant staff. Working along with the culinary team, they pair and suggest wines that will best complement each particular food menu item. This entails the necessity for a deep knowledge of how food and wine, beer, spirits and other beverages work in harmony. It could be argued that the role of a sommelier in fine dining today is strategically on par with that of the executive chef or chef de cuisine. A professional sommelier also works on the floor of the restaurant and is in direct contact with restaurant patrons. The sommelier has a responsibility to work within the taste preference and budget parameters of the patron.

Concierge. In hotels, a concierge assists guests with various tasks like making restaurant reservations, arranging for spa services, recommending nightclubs, finding escorts, procurement of tickets to special events and assisting with various travel arrangements and tours of interesting places to visit. In upscale establishments, a concierge is often expected to “achieve the impossible”, dealing with any request a guest may have, no matter how strange, relying on an extensive list of personal contacts with various local merchants and service providers.

Recruitment: Employee recruitment forms a major part of an organization’s overall resourcing strategies which seek to identify and secure the people needed for the organization to survive and succeed in the short to medium-term. Recruitment activities need to be responsive to the ever-increasingly competitive market to secure suitably qualified and capable recruits at all levels. To be effective these initiatives need to include how and when to source the best recruits internally or externally. Common to the success of either are; well-defined organizational structures with sound job design, robust task and person specification and versatile selection processes, reward, employment relations and human resource policies, underpinned by a commitment for strong employer branding and employee engagement strategies.  Increasingly, securing the best quality candidates for almost all organizations will rely, at least occasionally if not substantially, on external recruitment methods. Rapid changing business models demand skills of experiences which cannot be sourced or rapidly enough developed from the existing employee base. It would be unusual for an organization today to undertake all aspects of the recruitment process without support from third-party dedicated recruitment firms. This may involve a range of support services, such as; provision of CVs or resumes, identifying recruitment media, advertisement design and media placement for job vacancies, candidate response handling, short listing, conducting aptitude testing, preliminary interviews or reference and qualification verification. Typically, small organizations may not have in-house resources or, in common with larger organizations, may not possess the particular skill-set required to undertake a specific recruitment assignment. Where requirements arise these will be referred on an adhoc basis to government job centres or commercially run employment agencies.  Except in sectors where high-volume recruitment is the norm, an organization faced with an unexpected requirement for an unusually large number of new recruits at short notice will often hand over the task to a specialist external recruiter to manage the end-to-end resourcing program. Sourcing executive-level and senior management as well as the acquisition of scarce or ‘high-potential’ recruits has been a long-established market serviced by a wide range of ‘search and selection’ or ‘headhunting’ consultancies which typically form long-standing relationships with their client organizations. Finally, certain organizations with sophisticated HR practices have identified there is a strategic advantage in outsourcing complete responsibility for all workforce procurement to one or more third-party recruitment agencies or consultancies. In the most sophisticated of these arrangements the external recruitment services provider may not only physically locate, or ‘embed’, their resourcing team(s) within the client organization’s offices but will work in tandem with the senior human resource management team in developing the longer-term HR resourcing strategy and plan.

A recruiter is someone engaging in recruitment, which is the solicitation of individuals to fill jobs or positions. Recruiters can be divided into two groups; those working internally for one organization, and those working for multiple clients in a third-party broker relationship, sometimes called headhunters or agency recruiters.

Executive Search: An executive search firm is a type of employment agency that specializes in recruiting executive personnel for companies in various industries. Executive search agents/professionals who typically have a wide range of personal contacts within the area in question, a detailed specific knowledge of said area, and typically operate at the most senior level. Executive search professionals are also involved throughout more of the hiring process, conducting detailed interviews as well as only presenting candidates to clients where they feel the candidate in question will fit into the employment culture of the client. Executive search agencies typically have long-lasting relationships with clients spanning many years, and in such cases the suitability of candidates is paramount. It is also important that such agencies operate with a high level of professionalism.

Human resources is a term used to refer to how people are managed by organizations. The field has moved from a traditionally administrative function to a strategic one that recognizes the link between talented and engaged people and organizational success.