Restaurant job profile: what should it include?

A restaurant job profile serves three purposes: hiring the right person, onboarding them without improvising, and managing them with criteria known in advance. To do that, it must contain the role's mission, its typical day, the standards to follow, the expected skills and the independence criteria. The rest is decoration.

The profile that was useless

A restaurant is looking for a sous chef. The existing profile runs to five lines: "Under the authority of the chef, ensures the smooth running of the kitchen. Rigorous, organized, team spirit." It was used to write the job ad, then filed away.

The candidate arrives, and everything is explained verbally. Three weeks later, he discovers he was also supposed to handle the week's orders, which nobody had told him. The chef thought it was obvious. The candidate thought it was the chef's business. No profile could have settled it, because none said who ordered what.

Why job profiles mean so little

They describe qualities, not work

"Rigorous" does not say what the person does at 9 a.m. A candidate cannot picture themselves in the job, and a manager cannot check anything.

They are written once, for hiring

After the hire, the role evolves and the profile stays frozen. It no longer says what really happens.

They are connected to nothing

The role's tasks are in the checklists, the training in another document, the skills in the chef's head. No link exists.

They hide the gray areas

Who covers for whom? Who decides to discard a product? The profile does not say, and the gray area stays a source of conflict.

The template to copy

Section	What goes in it	Example wording
Title and reporting line	The role, the location, who manages it	Sous chef, location 2, reports to the chef
Mission in one sentence	Why this role exists	Runs production and the kitchen in the chef's absence
Typical day	Tasks, time, duration	8:30 a.m.: receiving and checking deliveries, 30 min
Responsibilities and decisions	What the role decides alone, what it signs off	Decides to pull a non-compliant product
Standards to follow	Pointers to the role's procedures	Plating, food safety, opening, closing
Expected skills	Techniques, with the target level of independence	Runs the pass alone from the evening service
Planned training	Onboarding modules, duration, go-to person	Menu recipes, food safety, culture
Relationships	Who covers for this role, who it covers for	Covers for the chef when absent
End-of-probation criteria	Observable facts	Opens alone, without correction, three times in a row

How to write it in six steps

1. Watch the role for a full day, or interview two incumbents. Note the real tasks, not the ones people think they do.
2. Write the typical day in times and durations. Invisible tasks (orders, supplier calls) count.
3. Separate what is decided alone from what is signed off. A clear line prevents conflicts over responsibility.
4. Link each task to its instruction. The profile points to the procedures; it does not copy them.
5. Turn qualities into observations. "Organized" becomes "has station setup done before 10 a.m., checked by the chef".
6. Have an incumbent of the role review it. Someone who holds the job spots in five minutes what is missing.

Common mistakes

• Copying the job ad. An ad sells, a profile describes.
• Putting in tasks nobody does. The profile loses its credibility.
• Forgetting to update it. Set a review for every change in organization or menu.
• Building in judgments about people. The profile describes a role, not an ideal profile of a person. Avoid any criterion that departs from what can be observed.
• Not saying who covers. A vacant role becomes a hole in the schedule.

What to measure

• The share of typical-day tasks that point to a written instruction, across the whole role.
• New hires' questions about "what I'm supposed to do", logged over the first two weeks: the better the profile, the less they come back.
• The date of last review of each profile.

Where Tsuno comes in

In Tsuno, the role is a central building block: the typical day (tasks with time and duration, signed off), the instructions, the expected skills and the training modules are all attached to it. The job profile becomes the view of a role, not an isolated document. Checklists feed skills, skills feed roles, roles feed the schedule. To start, we take your existing documents: Word profiles, spreadsheets, schedules. A person validates the sensitive matches. Tsuno does not score people. To see how a role is put together, visit the solution page.

To continue

The natural complement is the skills matrix. To onboard on this basis, read how to reduce restaurant onboarding time without cutting corners and how to know when a new restaurant employee is actually ready. For a location opening, see how to prepare a restaurant opening from the people side. The pillar: managers do not need another dashboard.

Key takeaway

A useful job profile describes work: tasks, times, decisions, standards, observable independence criteria. Attached to the role, linked to the instructions and reviewed regularly, it serves for hiring, onboarding and management.