Cook

Help us build a menu from scratch. We're opening a soup-and-salad buffet in Arcadia, and right now the work is mostly recipe development: creating, testing, and writing down the soups, sauces and pastas we'll serve. It's paid, part-time, and much of it happens in your own kitchen. As opening gets closer, it grows toward full-time.

Culinary students and recent grads are welcome. You'd be on the founding team, shaping the playbook instead of inheriting one.

Before we open: develop and test dishes, write them so anyone can make them, and taste each other's work honestly.

After we open:

• Service: run the soup and pasta stations at the restaurant, keeping every bowl as good as the first.
  
• Production: cook our soups and sauces from scratch in volume at our production kitchen, usually alongside another cook.
  
• Development: keep creating new dishes, if you want to.
  

• Creativity: you can come up with a dish that's new and good, and you know why it works.
  
• Consistency: you can take a recipe, yours or ours, and make it exactly the same way every time.
  

Most cooks are stronger at one than the other, and that's fine. Underneath both, we need good knife skills, a clean station, and food safety you don't have to think about.

You'll also need:

• Kitchen experience (school counts); high-volume experience is a plus
  
• A California Food Handler card, or one within 30 days (we reimburse)
  
• Reliable transportation, since you'll work at both locations
  
• Ability to lift 50 lbs and work long days on your feet
  

• Base pay: $16.90 $21.50/hr. Production-kitchen shifts are $20/hr. Restaurant shifts start at California minimum wage (rising to $17.40 on January 1, 2027). Both go up as you pick up skills and roles.
  
• Estimated total pay once we're open: about $21 23/hr, including tips on restaurant shifts and our quarterly profit-share. Tips and profit-share vary and aren't guaranteed; before we open, pay is base only.
  
• Family meal on production days and a shift meal from the buffet
  
• ServSafe certifications paid for 401(k) with match California paid sick leave
  
• Group health plan for teammates working 30+ hours, starting a few months after we open
  

Down the road, our production kitchen will also develop new food concepts. Cooks whose ideas earn a spot will have a path to help build them, and to share in what they earn.

• Get better, and stay coachable. We'll invest in you, and we expect you to keep improving.
  
• Own it. If something's wrong in our kitchen, it's yours to make right, even if you didn't cause it.
  
• Good, never just ok. Make food you'd be proud to put in front of anyone.
  
• Say it. If something could be better, tell us.
  

Southern California has been missing its soup-and-salad buffet since 2020. We're one restaurant opening its first location, not a chain opening its fortieth. Working here means someone actually cares about the work, the people doing it, and where you go next.

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Souper Greens is an equal opportunity employer. We consider qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records in line with California's Fair Chance Act.