Food Production Lead

At Kitchen Doula, our mission is to provide wholesome, delicious, and deeply nourishing foods that ease the everyday challenges of feeding yourself and your family especially during times of transition, healing, and new parenthood. We specialize in meeting the culinary and dietary needs of those welcoming a baby into their lives, those on a healing journey, and folks wanting easily digestible, and accessible meals that satisfy tastebuds and bellies.

Kitchen Doula crafts nutritiously dense, comforting soups, stews, breakfasts, snacks and drinks in small batches and delivers them directly to our customers. We believe food is more than fuel it is medicine, ritual, and community. Rooted in seasonal abundance and time-honored healing traditions, our offerings are crafted to restore energy, reduce decision fatigue leaving our customers feeling cared for, delighted, and truly nurtured. We are a team of culinary masters, doulas and lactation consultants, parents and folks that love food.

We serve a growing community across the Bay Area and nationwide, and are known as a trusted source of postpartum and healing foods for new mamas, families, and anyone in need of a gentle, joyful shortcut to well-being.

Position Overview:

Are you eager to put your culinary instincts, leadership, and love of good food to work? Do you thrive when working on a small team, especially one where you can use your skills and talents to foster growth, knowledge and kitchen confidence in your peers? At Kitchen Doula you ll help create thoughtfully prepared nourishing meals designed to support healing, recovery, and well-being during some of life s most transformative seasons.

The Kitchen Doula Production Lead is responsible for executing and overseeing daily food production activities and ensuring products are produced safely, efficiently, consistently, and according to company quality standards. This position assists in guiding the production team members, coordinates workflow and staffing, monitors production schedules, and helps ensure compliance with food safety, sanitation, and regulatory requirements.

This is a full-time on-site role reporting directly to the COO. This position will interact regularly with the customer service team on matters related to customer orders, and work closely with our Kitchen staff to meet production goals while maintaining a safe, organized and productive work environment.

• Prepare and cook menu items according to recipes and established standards.
  

• Lead and support daily production activities to ensure production schedules, quality standards, and deadlines are met.
  

• • Assign employees to production tasks based on staffing needs, production priorities, and employee skill levels.
    

  • Monitor production processes to ensure products are manufactured according to approved recipes, specifications, procedures, and quality standards.
    

  • Provide day-to-day guidance to production employees, and communicate performance or disciplinary concerns to management.
    

• Ensure all food safety, sanitation, GMP, HACCP, allergen-control, and workplace safety procedures are met.
  

• • Ensure proper handling, storage, labeling, and rotation of ingredients and finished products.
    

  • Ensure proper cleaning and sanitation procedures are completed according to established schedules and standards.
    

  • Conduct routine quality checks throughout the production process and take appropriate corrective action when issues arise.
    

  • Maintain a clean and organized production environment.
    

• Support efficient and effective production operations
  

• • Monitor production output and communicate delays, equipment issues, product shortages, quality concerns, or staffing challenges to management.
    

  • Assist with troubleshooting production and equipment issues and coordinate with management when necessary.
    

  • Monitor labor efficiency and help minimize product waste, ingredient loss, and unnecessary downtime.
    

  • Support continuous improvement efforts to increase productivity, consistency, quality, safety, and efficiency.
    

• Perform other production-related duties as assigned.
  

• You aim to do your best each day.
  

• You arrive on time and maintain reliable attendance.
  

• You maintain a positive and solutions-oriented attitude.
  

• You follow established processes and procedures and utilize support tools (checklists etc).
  

• You accept feedback graciously and offer feedback constructively.
  

• You treat people with respect.
  

• You are eager to learn, teach and share.
  

• Experienced in food manufacturing, food production, commercial kitchens, or a similar production environment.
  

• Comfortable leading a small team of employees in a commercial kitchen setting.
  

• Focused on details and possess strong organizational, communication, and leadership skills.
  

• Aligned with the value of acts of service.
  

• Capable of working with clear work timelines and cutoff times.
  

• Observant and adaptable to the daily needs of the business.
  

• Minimum 2 years of working in food manufacturing/production with direct cooking experience.
  

• Availability to work in person 35 hrs/week:
  

• Ability to lift and carry 50lb while utilizing safe lifting techniques, and to stand for up to 6 hours at a time.
  

• Working knowledge of food safety, sanitation, GMPs, HACCP principles, allergen controls, and safe food-handling practices.
  

• Familiar with safe operation of moving equipment such as dollies, pallet jacks, and carts.
  

• Strong attention to detail and organizational skills.
  

• Comfort working in a shared kitchen environment including working inside of a walk-in refrigerator and freezer.
  

• Ability to work independently and lead/collaborate with a team.
  

• Must be able to communicate effectively with a bilingual team (English & Spanish).
  

• 9 paid holidays plus 5 paid days off Christmas Day through New Year s Day
  

• 40 hours paid sick time per year
  

• 30% Employee Discount on our delicious meals
  

• Collaboration with a passion-driven team working to feed our communities
  

This is a full-time (35 hrs/week), non-exempt position. Working hours are: Monday - Friday 7:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Compensation: $31.00/hr

Ideal Start Date: 11/02/26, flexible for the right candidate

We look forward to meeting you and hearing about what makes you a great fit for the Sous Chef role with Kitchen Doula.

To Apply: Submit your resume and complete this skill quiz. Copy/paste this link and follow prompts to quiz: https://forms.gle/NQcUgpgymXSwHyJy8