A template for line cooks who hold their station through the rush, clean and on time.
Line cooks run the stations that put food out the pass. They prep ingredients, work the grill, saute, or fry station, plate to spec, and keep up with the ticket rail through service. Most work in restaurants, hotels, and high-volume kitchens, and the pressure is real when 200 covers hit at once. A normal shift mixes morning prep, a hard service on the line, and a clean-down at the end. The role rewards speed, consistency, sharp knife skills, and a cool head. The whole kitchen depends on each station holding its own when the tickets stack up, so a recruiter wants proof you can carry yours.
Reliable Line Cook with 6 years in high-volume restaurant kitchens. Holds the saute and grill stations through 250-cover dinner services with consistent plating and tight timing. Sharp knife skills, ServSafe certified, and calm under a stacked ticket rail. Known for clean stations and training newer cooks without slowing service.
Stations, speed, and consistency. A chef reading your CV wants to know which station you owned and how busy it got. 'Held the saute station through 250-cover dinner services' beats 'worked in a kitchen' every time. Show the cuisine you cooked, the pace you worked at, and the fact that you turned up and held your spot through the rush. Food-safety certification and a clean record on the line round it out.
List the stations you can run: grill, saute, fry, cold, and pass. Add knife skills, food prep, ticket timing, and recipe adherence. Sanitation and HACCP belong here too, alongside mise en place and portion control. If you've trained newer cooks or set up a station from open, say so. These are the words a kitchen actually searches for.
The two big ones are no covers or stations stated, and no food-safety cert listed. A chef can't tell a 40-cover cafe cook from a 250-cover service cook if you never give the number. Skipping ServSafe or your local food handler card makes you look like a risk. Also avoid vague lines like 'assisted in the kitchen' when you ran a station on your own.
One page is plenty for a line cook. Lead with your stations and cuisine, then your experience newest first with covers and dates. Put your food-safety certification where it's easy to spot. Keep bullets short and concrete, each one a thing you did, not a duty you were handed. Save the design flourishes; a clean, scannable page reads faster on a busy chef's phone.
Figures in USD. Ranges reflect mid-level experience (3–7 years). Senior roles and major metro areas typically sit at the top of these bands.
Restaurants, hotels, and catering companies want station experience, real knife skills, a food-safety certification like ServSafe, and proof you hold up under volume. Name your stations, your cuisine, and your covers-per-service near the top. A line that reads 'ran the saute station through 250-cover dinner services' tells a chef more than a paragraph of soft phrasing ever will.
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