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CAFÉ CHEF

Full-time · $75,000 + super · Buddina, Sunshine Coast

Your kitchen. Your ideas.

We’re looking for an experienced café chef to take ownership of the kitchen at Hey Day Buddina.

Hey Day is a busy, established independent café on the Sunshine Coast with a strong local following, a great team and a genuine love of good food, coffee, natural wines and hospitality.

We’re now looking for someone who can help take the food side of Hey Day to its next chapter.

This isn’t a big brigade or a late-night restaurant kitchen. It’s a small, creative daytime kitchen — and we’re looking for someone who’ll enjoy making it their own.

THE ROLE

We want someone with a strong feel for contemporary café and brunch food — seasonal plates, great sandwiches, baking and sweets, and food that feels considered without becoming unnecessarily complicated.

You’ll have genuine creative input into our menus while taking responsibility for the day-to-day running of the kitchen.

The role includes:

  • Developing seasonal menu items and specials

  • Preparing and executing our daily food offering

  • Baking and developing our sweets and pastry offering

  • Managing ordering, stock levels and food costs (training can be provided)

  • Maintaining strong prep, labelling and kitchen systems

  • Managing waste and portion control

  • Ensuring consistency in presentation and quality

  • Working closely with the owners to continue developing Hey Day’s food offering

WHY HEY DAY?

Hospitality doesn’t have to mean sacrificing your entire life to your job.

We can offer $75,000 + super, predominantly daytime hours and no regular night shifts (we open one night a week with food trucks), with flexibility around how the working week is structured. There is an option to fit your work week into 4 days so you can have a 3 day break to enjoy everything the Sunshine Coast has to offer.

You’ll also get something that can be hard to find in a larger kitchen: real ownership and creative freedom.

We’re a small team, so this position would particularly suit someone who is confident working independently and likes having responsibility for their own space.

At the same time, we don’t want working in a small kitchen to mean putting your own development on hold. For the right person, we’re happy to invest in ongoing professional development, culinary courses and opportunities to keep learning.

WHO WE’RE LOOKING FOR

You might be an experienced restaurant chef who still loves making great food but is ready to leave night shifts behind.

You might already be working in a great brunch venue and be ready to have more creative ownership.

Or you might have a strong background in pastry and café food and want a role where you can do a bit of both.

What matters most is that you have good food instincts, strong kitchen standards and ideas of your own.

We’re not looking for someone to simply reproduce recipes and fill a roster. We want someone who cares about the food coming out of the kitchen and wants to help us make it better.

THE DETAILS

Position: Full-time Café Chef
Salary: $75,000 + super
Location: Hey Day Buddina, Sunshine Coast
Hours: Predominantly daytime / no regular night shifts (optional)
Start: Ideally before the summer season

APPLY

If this opportunity sounds like a perfect fit for you, we’d love to hear from you.

Use the “Apply Now!” button at the bottom of the page to send us your resume and a cover letter with a short introduction about yourself, the kind of food you like to cook and what you’re looking for in your next role.

BARISTA

Casual · Award Rates · Buddina, Sunshine Coast

  • Flexible hours available

If you can pull out some beautiful latte art and you work well with high volume we’d love to hear from you! Use the “Apply Now!” button at the bottom of the page to send us your resume.