The Folder, the Fridge and the Fine Print: Due Diligence Before You Take a Head Chef Job

The head chef has gone. The owner is keen. Service is still booked for Friday, the Christmas function sheet is filling up and someone has already asked you to 'just steady the ship' for a few weeks. In a North West market where good senior chefs are hard to find, it is easy to hear an opportunity. It is harder to hear the warning signs.

A head chef job is not just a bigger section and a better salary. It is a small business inside a business. You inherit the menu, the brigade, the suppliers, the fridges, the leases and the promises made before you arrived. That is why the most useful thing you can ask for before you sign is not another trial shift. It is the handover folder.

The vacancy is not the job

When a chef leaves suddenly, the job advert describes the version the owner wishes existed. The handover folder describes the version you will actually walk into. Those two things can be very different.

This is especially true in independents across Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Lancashire and Cumbria, where one person often carries supplier relationships, rota planning, allergen records and maintenance in their head. When that person walks, the knowledge walks with them. If nobody has written it down, you are not taking over a kitchen. You are taking over a set of surprises.

Ask for the folder during the second interview or after a trial shift, not after you have signed. A sensible operator will respect the question. A defensive one has told you something useful.

What should actually be in it

A proper handover folder does not need to be beautiful. It needs to be current. Look for:

• Supplier contracts, price agreements and any rebates or volume deals.
• Rota commitments, holiday accrual, unpaid hours, agency invoices and any informal time-off arrangements.
• Equipment leases, service contracts, warranties and outstanding repairs.
• Allergen matrix, HACCP paperwork, temperature logs, pest control reports and recent environmental health correspondence.
• Staff training records, right-to-work checks, probation notes and any live grievance or disciplinary matters.
• Gross profit figures, food cost, stocktake results, wastage records and menu costing sheets.
• Maintenance requests, capital expenditure plans and anything the previous chef kept asking for and did not get.

You do not need to read every page before you accept. You do need to know whether the pages exist.

Follow the money, not the headline GP

Every owner will tell you the GP is strong. Ask how it is calculated. Ask for the last three months of food cost and stocktake results, not just the best month. Ask whether supplier prices are fixed, whether they are due for review, and whether any deals were personal to the previous chef.

A menu that looks profitable on paper can be running on outdated prices, oversized portions or a supplier arrangement that disappears when the chef does. In a North West kitchen with tight margins, a two-point swing in food cost is the difference between a sensible head chef salary and a stressful one.

If the owner will not share margin information, ask a narrower question: 'How do you cost a dish here, and who updates it?' The answer tells you plenty.

Rota debt and people problems

Rota debt is not only money owed. It is hours promised, holidays deferred and favours banked. Ask how much holiday is accrued across the brigade. Ask whether anyone is on long-term sick, phased return or a temporary contract that ends soon. Ask how often agency staff are used and who signs off the invoices.

A kitchen can look fully staffed on a Friday night and still be fragile. One sous chef off with a bad back, one commis waiting for a start date and one agency bill three weeks overdue is a different picture. You need to know the shape of the team before you agree to run it.

Equipment, leases and the things that go bang

Walk the kitchen with the owner and ask what is leased, what is owned and what is held together with hope. Extraction, walk-ins, combi ovens, glasswashers and cellar cooling are expensive when they fail. Ask for the maintenance log and the last service dates.

In older sites - a railway arch in Manchester, a Victorian pub cellar in Liverpool, a stone-built hotel in the Lakes - maintenance is not a side issue. It is part of the job. You need to know whether there is a budget for it or whether every repair becomes an argument.

Allergens, records and the paper trail

Allergen records are non-negotiable. Ask to see the matrix, the HACCP plan and the last environmental health inspection. If the previous chef kept all of that in their head, treat it as an urgent risk, not a quirk.

You are not being difficult by asking. You are being professional. A head chef who inherits weak records inherits the consequences.

How to ask without scaring the owner

Frame it as speed. Say you want to hit the ground running and avoid surprises in week two. Ask for a twenty-minute handover meeting or a digital folder. Offer to sign a confidentiality note if they are worried about staff information. You do not need personal details - just the commitments, contracts and records that affect the kitchen.

Put your questions in an email after the interview. It gives the owner time to gather answers and gives you a written record. If they say there is no folder, ask who holds the supplier list, the allergen matrix and the maintenance log. The answer will tell you how much of the job is actually admin rescue.

When to slow down

Be wary if there is no paperwork, no GP breakdown and no maintenance record, but plenty of urgency. Be more wary if you are asked to start before you have seen the allergen matrix or the holiday liabilities. You can still take the job, but you should negotiate time, support or resources to fix what is broken.

A good owner will see the folder as a sign that you are serious. A bad one will see it as a nuisance. Either way, you have learned what you needed to know before you accepted the keys.