Sous Chef – Kitchen Operations Head

Project Annapoorna | Gurugram | Full-Time

The Problem

• An urban Indian eats ~8090 meals a month.
• Online food delivery captures roughly 4 of those. In China, its 42.
• The remaining meals daily meals are largely cooked at home by part-time cooks. Consumers are deeply unhappy with this, but feel stuck with it.
• This gap is one of the largest untapped consumption surfaces in Indian consumer internet.

What Were Building

Project Annapoorna is being built to solve daily meals at scale. Were creating a structured, process-led kitchen model designed for consistency, discipline, and operational excellence. Think manufacturing mindset applied to food.

The Role

Were hiring a Founding Sous Chef / Kitchen Operations Head to help build this from zero to one.

You will be responsible for translating standardized recipes and SOPs into flawless, large-scale daily production without deviation. Youll own what happens inside the kitchen: the output, the process, the team, and the quality.

This is a founding role. You wont be executing someone elses playbook youll be writing it. If you enjoy building systems while running production, this could be the most defining stretch of your career.

What Youll Do

• SOP Execution at Scale: Own end-to-end production against standardized recipes and processes.
• Mass Production Excellence: Run high-volume daily meal production with precision batch planning, mise en place discipline, timing, and throughput.
• Quality & Process Discipline: Enforce food safety, hygiene, and consistency standards. Build and maintain checklists, audits, and quality gates.
• Team Supervision: Lead kitchen staff with clarity and calm. Set expectations, train relentlessly, and hold the line on discipline.
• Build the Kitchen Playbook: Work closely with the founder to define and refine SOPs, workflows, and operating rhythms for kitchen operations as the company scales.

Who You Are

• Graduate of a Management Training Programme (MTP) from a reputed 5-star hotel, OR 05 years as a Junior Sous Chef / Sous Chef in a five-star hotel environment.
• Experience in mass production, banquet, or bulk cooking operations youve cooked at scale and understand batch control.
• Deeply disciplined and detail-oriented. You find comfort in systems, checklists, and repeatable processes.
• Calm under pressure. Structured and firm in execution not reactive or ad hoc.
• Comfortable operating within strict SOP-driven environments.
• Hands-on. You lead from the pass, not from a desk.

Why This Role Is Special

• Youll be one of the earliest members of the founding team. Its a chance to build the kitchen that feeds a new category of food-tech.
• Youll have direct access to the founder, real ownership of outcomes, and the opportunity to shape how an entire operation runs from day one.
• When we succeed, this role will be career-defining.