Hotel kitchen roles: from executive chef to commis, and who decides what

A hotel kitchen brigade is the ranked team that runs a hotel's food service: from the executive chef who owns menus and food cost across every outlet, through sous chefs and section chefs (chef de partie), to commis cooks and stewards. In a small hotel one person often holds two or three of these roles.

Two hotels run the same breakfast, the same à la carte menu and the same banquet hall. In one, a missing delivery is caught before service; in the other it is discovered at the pass at eight in the evening. The difference is rarely talent. It is whether anyone can say, by name, who owns the order, the fridge and the record. This article explains the roles of a hotel kitchen brigade, how the work splits across sections and outlets, who decides what, and what to ask a new chef in the first week.

Why does a hotel kitchen run a brigade at all?#

Because a hotel kitchen serves several outlets on several clocks at once, and a single cook cannot hold the whole list. The brigade splits the work into sections so that every dish, every fridge and every record has one owner.

A hotel kitchen usually feeds more than one outlet: breakfast, à la carte, room service, banquet events, sometimes a pool bar and staff meals. Each has its own service time and its own peak. Splitting by section, such as hot, cold, pastry and banquet, means a dish is finished by the person who started it, and a mistake has a name attached to it.

Rank exists so decisions can be made without a meeting. The section chef decides within the section, the sous chef decides across sections during service, and the executive chef decides across outlets. The brigade is also a cover plan: when someone is off, the chart shows who steps into the gap, which is why the chart should be written down rather than carried in the chef's head.

A brigade is not a measure of quality. A well-run kitchen with six people and clear ownership beats a badly run kitchen with fifteen and none. The kitchen chart also sits inside the wider hotel organisation chart, and the two must agree on who the chef reports to and which decisions stop at the food and beverage manager.

What are the roles in a hotel kitchen brigade?#

The core list runs from the executive chef, who owns food across every outlet, down through the sous chef and the section chefs to commis cooks and stewards. Turkish hotels use a mixed vocabulary of Turkish, French and English titles, often for the same job.

The executive chef (aşçıbaşı) owns menus, food cost, supplier standards and the kitchen team across all outlets; in a hotel with one restaurant the title is often simply head chef or mutfak şefi. The sous chef (sous şef) runs service: sets the pace at the pass, moves people between sections when one falls behind, and takes the chef's place when the chef is absent.

The chef de partie, or section chef (kısım şefi), owns one section: its mise en place, its fridge, its stock levels and the quality of everything leaving it. The demi chef (demi şef) is the step between commis and section chef: runs the section when the section chef is off, and is usually the person being tested for promotion. The commis (komi) does preparation and basic cooking under a section chef, and is the role most often filled by people learning the trade.

The steward (stüard, bulaşık) owns washing, kitchen cleanliness and the pots and pans flow; in many hotels the steward also holds the cleaning records. Pastry (pastane şefi) and butchery (kasap) are usually separate roles even in mid-sized hotels, because their work starts hours before service and follows a different rhythm.

How do hot, cold, pastry and banquet sections split the work?#

Each section owns a set of dishes from preparation to the plate, and the pass is the single point where the finished plate is checked before it leaves the kitchen. The split follows cooking method, temperature and timing, not seniority.

The hot section (sıcak mutfak) owns mains, grilled items, sauces and the pass during à la carte service; it is the section that sets the pace of the evening. The cold section (soğuk mutfak) owns salads, meze, cold starters, the cold part of the breakfast buffet and cold plated desserts; it often starts earliest in the day. Pastry works on a different clock: bread, breakfast pastry and desserts are made hours before service, so the pastry chef is often the first person in and the last to finish plating.

Banquet (banket) is production at volume with a fixed serving time, and in many hotels it has its own kitchen or its own hot cupboard line so that à la carte service is not stopped by an event. The pass is where the dish is checked, garnished and released; the person at the pass is accountable for what leaves, even when the dish was cooked in another section. A dish that crosses sections, for example a hot main with a cold garnish, needs one named owner for the final plate, otherwise each section assumes the other finished it.

Breakfast is the section split most often got wrong: it is a cold buffet plus a hot line plus pastry, all running before the rest of the kitchen is fully staffed. The same logic applies across the wider food and beverage department, and the details of the breakfast rush are worth reading alongside the hotel breakfast buffet set-up and refill rules.

Who owns ordering, hygiene records and the shift plan?#

Ownership is split by decision type, not by title. The chef owns the recipe and the prep list, purchasing owns the supplier and the purchase order, and the shift plan is written against the outlet's workload and approved above the kitchen.

The chef owns the recipe, the portion and the yield, which together produce the food cost; the food and beverage manager and the general manager own the menu price and the margin. The chef raises a requisition for what the kitchen needs; the purchasing function or the food and beverage manager holds the supplier contract and places the purchase order. Receiving is checked by the storekeeper against the delivery note, not by the person who ordered, so that quantity and quality are confirmed by a second pair of eyes.

Hygiene records, meaning temperature logs, cleaning schedules and allergen lists, are signed by a named person on each shift; the chef remains accountable for the record even when the signing is delegated. The shift plan is written by the chef or sous chef against covers, banquet events and breakfast volume, then approved by the food and beverage manager because it drives payroll. Menu changes, new suppliers and any change to a standard recipe should have one approver named in writing, so that a change cannot arrive on the plate without a decision behind it. Training and discipline sit with the chef, while hiring, contracts and payroll sit with human resources; the boundary is worth writing down before the first dispute.

What does the brigade look like in a small hotel?#

In a small or seasonal hotel, two or three people hold the entire list. The titles do not disappear; they are stacked onto fewer people, and the risk moves from coordination to single-person dependency.

A typical small hotel runs one chef, one cook and one commis or steward for breakfast plus a short à la carte menu, with pastry bought in or made by the breakfast cook. The chef is usually also the buyer, the hygiene signer and the trainer, which is workable only if the records are simple enough to complete during service.

The dangerous stacking is ordering, receiving and approving the invoice in one pair of hands; at minimum, separate receiving so that a second person confirms what arrived. Write the doubled roles into the job description, with the deputy named for each one, so that holiday and sick cover does not depend on a phone call. Small kitchens should keep the section logic even without the titles: one person owns cold and breakfast, one owns hot and the pass, and both know who owns the fridge keys. When the hotel adds a second outlet or a banquet room, the stacking usually breaks first at the pass, because one person cannot check every plate and cook at the same time.

How does handover between shifts work?#

In writing, at the pass, before the outgoing shift leaves. The handover is a short written record plus a two-minute face-to-face, and the incoming section chef signs it.

The handover sheet carries what is prepared, what is out of stock, allergen notes, VIP and group arrivals, tomorrow's banquet counts, fridge and freezer temperatures and any equipment fault. The face-to-face happens at the pass, not in the office, so the incoming cook can see the state of the mise en place rather than read about it. The incoming section chef checks the fridge and signs the sheet; an unsigned handover is treated as no handover.

Anything already sent to a guest cannot be recalled, so orders and guest messages are confirmed before sending, not after. The chef reads the previous day's handovers at the morning meeting, which is how a repeated fault becomes a maintenance request instead of a daily complaint. The same discipline applies to the pass between services: what was 86'd at lunch must be visible to the dinner shift before the first order arrives.

What should an owner ask a new chef in the first week?#

Ask questions that reveal how the chef will split decisions, not questions about signature dishes. The answers tell you whether the kitchen will have named owners or a single memory.

The answers should name people, not departments, and should distinguish what the chef decides alone from what the chef brings to you. Listen for the chef's own account of receiving, stock counting and hygiene signing, because these are where a new chef most often inherits an invisible problem. A good answer includes a deputy for every role the chef holds, which is the test of whether the kitchen can survive a week without its chef. A weak answer describes the kitchen as a team with no names, or promises to be present at every service, which is not a plan. Write the answers down and compare them with the job description, so the first review has something factual to measure against.

What to do next#

Write your own kitchen's decision list this week: five recurring decisions, each with a proposer, an approver and a place where it is recorded. Then read it against the chef's job description and the handover sheet. If a decision has no name, it has no owner, and the brigade chart is only decoration until it does.