Commis cooks are early-career cooks with one to two years on the line, often coming from culinary school or prep cook roles. This resume needs to prove station versatility, ServSafe certification, and willingness to work any shift the schedule needs.
Line cooks own two to three stations at a steady volume kitchen and run their own mise en place each shift. This resume needs to prove ticket speed under pressure, recipe consistency, and clean HACCP execution across grill, sauté, and fry.
Lead line cooks run the pass during service, train new hires on stations, and step in when the sous chef is off the floor. This resume needs to prove kitchen leadership, scheduling input, and measurable food cost or waste improvements.
Anton Brennecke
Minneapolis, MN | (612) 558-3092 | [email protected] | linkedin.com/in/antonbrennecke
Line cook with seven years across scratch kitchens, hotel restaurants, and a high-volume brewpub. Strong on grill and sauté, comfortable expoing, and known for clean station breakdowns. Trained nine cooks over the last three years and helped two kitchens cut food cost without dropping menu quality.
Lead Line Cook (Grill / Sauté)
Northstar Hearth Kitchen | Minneapolis, MN | 2022-Present
Line Cook (Sauté)
Birch & Iron Tavern | St. Paul, MN | 2020-2022
Line Cook
Cedar Lake Brewpub | Minneapolis, MN | 2018-2020
Line Cook
Riverview Hotel & Grill | Duluth, MN | 2017-2018
Prep Cook
Greenhouse Bistro Catering | Duluth, MN | 2016-2017
Your profile should state your years on the line, the kitchen type you’ve worked (fine dining, high-volume banquet, fast casual, hotel, country club), and the stations you run unassisted.
Name the covers per shift you handle and the cuisine style. A chef reading the top of page one wants to know in one pass whether you can hold sauté on a 250-cover Friday night or whether you’re still building speed on garde manger.
Strong line cook bullets carry numbers. Name covers per shift, average tickets per hour on your station, and prep volume in pounds or pans.
Bullets without a number tend to read as duties, so swap vague claims for scale. Try covers held during peak service, ticket times you hit on the rail, and waste or cost reductions you contributed to under the sous chef’s targets.
Sort your line cook work into three or four buckets so a chef can scan it fast. Group by stations run (grill, sauté, fry, broiler, garde manger), prep and butchery, food safety and HACCP, and team or training contributions.
Inside each group, lead with the heaviest scope. A bullet about running sauté solo on a Saturday service outranks a bullet about restocking lowboys, and the order on the page should reflect that.
ServSafe Food Handler or your state-equivalent card belongs in a credentials block near the top of page one, with the issuing body and expiration year. ServSafe Manager, allergen training, and any HACCP coursework go in the same block.
Executive chefs and sous chefs scan for these before they read bullets, because a card-current cook can start the next shift. List the credential name and year. Do not list card numbers on the resume itself.
Close with culinary education if you have it (CIA, Johnson and Wales, ICE, community college culinary programs, apprenticeships) and any externships at named restaurants. If you came up through the line without culinary school, list your highest education and lead the resume on stations instead.
Add a short availability line: nights, weekends, doubles, holidays. Executive chefs and sous chefs use that line to decide whether to call before they finish the stack.
Based on data from the line cook resumes our users build, the skills below are the ones that show up most on resumes that move to a trail shift. Chefs weigh hard skills like station coverage and ServSafe status first, then read soft skills as evidence behind the bullets. A claim of composure under pressure only lands if the bullet next to it names covers per shift.
Match the lists against the specific posting, and use your soft skills to back up what the station bullets already prove.
| Soft Skills | % of resumes with this skill |
|---|---|
| Teamwork | 78% |
| Working under pressure | 52% |
| Communication | 45% |
| Attention to detail | 38% |
| Time management | 34% |
And here are the top hard skills showing up most often.
| Hard Skills | % of resumes with this skill |
|---|---|
| Food safety and sanitation | 70% |
| Knife skills | 63% |
| Food preparation | 42% |
| Station setup and line cooking | 40% |
| Inventory management | 28% |
Based on data from thousands of line cooks’ resumes built on ResumeTemplates.com, May 2026.
The items below are what separate a line cook resume from one that gets put back in the pile.
Food handler requirements vary by state and county, and chefs expect you to know which card applies where you work. List the credential, the issuing body, and the expiration year on page one.
Modern kitchens run tickets through KDS screens tied to a POS, and chefs notice when you can name the system you’ve worked. List the platforms you’ve used in a short skills line near your hard skills.
Chefs schedule around availability before they schedule around skill. A short availability line near the top of the resume tells them whether to call you before they finish the stack.
Keep it to one line and be specific. Vague availability reads as limited availability.
Executive chefs and sous chefs read this list as a map of where your kitchen work is heading. The credentials below tell them which track you’ve invested in, whether food safety leadership, sanitation, or a specialty cuisine. List the issuing body and the year of completion for each item.
Line cook is one of the larger occupations BLS tracks, which means the median pulls in a long tail of fast-casual and quick-service variants alongside steakhouses, hotels, and fine dining. The spread between the 10th and 90th percentile reflects that mix more than seniority alone.
To position above the median, lead the resume with the kitchen tier you’ve worked, the stations you run solo, and the covers per shift, not the years on the line.
| # | State | Avg. Annual |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Massachusetts | $46,280 |
| 2 | District of Columbia | $45,230 |
| 3 | Washington | $44,980 |
| 4 | Maine | $44,870 |
| 5 | Hawaii | $44,710 |
| 6 | Vermont | $44,560 |
| 7 | California | $44,290 |
| 8 | New York | $39,890 |
| 9 | Colorado | $39,170 |
| 10 | New Hampshire | $39,050 |
| # | State | Workers | Median |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | 160,270 | $44,290 |
| 2 | Florida | 134,480 | $36,300 |
| 3 | Texas | 125,880 | $34,050 |
| 4 | New York | 62,430 | $39,890 |
| 5 | Illinois | 61,630 | $36,630 |
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Yes. Many kitchens hire line cooks straight from prep, dish, or culinary school externships.
Lead the resume with your ServSafe card, knife skills, and any stage or externship hours at named restaurants. Add a short availability line. Chefs hire on reliability and pace as much as on resume length.
Name the stations you run (grill, sauté, fry, broiler, garde manger), the covers per shift, and the cuisine style of the kitchen.
Pair each bullet with a number where you have one, such as tickets per hour or prep volume. Group bullets by station so a chef can scan your scope in one read.
Yes, but reframe them for the line. List prep volume in pounds or pans, the stations you supported during service, and any shifts you covered on the line.
If you stepped up to sauté or garde manger when a cook called out, name it. That is the bullet that tells a chef you're ready for a line role.
A one-page reverse-chronological format works best. Chefs read fast and want the recent kitchens at the top.
Put your ServSafe and availability line near the top, then work history with bullets grouped by station, then a short education or culinary training block. Keep it to one page.
For a line cook, an ATS-friendly template is the safest pick, because it puts your certifications and experience where a hiring manager scans first. A basic template is a solid alternative. Whichever you choose, keep the formatting clean and easy to parse: clear section headings, a standard font, and no graphics a parser can choke on.
Executive Resume Writer and Career Coach
Andrew Stoner is an executive career coach and resume writer with 17 years of experience as a hiring manager and operations leader at two Fortune 500 Financial Services companies, and as the career services director at two major university business schools.
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