Culinary Manager
The quality and craftsmanship of fine dining, at the scale of corporate catering. With that proposition, UMA Catering has grown since 2021 into a partner of Nebius Group, Databricks, and the Van Gogh Museum, among others. The Culinary Manager safeguards the culinary standard across all locations and develops the concepts that win over new clients.
About UMA Catering
Tobias Overgoor and Ilse Lugard founded UMA Catering in 2021, building on a shared background in high-end catering, hospitality, and concept development. The proposition is sharp. Food & hospitality with the quality and craftsmanship of fine dining, delivered at the scale of corporate contract catering, across four pillars: UMA Horeca, UMA Company Catering, UMA Events, and UMA Concept Creation. Sustainability, quality, creativity, and design are the guiding values for the roughly ninety people at the Amsterdam-Zuid office and across the locations.
UMA runs the daily operation of company restaurants serving more than five hundred guests per location per day. At Nebius Group and Databricks, among others, UMA provides high-end lunches, events, and meetings. With the Van Gogh Museum, UMA has an exclusive partnership spanning a museum restaurant, a Rietveld coffee bar, two staff restaurants, and some one hundred fifty events a year, serving five thousand visitors a day, 365 days a year.
The organization is ready for further professionalization to realize its growth ambitions, which is why the management team has been strengthened with a Head of Finance and a General Manager. Several new company restaurants open this year as well. UMA is selective in doing so, working with clients and locations in leisure and leading office environments where hospitality and quality come first. In the Netherlands, and possibly beyond in the future.
Requirements*
- 10+ years of experience in food and hospitality
- Has cooked at a high culinary level
- Has held a leadership or commercial role outside the kitchen
- Works in line with HACCP and food safety regulations
- Develops concepts and presents them to clients
- Manages food cost, costings, and menu engineering
Research shows that while male candidates feel confident enough to apply when they meet about 60% of the requirements, female candidates only apply when they tick every box. So if this role has your name on it, but you’re not sure about the criteria, we still want to hear from you.
“Our chefs should be on their toes when the Culinary Manager walks in, and an hour later want to share their best idea with that same person. Keeping people sharp and earning their trust at the same time, that is what it comes down to.”
Culinary Manager
Every UMA location has its own head chef, with their own knowledge, experience, and signature. With more locations on the way, the question becomes how UMA maintains the same standard across all those kitchens. That is the assignment for the Culinary Manager, a new position to which all head chefs report directly.
She/he spends much of the time on location. Tasting, working the lunch rush, checking how a dish reaches the plate and whether the recipe is followed. The Culinary Manager earns trust at the stove. Food safety, including HACCP procedures, also falls under her/his supervision. Where the standard slips, she/he steps in immediately and makes sure the team is trained, personally or through others. Every kitchen thus gains someone who guards the standard and inspires at the same time, with new dishes, techniques, and ideas that travel between locations.
Alongside quality, there is the commercial side. When a new opportunity arises, an office complex under development, a museum, a leisure venue, the Culinary Manager quickly puts together a culinary concept that fits that place and those guests. She/he sits at the table with clients, at tastings, supplier selections, and tenders, and makes the concept tangible on the plate. UMA's DNA of quality and sustainability is fixed; the translation differs per audience and dining moment. In doing so, the Culinary Manager thinks in propositions that work within the client's budget. What does UMA cook on site, what comes from the production kitchen, and what is sourced from suppliers in its own network. For the company restaurants, she/he develops the menu cycles and plans ahead with suppliers so that the kitchens work seasonally and efficiently. Menu engineering, costings, and food cost are daily instruments in this.
The Culinary Manager works closely with the operations, events, and hospitality teams, with Marieke Lever, who recently started as General Manager, and with the founders, in particular Tobias Overgoor, who trained as a chef himself.
This role suits a chef who has cooked at a high level for years and now wants to steer more broadly than a single kitchen. Someone who still has the craft at their fingertips and at the same time thinks in concepts, guests, and margins. Who is recognized by head chefs as a peer and can therefore intervene while keeping the atmosphere in the kitchen intact. And who finds it appealing to be the first to define what UMA stands for culinarily, from Museumplein to a new office complex, with a founder who speaks the language of the kitchen as a sparring partner. Chefs who have worked in commercial or business roles in recent years are also expressly welcome.
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