Cooking on weekday hours, with your evenings and weekends free. We place nursery cooks and chefs across London, Essex, Surrey and Hertfordshire — temporary, permanent and bank.
Most professional cooking happens when everyone else is off: evenings, weekends, bank holidays, Christmas. That is fine at twenty-two and much harder at thirty-five with a family.
Nursery kitchens run on the opposite pattern. You are typically in early, cooking breakfast, lunch and tea for the rooms, and finished by mid-afternoon. No dinner service, no weekends.
It is also cooking with a point. You are feeding children who are learning to eat, working round allergies and dietary requirements, and often the food you make is the best meal a child gets that day.
Typically an early start and an afternoon finish, Monday to Friday. No evening service and no weekend rota.
Fresh food for babies through to pre-schoolers, allergen management and food hygiene standards. It is a proper cooking job, not reheating.
Cover a cook’s holiday, take a term-long contract, or find a permanent kitchen. Many settings need reliable holiday cover for their cook every year.
You will usually need a Level 2 Food Safety and Hygiene certificate and experience cooking to a menu. Allergen awareness matters a great deal in an early years kitchen, and settings will ask about it.
In return: weekly pay, a named consultant, access to training courses, a £50 gift card for referring a friend who starts with us, and £100 cash back if you take a permanent role and are still there after four weeks.
London, Essex, Surrey and Hertfordshire — day nurseries, nursery schools, children’s centres, primary schools and residential care settings.
Every live vacancy we are recruiting for is on our job board — nursery, school and SEN roles across London, Essex, Surrey and Hertfordshire, updated as they come in.
Usually a Level 2 Food Safety and Hygiene certificate as a minimum, plus experience cooking to a menu and managing allergens. Formal chef qualifications help but are not always required — reliability and allergen awareness matter more to most settings.
Typically weekday mornings into early afternoon — in early to prepare breakfast, through lunch and tea, finished mid-afternoon. No evening service and no weekends in most nursery settings.
Yes. Kitchen staff work on the premises with children present, so the same DBS requirements apply. We can obtain one for you or verify an existing one on the update service.
Yes, and it is one of the most consistent needs we get. Settings with a single permanent cook need reliable cover when that person is off, every single year.
Yes — kitchen assistants, cooks and chefs across nurseries, children’s centres and schools.
Register with your food hygiene certificate and we will find you a kitchen.
