Executive Chef - AI Precision Nutrition / Everyday Food at an

Extraordinary Standard Department:

Culinary Reports To:

Co-Founder & COO Location:

Concord, CA, on-site

Compensation:

$140,000-$175,000. About Methodology Methodology is a mission-first clinical nutrition company producing personalized meal programs from our production facility in the East Bay. Every meal is gluten-free, dairy-free, and refined-sugar-free. The protein program runs grass-fed beef, heritage pork, antibiotic-free poultry, high-grade wild seafood, and wild game including elk, venison, and bison. Produce arrives from a partner farm within two days of harvest. Meals ship nationally to busy professionals and families in reusable glass jars and proprietary bowls, and a live packaging recovery program in California retrieves reusable packaging from the prior week's delivery. Close to 11 years in, Methodology holds the registered trademark on "Food is Medicine" and has the clinical research to back it up. A study published with Stanford in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that our meals drive measurable changes in biomarkers. That research is not a marketing credential. It is the foundation the culinary program is built on.

The foundation is strong:

the science, customer base, operating infrastructure, and millions of customer food decisions. Now the ceiling is being raised. An AI precision-nutrition engine is being built to connect biomarker data, health goals, nutrition targets, and taste preferences to what each customer eats. The menu is where that intelligence becomes everyday life. This is not fine dining. It is harder in a different way: familiar, craveable food that a customer wants to eat every week, executed with extraordinary creativity and care, nutritionally exact, commercially viable, and repeatable at scale. We have 52 deliveries a year to wow a customer. Fifty-two hospitality moments on a kitchen counter. No restaurant gets that kind of access to someone's life. The Opportunity We are looking for an Executive Chef who can make everyday food extraordinary and turn that creative standard into a durable culinary system. The Role The Executive Chef owns the culinary program from concept through repeatable production. You lead menu development, culinary quality, recipe architecture, and the systems that allow Methodology to produce extraordinary everyday food every week. You are not being hired to create ideas and hand them off. You stay with the work through tasting, costing, yield testing, batch scaling, cold-chain behavior, packaging, training, and customer feedback. What You Own Menu Creation and R D Co-create weekly menu items. Build recognizable, comforting, varied food that people want repeatedly, executed with uncommon creativity, flavor, and care. Design within Methodology's constraints: no gluten, dairy, refined sugar, or canola oil, while hitting nutritional targets and customer expectations. Lead weekly R D. Dishes are built, killed, challenged, and reformulated in real time. Ideas are welcome from everyone; approval requires evidence. Define the final culinary standard for flavor, texture, appearance, portion, and guest experience. Use customer behavior, feedback, health goals, and AI-assisted analysis to improve the menu without outsourcing judgment to a tool. Commercial Viability Make every approved item work at production scale: ingredient availability, food cost, yield, labor, equipment, batch size, shelf life, cold chain, packaging, and throughput. Work with sourcing on ingredient quality, substitutions, seasonality, vendor reliability, and cost. Connect every menu decision to margin, retention, waste, labor, and health outcomes. Kill or redesign ideas that are beautiful in R D but fail the production or economic test. Ensure the weekly menu is locked with no unresolved TBDs before production begins. Culinary Systems and Quality Own the complete recipe system: specifications, yields, prep instructions, cook sheets, portion weights, plating standards, photos, labels, and training. Require that a trained cook can reproduce the food without the creator standing beside them. Taste the food as it is actually produced, packed, reheated, and eaten, not only in the R D kitchen. Establish pre-publication and pre-production gates the culinary and operating teams trust. Hold the highest standards for food safety, sanitation, allergen controls, and documentation. Leadership Lead the Chef de Cuisine, Sous Chef, R D cooks, and production team through clear standards and direct accountability. Build both kinds of exceptional operators: fast leader-doers who raise the pace, and quiet, no-ego anchors whose consistency holds the kitchen together. Develop successors. The kitchen should become stronger without creating dependence on one person's memory or presence. Be demanding without creating drama. Correct the work directly, protect dignity, and confirm the standard is understood. Non-Negotiables 7+ years in professional kitchens, including at least 3 years in senior culinary leadership. Proven high-volume production experience. Restaurant-only experience is not enough unless paired with commissary, catering, banquet, CPG, or comparable batch production. Strong original menu and recipe-development ability within dietary constraints. Demonstrated command of food cost, yields, labor, waste, purchasing, and margin. A systems mind. Recipes, SOPs, and decisions must survive outside your head. Ability to co-create with a hands-on founder: strong point of view, low ego, no need to own every idea. On-site leadership in Concord and comfort with an early-production kitchen.