Childcare cook job description template (duties, qualifications, schedule)

Write for the version of the kitchen you actually run, because the sections that change between versions are the duties, the qualifications and the pay line.

A head cook plans menus, orders groceries and owns the room alone; a kitchen assistant preps and washes under someone else's menu; a from-scratch operation posts a different seat from a prep-and-serve one.

Decide that first, keep every bracket honest, and delete the lines that do not describe your kitchen.

This page owns the posting itself; the career-side question — what the seat is — is our description of what a childcare cook does.

Key duties and responsibilities

Organize the duty list around the shape of the day: the prep before the first service window, the meals and snacks themselves, and the cleanup and next-day prep after the last one.

Name the windows and the head count in the posting — "breakfast at [time], lunch at [time], afternoon snack for [number] children" tells a cook candidate more than any adjective.

A posting that says only "food prep and kitchen duties" describes nobody's kitchen, and it gives a cook candidate nothing to judge your kitchen on.

Treat cooking to the allergy list as a duty that sets a childcare kitchen apart.

Put it in the posting as the duty it is: reading each classroom's allergies before the menu is planned, labeling and separating at prep, and the handoff at the service line so the wrong plate never reaches the wrong child.

Name the system your center uses to flag allergies and who the cook checks with when a mismatch shows up mid-service — that sentence is what tells an experienced childcare cook you run a serious kitchen.

Then the between-services work: the cleaning schedule, the dish pit, and the kitchen paperwork your program runs — temperature logs, production records and, where your center participates in CACFP, the meal-count records the program runs on.

Name the records your licensing agency or sponsor actually asks the kitchen to keep, and confirm that list with them before it goes in the posting.

If the seat also plans menus, prices and orders groceries, receives deliveries and rotates stock, say so — those lines are the difference between a head cook and a prep cook, and they are what a candidate screens on.

Decide and state whether the cook covers classrooms when the schedule runs thin.

If they do, whatever your state requires before staff count in ratio applies to them like anyone else covering a room — so either build the coverage into the posting's duties and qualifications honestly, or drop the coverage expectation from the role.

Minimum and preferred qualifications

Split the two lists by enforcement: a minimum is a line you will screen on, a preference is a line that ranks otherwise-qualified candidates.

Keep the minimums at what the kitchen actually requires and park the rest under "preferred" — every inflated minimum can quietly remove candidates who could do the job.

Start from your state, not from a template.

The state child care licensing agency sets the staff qualification rules your center operates under, and kitchen roles can carry a different set from classroom roles — what training applies, which food-safety credential the kitchen must hold, who issues it, and when it must be in hand are the agency's to answer (your local health department too, where it has a role).

Ask before you post, and phrase the line itself as a placeholder — "meets [State]'s child care licensing requirements for [role], where your state sets any" — filled from your own agency's answer, never from another center's posting.

Our guide to how to hire a childcare cook walks the qualification question, state variation included.

One rule reaches the kitchen like every other seat in the building.

Under the federal CCDF background-check rules (45 CFR 98.43), a "child care staff member" includes anyone employed by a child care provider for compensation — the floor covers cooks as well as teachers, and the components and timing are your state child care licensing agency's to administer.

Keep the background-check line in the minimums with its timing spelled out; our guide to the background-check steps walks each one.

Then the craft.

Genuine preferences for a kitchen seat: experience cooking for groups at scale, an institutional or school-kitchen background, comfort cooking around an allergy list, menu planning and ordering for a head-cook seat, and familiarity with CACFP records if your center participates.

None of those belong in the minimums unless the kitchen truly cannot run without them — the certification your state allows to be earned after hire, for example, screens out otherwise-qualified cooks when you demand it up front.

Confirm before you post: qualification minimums, food-safety certification and background-check steps for a childcare cook are set and enforced by your state child care licensing agency — and your local health department where it has a role — and they change.

Verify the current requirements for your state before they go into the posting.

Physical requirements and schedule

Describe the physical work as the kitchen's own essential functions: standing through prep and service, hot equipment and sharp tools, lifting and carrying stock, sheet pans and deliveries as your kitchen actually runs them, and the dish machine, floors and storeroom work between services.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, physical requirements in a job description should describe those essential functions, and the EEOC requires accommodation for applicants with disabilities unless it causes the employer significant difficulty or expense.

One line to leave out: a lifting weight written as a legal threshold.

No federal rule sets a lifting weight for childcare jobs, and no national licensing standard does either — a must-lift figure in your posting is your center's own practice, so if you state one, present it as what this kitchen itself demands.

A second accommodation law reaches the same section: employers with 15 or more employees are covered by the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act — effective June 27, 2023, with the EEOC's regulation effective June 18, 2024 — which requires reasonable accommodation of known limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth or related conditions.

The schedule section sets expectations a cook can plan a life around: the service windows with prep before and cleanup after, whether the day splits into two shifts, full time or part time, year-round or program-year, the head count the kitchen feeds, and who covers the kitchen when the cook is out.

If your service windows split the day, say so plainly — a split shift nobody warned a cook about is a fast quit.

How to write the pay and benefits line

Write a range, not a shrug. "Competitive salary" and "depends on experience" hand the decision back to the candidate with nothing to decide on; a range with a real floor and a real top lets a cook candidate tell in seconds whether the seat fits.

State what moves a candidate up the range: years on an institutional line, the food-safety certification already in hand, or head-cook scope over a prep seat.

Benchmark the range before you write it, and label what you benchmarked.

The kitchen seat has a direct federal line.

In BLS's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey for May 2025, cooks, institution and cafeteria (SOC 35-2012) earned a U.S. median of $37,450 a year across all industries; within child care services — the industry your center sits in — the median for the same occupation is $35,150 a year (20,620 jobs).

Read the child-care-services line as the closest federal figure to what a center kitchen pays — an occupation benchmark, not a pay policy for your seat.

National medians are not your market, though: pull your state and metro rows from the same survey, and check what school cafeterias, hospitals, senior-living kitchens and institutional caterers near you pay for the same occupation — they employ the institution-and-cafeteria cooks the 35-2012 line measures.

For the offer around the benchmark — the structure, and how the kitchen line sits beside the classroom pay scale — that work lives in our guide to how to hire a childcare cook.

In eight states, the pay line is not optional for covered employers. Our research verified pay-disclosure laws in eight states, each written into the state's own law and reaching the job posting or advertisement:

• California — employers with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale for a position in any job posting (Labor Code 432.3).
• Colorado — the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act requires employers to disclose compensation in all job postings and notices, internal and public, including benefits information.
• New York — Labor Law 194-b requires businesses with four or more employees to list compensation ranges in postings for jobs, promotions and transfers.
• Washington — employers with 15 or more employees must disclose the wage scale or salary range and a general description of benefits in each job posting (RCW 49.58.110).
• Illinois — employers with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale and benefits in any specific job posting; a hyperlink to a public page with that information satisfies the rule (820 ILCS 112/10(b-25)).
• Minnesota — employers with 30 or more employees in Minnesota must include a good-faith salary range in job postings (Minn. Stat. 181.173).
• Massachusetts — since October 29, 2025, employers with 25 or more employees must disclose wage ranges in job postings.
• Vermont — employers with five or more employees must include the compensation or range of compensation in any advertisement of a Vermont job opening.

Secondary trackers report more states adding posting rules, including some with 2026 and 2027 effective dates; our research did not confirm those against the state sources, so treat any state outside the eight above as unconfirmed and check with your state labor department before you post without a range.

Some of the eight also reach the benefits line — Washington asks for a general description of benefits, Illinois for pay scale and benefits, and Colorado's disclosure covers benefits information — so write the benefits section of your template before you post, not after. Confirm before you post: pay-disclosure laws carry their own definitions and employer-size thresholds — Colorado's applies regardless of employer size — and they change, so check the current rule with the state agency that administers it before the posting goes up.

Mistakes that shrink your applicant pool

The template can be airtight and the wording around it can still cost you candidates.

Check each of these before the posting goes live.

• Wording that signals a protected-trait preference. Under the laws the EEOC enforces, a job ad that shows a preference based on a protected trait is illegal — the EEOC's own examples are an ad seeking "females" or "recent college graduates," which may discourage men and people over 40 from applying. Kitchen postings fall straight into the pattern: a "young and energetic" dish pit, a preferred gender for the kitchen, an age band dressed up as "recent graduate." Describe the job — the windows, the head count, the allergy list, the dish pit — and leave age, sex and every other protected trait out of the ad.
• No pay line. In California, Colorado, New York, Washington, Illinois, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Vermont, the law makes pay disclosure — and, in Washington, Illinois and Colorado at least, the benefits description — part of what a covered employer's posting must carry; every one of the eight but Colorado covers only employers at or above its own size threshold. Elsewhere, and below those thresholds, an empty pay line asks cook candidates to apply blind, while the posting next to yours that states one lets them self-sort on the spot.
• A lifting threshold written as a legal rule. No federal rule or national licensing standard sets a lifting weight for childcare jobs; a number in your posting is your center's own practice. State the kitchen's actual demands instead, and keep the ADA's accommodation obligation in view — and the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act's, for employers with 15 or more employees.
• One posting for two seats. A head cook who plans menus, orders and owns the kitchen alone is not a kitchen assistant who preps and washes under someone else's menu — different scope, different pay, different candidates. Bundling both into one "cook" posting screens each pool out of the other; post the version you need under its own title. The sizing decision is walked through in our guide to how to hire a childcare cook.
• Screening against an unconfirmed qualification bar. Which licensing requirements attach to the kitchen seat is your state child care licensing agency's call — and your local health department's, where it has a role. Guessing the bar too high loses qualified cooks; guessing too low means re-posting when the file comes back wrong. Get the answer in writing before the posting goes up.
• Requirement inflation. A certification timeline stricter than your state actually requires, experience thresholds copied from a restaurant posting, menu-planning demands on a seat that preps and washes — every inflated minimum can remove candidates who could run your kitchen. Put genuine preferences under "preferred" and leave the minimums at what the seat and your state actually require.
• Vague duties. "Kitchen help wanted" describes every applicant in the pool and no kitchen in particular. The duty list — the windows, the head count, the allergy list, the records, the ordering — is what lets a cook tell whether they have already run this seat.
• A title candidates do not type. If your community would call this seat daycare cook, kitchen lead or chef, say so in the body text: the title in your heading is what candidates search for, and the alternates in the body are what catch the rest of the pool.

After you post, run the search like a live process.

Answer every application, including the declines — a posting that goes quiet can teach candidates to skip your next one — and refresh or re-post when a listing ages.

Read your own ad from the other side before it goes live, and compare your wording against childcare job ad examples that get applicants.

From there the work is screening and interviews — the working interview in a real service, the reference questions and the full process are our guide to how to hire a childcare cook.

This page is employer information, not licensing or legal advice. Qualification minimums, food-safety certification, background checks and ratio rules are administered by your state child care licensing agency — and your local health department where it has a role — and pay-disclosure posting rules by the state agencies named; wage questions belong with your state labor department or employment counsel. Confirm the current rules with each before you post.