Hire a line cook or prep cook for your restaurant kitchen

Most kitchens start looking for a cook at the worst possible moment: someone quit on Thursday and the weekend is fully booked. The two usual answers are both slow or expensive. A job board ad takes one to three weeks to turn into a hire, and a restaurant staffing agency bills the cook wage plus its margin for every hour worked. If you run the kitchen yourself and only need a capable cook on the line, posting the shift directly is the shorter path. You set the rate, you choose the cook, and your GigList plan covers every gig you post that month.

Be specific about the station. A cook who is strong on a flat top is not automatically ready for a six burner saute station on a Saturday night, and vague posts attract vague applicants. Write the station, the cuisine, the covers and the equipment (wood oven, charbroiler, combi) into the gig. Cooks who have done exactly that work will say so in the screening answers, and the ones who have not usually pass. A short paid trial shift, often called a stage, is still the best test before you offer regular hours.

Short shifts are also a low risk way to fill a permanent spot. Many owners post two or three paid shifts, see who shows up on time, keeps a clean station and handles the rush, and then offer the job to the cook who fit. Because there is no placement fee and no conversion fee on GigList, hiring that cook full time costs you nothing extra. Check with your accountant on how to classify regular kitchen staff, since a cook on your weekly schedule is usually an employee under US wage rules.

Catering and event kitchens work the same way. Post the prep day and the event day as one gig with several seats, and add front of house from our pages for wait staff for hire and how to hire a bartender. If you are weighing this against an agency quote, our breakdown of restaurant staffing agency cost shows the math on a typical week, and GigList pricing lists the flat plans.