Culinary Consultant

Culinary Product Lead (6–12 Month Sprint)
Firenze Italian Street Food - Chicago

We’re Firenze Italian Street Food, a craveable clean-eating sandwich and catering brand in Chicago, focused on food that hits every time. Our bread is made from scratch and baked fresh daily. Our sauces are simple, scratch-made recipes. Our ingredients are clean. No seed oils, no preservatives, nothing fake.

We’re obsessed with doing things the right way and doing them consistently at scale, while keeping our food accessible at affordable price points. We aim to be as much of a scratch kitchen as possible without losing operational discipline.

We’re now looking for someone to help expand that mission in our next phase. This person will help improve our existing food, source higher-quality ingredients, and build new dinner and breakfast offerings that can ship quickly and hold up in real production. Think pizza, chicken parm, salads, wraps, breakfast sandwiches, and breakfast catering, with potential for pastries over time.

We’re looking for a hands-on culinary consultant to help push the food forward over the next 6–12 months. This is an execution-first role for someone who wants to cook, iterate, adapt based on feedback, and see their work hit the menu fast.

This role works best for someone comfortable designing food for scale, holding, and simple execution by non-expert staff, and who has experience making tradeoffs between ideal and repeatable.

If the fit is exceptional, the role could evolve longer-term. If not, the work stands on its own.

Our immediate focus is dinner and breakfast platforms, ingredient upgrades, and durable recipe documentation we can keep.

What you’ll be doing

• Building and improving dinner offerings (pizza, chicken parm, wraps, salads, bowls, etc.)

• Helping launch or refine breakfast platforms

• Upgrading ingredient sourcing (organic where possible, clean labels, simplified inputs)

• Refining and documenting recipes for consistency and scale

• Working closely with operations while owning food execution day-to-day

This is a very hands-on role — you’ll be cooking, tasting, iterating, and shipping food regularly.

What this role is

• ✔ Full-time, focused, execution-heavy

• ✔ Real autonomy over food decisions

• ✔ Clear goals and fast feedback

• ✔ Designed as a 6–12 month sprint

Who you might be

• Strong hands-on cook with professional kitchen experience

• Comfortable operating inside structure and constraints

• Bias toward shipping food , not over-theorizing

• Good taste, good judgment, low ego

• Excited by improving food that real people eat every day

Compensation & structure

• Structured as a monthly consulting retainer

• Typical range: $6,000–$8,500/month , depending on experience and scope. For the right candidate, scope and compensation can evolve based on impact

• Intended ~45 hours/week with flexibility around timing based on launches

• Mutual two-week exit if the fit isn't right

• Optional bonuses tied to launches and milestones

Location

• Chicago

• Some flexibility, but this role benefits from being close to the food

Why this role

This is a chance to make a real, visible impact on a growing food brand without long-term pressure or politics — just great food, done well.

Interested?
Please message us through Culinary Agents or email [email protected] with a brief note on why this role excites you and why you’d be a great fit . If you have examples of past work, menus, or projects, feel free to share — not required .