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Methodology is a luxury, sustainable meal prep service clinically validated by Stanford University.

We're also known for packaging our ready-to-eat meals in reusable glass jars and bento bowls and are building a closed-loop supply chain with as close to zero waste as possible.

Our headquarters is based in

Concord, California. We currently deliver throughout the 48 states.

All of our culinary and warehouse roles are based in Concord, California, so if you'd like to join one of these teams you must be able to work from Concord. Our corporate roles are fully remote and spread throughout the world.

We have a hospitality-driven culture and are looking for teammates with a hospitality, service-oriented mindset.

We're hiring for positions across the business and would love to hear from mission-aligned people with food industry (especially fine dining) experience who want to grow with us long term.

Roles based in Concord, California

GF / DF Recipe Development Specialist

Overall Mission of This Role

This role owns creating and updating recipes for Methodology, which primarily involves designing our weekly rotating menu of nourishing, high-protein, gourmet meals and snacks. While the overall strategy of our menu and product design is owned by co-founder and CEO Julie Nguyen, who ideates what new items will go on the menu, you’ll collaborate closely with Julie to refine and perfect menu concepts to ensure every concept elevates the brand by being visually striking with perfect macros and is operationally efficient, profitable, and executable by our culinary team.

To be successful in this role, you can expect to be behind a computer about 90% of the time and in the kitchen 10% of the time testing new recipes and correcting existing recipes, plating meals, and weighing components to ensure their accuracy.

You’ll report directly to Stephen Liu, Co-Founder and COO of Methodology, and work in parallel alongside both our Chief Business Operations Officer and our Menu Design Admin Team, who oversees all menu data input, culinary scheduling, cook sheet production and organization, and purchasing.

To succeed in this role, you must be able to scale any recipe accurately without having to cook it at a large batch size. Recipes must be written concisely and clearly enough for chefs to consistently replicate the recipes as they were intended to look and taste.

The ideal candidate has a mix of pastry and savory experience in a high-volume, high-end catering environment.

Qualifications:

• Minimum of 5 years of experience in a fine dining setting
• 5+ years of experience cooking and developing recipes within a high-volume catering environment
• 5+ years of experience cooking and developing recipes for a Rational iCombi pro and tilt skillets
• 5+ years of pastry experience is preferred
• 3+ years of gluten-free, dairy-free, refined sugar-free R&D / cooking experience
• 3+ years of developing recipes for an encrusting machine
• Proven expertise in recipe design with a strong portfolio from a fine dining or high-end catering environment
• Exceptional attention to detail; zero tolerance for mistakes
• Proven ability to review existing recipes online and accurately scale them for our kitchen without having to do any physical recipe testing; prior experience required
• High attention to detail in writing and documenting every step of a recipe so they can be executed at the same quality levels, flavor, and visual consistency every time
• Tech-savvy with ample advanced experience with Google Spreadsheets - pivot tables / data aggregation, customizable reports, vlookup/hlookup, filter, query, calculating profit margins, creating recipe costing sheets
• Proven ability to thrive in a fully remote work environment
• Ability to create innovative recipes that drive client retention
• Passionate about health, wellness, and nutrition, with health as a priority in your life
• Excited to design recipes that are optimally nourishing and macros optimized without ever sacrificing flavor or aesthetics
• Stays on top of the the latest innovations in food, nutrition, menu design, and cooking techniques
• Expertly knowledgeable about techniques, science, and numbers behind cooking so you can instantly recognize when a recipe needs correcting in order to work properly and taste amazing
• A deep passion for food: you are the kind of person who reads cookbooks in your spare time and is always eager to try new restaurants and recipes at home
• Artistic eye for meal aesthetics, including color combinations and plating designs in the glass jar or bento bowl
• You collaborate and communicate respectfully, clearly, and thoughtfully with your teammates, including those you report to, those at your level, and those who report to you.
• Team-oriented mindset, focused on overall business success
• Patient, generous, and humble attitude towards all team members
• Attentive to any issues in our menus or operations and has the initiative to flag these proactively, ensuring continuous improvement and excellence in our service delivery.

Responsibilities:

• You will design our weekly changing menus in spreadsheets that include every detail required for every component that week. You take full ownership of this to ensure the menu is accurate, profitable, executable, and drives revenue and retention. The weekly menus must:
  • hit nutrition targets for Standard and Large variations, including target calorie, protein, fiber, fat, and carbohydrate ranges;
  • never include any illegal ingredients such as seed oils, gluten, and dairy;
  • be profitably executable by the kitchen within given time, budgetary, kitchen, and equipment constraints;
  • include at least 1 new meal or snack every 1-2 weeks;
  • include accurate photos (plated and in its packaging) of any new or revised meals;
  • include accurate recipes, weights, portioning instructions, and packaging for every component of every meal;
  • be published accurately and on time every week, at least 4 weeks in advance of its delivery date.
• Clearly define the concept and visual presentation of each menu item, detailing the story, the overall flavor profile, each component, and exactly how components will be plated in a jar or bento, including how the item will be heated then plated by guests.
• Ensure that the design of your menu items looks beautiful both when packaged in the jar or bento and when guests plate the final menu item at home.
• Accurately scale recipes with instructions any chef in our kitchen could read and follow successfully.
• Provide the culinary admin team with all the details needed for each menu item to be input into our proprietary software system, including the exact weight of each component in grams once packaged (in all meal sizes), detailed recipes with instructions and weights of each ingredient in grams, plating instructions and photos for exactly how the menu item should look in the jar or bento, heating instructions for our guests, and more.
• Provide the marketing team with the story behind your menu items so they can properly share it with our guests.
• Collaborate with the sourcing and purchasing teams to ensure that all ingredients and packaging you include are available at scale at the time the menu item will be live on the menu.
• You will have an administrative assistant able to do data entry for our menus into our software system day-to-day, though you are expected to master our software inside out so you are able to make changes on your own or look up info you need.
• Create one new full recipe (every component needed for the meal or snack) every two weeks to ensure it is accurate and ready to be used on a menu. The recipe must meet all nutritional requirements, exclude illegal ingredients, and be profitable and feasible for execution.
• Meet with the CEO and/or COO at least once every two weeks to review R&D pipeline.
• Correct all existing recipes by catching mistakes before they go live and by getting lists of mistakes on a daily basis from chefs in the kitchen.