Cook Job Description: Template for Line, Prep and Fast-Food Cooks (2026)

"Cook" covers five different jobs with five different pay rates, and posting the wrong one is the most common reason a kitchen ad gets no response. Below is a copy-paste cook job description template with variant sections for line cooks, prep cooks and dishwashers, the requirements worth keeping, and what it costs to reach kitchen staff on social, from Boostpoint's campaign data.

What a cook does — and which cook you are hiring

The BLS separates cooks into five categories with visibly different medians, all May 2025: private household cooks at $23.05 an hour, restaurant cooks at $17.98, institution and cafeteria cooks at $18.01, short order cooks at $17.25 and fast food cooks at $14.85. That $3.21 spread between a restaurant cook and a fast-food cook is not a rounding difference — it is a different job, a different candidate and a different ad.

So before writing anything, decide which one you are hiring and put it in the title. "Cook" as a job title competes with every kitchen in your city; "Line Cook — Grill, PM Shift" competes only with the ones hiring the same person. No formal education is typically required for any of these roles, though employers may prefer a high school diploma, and roughly 432,200 openings are projected each year over the decade — a market where speed and specificity beat a longer requirements list.

Cook job description template

Copy this into your ATS or job board, replace the bracketed fields, and use the variant section below that matches the role. Order it the way kitchen staff read: station, shift, pay, then everything else.

Variant sections: line, prep and dishwasher

Line cook

Name the station in the title — grill, sauté, fry, pantry — and say the covers. Experienced line cooks judge a kitchen by volume and ticket times, and a posting that gives both reads as written by someone who has stood on a line. Restaurant cooks had a $17.98 median in May 2025; if you pay above it, say the number rather than the word "competitive". Mention whether you run scratch or assembly, because that decides who wants the job.

Prep cook

This is a daytime job and that is the selling point. Lead with the hours — "6am–2pm, home before school pickup" does more work than any duty list. Prep is where kitchens most often hire without experience, so say so explicitly and describe the training path onto the line. Requirements should be knife-comfort, reliability and the food handler card, and nothing else.

Dishwasher

Dishwashers fall inside the BLS group for food and beverage serving and related workers, which had a median of $15.24 an hour, or $31,710 a year, in 2025 across 5,143,000 people employed; the handbook does not publish a separate dishwasher median. Post it as its own job rather than as a line in the cook ad, keep the requirements to availability and physical ability, and state the shift end time — the honest question every applicant has is how late they will be there. One thing worth stating explicitly: if your kitchen shares in the tip pool, say so, because it materially changes the pay and it is a genuine advantage over the restaurant down the road that does not.

Requirements: what to keep, what to drop

Kitchen postings tend to fail on the same three lines. Here is what each requirement is doing to your applicant flow.

The highest-value addition to almost any kitchen posting is the schedule, stated exactly — days, start time, end time and whether the two days off are consecutive. In a category where nearly everyone advertises the same wage band, the schedule is the differentiator you actually control.

If you are hiring cooks rather than describing the job, the recruiting side — where kitchen staff actually are, what the ad has to say, and what an applicant costs to reach — is on our line cook and kitchen staff recruiting page.

Writing the ad version

The template above is for your ATS and careers page. The advertisement that runs on Facebook or Instagram is much shorter and answers three questions in the first two lines: how much, what shift, where. Something like: "Line Cook — Grill. $19–$22/hr. Tue–Sat, 3pm–11pm, two days off together. [Restaurant], [Neighborhood]. We pay for your food handler card. Apply in 60 seconds, no résumé."

Then two or three knockout questions on the form — station experience, evening availability, distance — and nothing else. Every added field costs completions, and each screening question buys precision with volume. The mechanics are in our candidate conversion rate guide, and the writing method is in job ad copywriting.

Dishwasher job description: the role most kitchens under-advertise

The dishwasher position is usually the easiest role in a kitchen to fill and the most expensive one to leave empty. A missing dish machine operator stops the line within an hour, which is why it is worth a proper job description rather than a two-line ad.

What belongs in one: the shift and, specifically, the close — a dishwasher posting that does not say when the shift ends is asking someone to accept an unknown. Whether it is a machine or a three-compartment sink. Whether the role includes prep, because "dishwasher with prep" is a different job and a genuine step toward a line position. The physical reality, stated plainly: standing, heat, lifting. And the pay, with the shift differential if there is one.

The strongest hiring argument most kitchens fail to make is the progression. A dishwasher role that explicitly says "we train dish to prep in eight weeks, prep to line in six months" competes for a different and better candidate than one that does not, and it costs nothing to say. If it is true, say it in the ad rather than at the interview.

Cook job duties, by station

"Cook" in a posting can mean five different jobs, and cooks filter on which one before they read anything else. Name the station and the duty list follows from it.

Prep cook. Receiving and rotating stock; washing, peeling and cutting produce to spec; portioning proteins; making stocks, sauces, dressings and batters; labelling and dating everything; keeping the walk-in organized and to temperature; completing the prep list before service and reporting what did not get done. Usually earlier hours and no service pressure, which makes it the most accessible entry point in a kitchen.

Line cook. Setting up the station to par before service; cooking to recipe, temperature and ticket time; plating to the picture; communicating on the line and calling back the expo; holding food safety through service; breaking down, wrapping, labelling and cleaning the station at close. A line cook is hired for the station — grill, sauté, fry, garde manger — and a posting that does not say which reads as a kitchen that will put them wherever there is a hole.

Short-order cook. Multiple tickets, a single cook, speed over complexity. Often also the dish and the prep. Say so.

Institutional cook — schools, hospitals, senior living, corrections. Volume batch cooking to standardized recipes, therapeutic or texture-modified diets, HACCP paperwork, and a temperature log that is inspected. Very different skills from a restaurant line and a much steadier schedule, which is the actual selling point.

Lead or head cook. The above plus ordering, prep lists, scheduling help, and training the new person.

The duties that belong in the posting and usually are not

Three things decide whether an experienced cook applies. The station and the covers — a grill cook doing 90 covers is not doing the same job as one doing 300. Who does the dish and the prep — if the line cook also runs prep and helps with dish, say it; finding out on day three is how a kitchen earns a reputation. And the close — what time the kitchen actually finishes, not what time the restaurant stops seating.

BLS puts the median for restaurant cooks at $17.98 an hour (May 2025). That is an hourly-only figure — BLS publishes no annual median for restaurant cooks, so do not convert it to a salary in your posting.

Hiring the pit as well as the line? The dishwasher job description is a separate page. A dish backup stops a kitchen faster than a broken stove does, and the posting that fills it competes against warehouse work rather than against other kitchens.

Pay, employment, outlook and cook-type wage figures: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, Cooks (2025 edition; May 2025 wage and 2025 employment data, 2025–35 projections, May 2025 medians by cook type) and Food and Beverage Serving and Related Workers (last modified August 27, 2026; 2025 data), both read August 28, 2026. Tip-pool statements: U.S. Department of Labor, Tip Regulations under the FLSA (dol.gov/agencies/whd/flsa/tips), read August 28, 2026 — summarized here, not legal advice. Cost-per-applicant figures: Boostpoint 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark — 891 campaigns, 1,334 campaign-months, advertising costs only. Cost per applicant is not cost per hire. Last updated August 2026.