Resident Chef/Retreat F&B Manager

The short versionWe’re a small, successful boutique retreat with 6 lodges, 28 rooms, and 850 acres of forest and private lake. We host overnight guests, corporate retreats, weddings, and wellness programs year-round. Food is a big part of the Vanderkamp experience and how we shape the mood of a stay. We’re bringing food in-house for the first time and looking for one person to help build the whole thing — event catering, a small upscale tavern, retail meals, and the occasional long-table dinner in the trees.This is not a typical chef job. It’s closer to running your own small food operation, with the safety net of an established business behind you and 850 acres of forest in front of you. Performance-based incentives and on-site housing available.What you’d actually be doingBuilding Vanderkamp’s food program from scratch:•      Event catering. Anywhere from three plated dinners on a quiet Tuesday to a 200-person wedding on Saturday. Corporate retreats, wellness weeks, weddings, family reunions. The volume swings hard, and you have to be wired for that.•      Opening a small restaurant and bar. Upscale tavern direction, open a few days a week to lodge guests and locals. You’ll shape the concept — menu, vibe, hours, drinks — alongside us.•      Retail meals. We sell heat-and-eat meals to lodge guests through our store. You’d own this product line — recipes, packaging, margins.•      Special experiences. Farm-to-fork long-table dinners in the forest. Foraging walks that end at a table. Ticketed dinner series. Whatever else you can dream up that fits the place.•      Running the operation. Menus, purchasing, sourcing, hiring part time servers and kitchen staff and managing them, P&L. You’re the whole food business, not just the kitchen.•      Foraging and local sourcing. We have 850 acres. Use them. We also want strong relationships with regional farms and producers.•      Being dynamic and hands-on. Some days you’re prepping, cooking, and serving lunch to a group of 10 retreat guests on a Tuesday. Others you’re behind the bar pouring drinks and getting to know guests on a slow night. We have full time staff here to support you and part-time staff scale up for higher-volume days and events — but the everyday rhythm calls for someone happy to do whatever the moment needs.Who this is forThe chef who’s a little burnt out. You’ve done the grind — the city restaurant, the long line, the chaos. You still love the craft, but you want a slower rhythm, more creative freedom, and a place where work fits inside a life instead of consuming it. You want trees outside the kitchen door.The talented up-and-comer ready to run their own thing. You’ve been a sous or chef de cuisine somewhere serious. You’ve seen how it’s done. You’re ready to build something that has your fingerprints on every part of it, without having to raise money or sign a lease.Either way, you need to be good with people — guests, staff, vendors, brides, CEOs on retreat. And you need to understand the business. Food cost, labor cost, margins, what makes an event profitable versus a vanity project. We’ll back your creativity, but it has to pencil.You also need range. The person who can pull off a $180-a-head long-table dinner needs to also be the person who can feed 60 corporate executives a Tuesday lunch without flinching.What we’re offering•      Competitive base salary starting of 50k per year plus performance-based pay tied to how the program grows•      On-site housing is an option if needed•      Real creative freedom — you’re shaping the restaurant concept, the events menu, the experiences. We have a brand and a point of view and we’ll partner with you, but we’re not handing you a playbook to execute•      850 acres of forest, lake, and quiet•      A very small team that is efficient and passionate about our mission•      Year-round work in a business that’s already running wellQualificationsSignificant kitchen leadership experience (executive chef, chef de cuisine, or owner-operator background)Catering and high-volume event experience — or a clear plan for how you’d skill up fastBusiness chops: you’ve run or been close to a P&L and understand the leversBeverage program experience or genuine interest in building oneComfort with the rural Upstate New York life —willingness to live the lifestyleHospitable personality, great with guests