Menu Development Jobs in Tennessee (NOW HIRING)

Description

ABOUT THE POSITION & ITS IMPACT

The Private Chef is responsible for planning, preparing, and serving nourishing, beautifully crafted meals for clients in our residential healing program. This is a deeply relational, client-facing role - one that sits at the intersection of culinary excellence and therapeutic hospitality.

At Milestones, food is never just fuel. For someone in the middle of one of the hardest seasons of their life, sitting down to a warm, intentional, thoughtfully prepared meal is an act of care that echoes the healing work happening in every other corner of our program. Our clients arrive carrying trauma, grief, and vulnerability - and they carry with them a wide range of dietary needs, restrictions, and histories with food that deserve to be honored with both knowledge and compassion. The Private Chef is a genuine part of each client's support system here. That means showing up with warmth, presence, and consistency - while maintaining the kind of clear professional boundaries that make a therapeutic environment safe. The right person for this role understands the mental health space, respects the relational nature of their position, and brings a rare combination of culinary excellence and emotional intelligence to the table every single day.

ABOUT THE DAY-TO-DAY IN THIS ROLE

Plan and execute daily menus for lunch and dinner, plus snacks, with a focus on whole, minimally processed, fresh, seasonal, and locally sourced ingredients that support physical and emotional wellbeing.

• Build genuine, consistent relationships with clients throughout their residential stay - engaging with warmth, attentiveness, and appropriate professional boundaries. The Private Chef is a familiar and trusted face in the day-to-day life of the program, and that presence matters deeply to the client experience.
• Proactively assess, accommodate, and meticulously track the full spectrum of dietary needs across the client population - including medically prescribed diets, allergies, intolerances, eating disorder sensitivities, religious and cultural dietary practices, and personal preferences - ensuring no one at the table is an afterthought.
• Collaborate closely with clinical, nursing, and program staff to align meal planning with therapeutic goals, medical guidance, and the daily rhythm of each program.
• Prepare creatively delicious, nutritionally balanced meals using advanced culinary techniques, with awareness of how food choices support mental health, emotional regulation, and recovery.
• Manage kitchen inventory, ordering, and procurement - sourcing quality ingredients responsibly and operating within budget while maintaining the standard of excellence our clients experience.
• Maintain a spotless, organized, and fully compliant kitchen environment in accordance with HACCP standards, ServSafe protocols, and all applicable health and safety regulations.

Requirements

IDEAL EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE FOR THE ROLE

We are specifically looking for a Private Chef - someone who has done this work before and brings a well-developed repertoire, a high standard of personal service, and the experience of cooking for small, discerning groups in an intimate setting. Other culinary backgrounds may be considered, but private chef experience is the baseline we're hiring from.

• Proven private chef experience is required - including a track record of delivering personalized, high-quality meals for individuals or small groups in a private household, estate, or boutique residential setting. Culinary degree or formal training is a plus, but real-world private chef experience takes precedence.
• 5 or more years of experience as a private chef, with demonstrated ability to manage all aspects of a personal kitchen - from menu development and dietary accommodation to ordering, prep, and service - independently and with a high degree of professionalism.
• Demonstrated expertise in dietary accommodation across a wide range of needs - including allergies, medically prescribed diets, eating disorder-sensitive meal preparation, gluten-free, vegan, kosher, halal, and other cultural or religious dietary requirements.
• Experience working in a therapeutic, behavioral health, or emotionally sensitive environment is strongly preferred; candidates who understand the relationship between food, mental health, and healing will stand out.
• A natural ability to build warm, genuine relationships with clients while maintaining clear and appropriate professional boundaries - someone who understands the mental health space, can be a consistent and trusted presence in a client's daily life, and knows the difference between being part of a support system and overstepping into it.
• ServSafe certification or equivalent required; working knowledge of HACCP protocols and food safety compliance.
• Experience with menu development, food costing, inventory management, and kitchen operations.
• A collaborative spirit and a mission-driven mindset - someone who sees their work in the kitchen as part of a larger story of healing.
• And more...a full job description can be shared during the recruiting process.

ABOUT OUR BENEFITS & COMPENSATION PACKAGE

Onsite Wellness Group offers competitive compensation and benefits including:

• Competitive base compensation with discretionary bonus incentives
• Medical, dental, vision, disability and life insurance offerings
• 401K plan with company match up to 4%
• Attractive Paid Time Off policies
• Ability to participate in Onsite's workshops
• Company Employee Assistance Program
• And more!

ABOUT ONSITE WELLNESS GROUP

Our collective vision is to create an emotionally well world, to reconnect humanity to themselves, to one another and to the world around all of us. Our team members, guides, clinicians and practitioners all work together to serve clients from places near and far all operating under the guidance of our company values, our ANCHOR values. The principles of authenticity, nurturing, courage, humility, openness and resilience steer our decision-making, the norms within our organization and how we gut check our future.

Onsite Wellness Group is a family of brands that provide emotional wellness and hospitality initiatives, in-person and digitally, including Onsite Workshops, Milestones, Onsite Adventures, Onsite Entertainment, The Onsite Foundation, Onsite Digital, Miles Adcox, Human School, Orchard Hill, and The Oaks. The Onsite family of brands provides services to an international client base through the company's transformational emotional wellness experiences that combine some of the country's best therapeutic, wellness, and personal-development minds with its signature healing hospitality. Onsite's mission is to design and deliver transformational experiences that optimize life and build meaning and value into the human experience. Onsite's work has been featured on 20/20, Good Morning America, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Marie Claire, People, The Doctors, and more.

For more information, we encourage you to visit our website at experienceonsite.com.