Three kitchen adverts, three different meanings of the word “certified”. A Chicago restaurant group wants an “Illinois food handler certificate within 30 days”. A Birmingham hotel wants “Level 2 Food Hygiene and allergen awareness”. A Lagos quick-service brand wants a “valid food handler medical certificate and SSCE”. None of them is asking whether you can cook; that gets tested on a station. They are asking whether you can be put on the rota on Monday without the business breaking a rule.
This guide takes the three markets one at a time, because the paperwork, the pay structure and the way tips reach the kitchen differ in ways that decide whether an offer is good. Then it covers what is the same everywhere: the brigade, what each station actually demands, how the pay packet is built, and how to write an application a head chef can read in five seconds.
United States: the food handler card is local, and the tip pool is federal
There is no national licence for a cook in the US. Food safety is regulated by state and county health departments, most of which follow a version of the FDA Food Code, and the credential they ask of a line cook is a food handler card: a short accredited course, a test, and a card that is valid for two or three years.
| State | What a line cook needs | Deadline |
|---|---|---|
| California | California Food Handler Card from an ANSI-accredited provider. Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties run their own local cards instead of the state one. | Within 30 days of hire |
| Texas | Food handler certificate from a course accredited by the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS). Valid two years. | Within 30 days of hire in most jurisdictions |
| Illinois | ANSI-accredited food handler training. Restaurants also need at least one certified food protection manager on staff. | Within 30 days of hire |
| Nevada | Health card issued by the county health district (Southern Nevada Health District for Las Vegas), obtained in person after a short course. | Before starting work |
Two things trip people up. First, a ServSafe Manager certification is a different credential, aimed at the person in charge; the health code usually wants one per establishment, not one per cook. You do not need it to be hired on the line, though it helps at sous chef level. Second, the card is tied to the state or county, so a move across a state line usually means a new card. Budget for it; the course fee is small, and an employer that reimburses it is telling you something about how it treats staff.
Tips can reach the kitchen, on one condition
Since the 2018 amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act, an employer that pays every worker the full minimum wage and does not take a tip credit may run a mandatory tip pool that includes cooks and dishwashers. An employer that pays servers the lower tipped cash wage cannot include the kitchen. Managers and supervisors are excluded from the pool in every case. So when an advert says “tip share for BOH”, ask two questions: does the house take a tip credit on servers, and what was the kitchen’s share last month in dollars per hour. The second number tells you whether the promise is real.
Hours, overtime and the schedule
Overtime at one and a half times the regular rate applies beyond forty hours in a workweek for non-exempt staff, and line cooks are non-exempt. There is no federal requirement for meal breaks; that is state law, and California’s rules on meal periods and split-shift premiums are among the strictest. Predictive scheduling laws in some cities, including Chicago and New York, require large employers to publish schedules in advance and pay a premium for late changes. On Hirovo, US kitchen openings are grouped by county: see line cook jobs in Cook County, Illinois, Clark County (Las Vegas) and Miami-Dade County.
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Create a free account →United Kingdom: no certificate is required by law, and every kitchen asks for one
UK food law puts the duty on the business, not the individual. Under the retained EU food hygiene regulation and the Food Safety Act, the operator must make sure that food handlers are supervised and trained in food hygiene commensurate with their work. The law does not name a certificate. The industry answer to that duty is the Level 2 Award in Food Safety and Hygiene for Catering, which is why it appears in nearly every advert as if it were mandatory. It is cheap, it takes a few hours online, and arriving with it removes the one thing an employer would otherwise have to organise before your first shift.
Allergens are the part that gets kitchens closed
Fourteen allergens must be declared for every dish, and since October 2021 food that is prepacked for direct sale, the sandwich made in the morning and sold at lunchtime, must carry full ingredient labelling with allergens emphasised. This is the rule people call Natasha’s Law. In practice it means a line cook is expected to know the allergen matrix for their section, to follow the separate-board and clean-down rules when an allergen order comes in, and never to guess. Environmental health officers ask kitchen staff about this during inspections, and a wrong answer from a cook counts against the business’s hygiene rating.
Pay, age bands and the 48-hour opt-out
The floor is the National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over, with lower statutory rates for 18 to 20 year olds and for under-18s and apprentices. The rates change every April, so check the current figure on gov.uk rather than trusting an advert written last year. Tips and service charges must now be passed on to workers in full under the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023, in force since October 2024, and venues must have a written policy; most run a tronc that includes the kitchen. The Working Time Regulations cap the average week at 48 hours, and kitchens routinely ask new starters to sign an opt-out. You can refuse, and you can withdraw it later with notice. Employers must also check your right to work before you start; that check is on them, but have your documents ready because a missing one delays the start date, not the offer.
On Hirovo, UK openings are listed by county or borough: see line cook jobs in Greater London and Birmingham.
Nigeria: the health certificate comes from the state, and the contract decides everything else
Nigeria has no cook’s licence. Food safety at product level is NAFDAC’s job, and NAFDAC does not certify kitchen staff. What employers ask for is a food handler medical certificate, issued through the state or local government health authority after a medical screening; Lagos State enforces it for staff in hotels, restaurants and canteens, and other states run similar schemes. Chains, hotel groups and the better quick-service brands will insist on it and often arrange it; informal kitchens rarely mention it.
The bigger difference is between formal and informal employment. A chain kitchen pays a monthly salary through payroll, remits pension contributions under the Pension Reform Act, gives written terms and runs a rota. A small kitchen may pay daily in cash with nothing in writing. The Labour Act requires written particulars of employment within three months, and pension remittance is a legal duty for employers above the size threshold; ask for both before your first shift, and ask specifically whether the pension is being remitted rather than merely deducted. Service charge, where a venue adds one, is often shared with the kitchen, but the split is house practice, so get the figure.
Nigerian openings on Hirovo are grouped by local government area: cook jobs in Kosofe, Lagos and Port Harcourt are two of the largest markets.
The brigade: what each role actually does
Adverts use the titles loosely, and a “chef” job in a pub can be a line cook post in a hotel. Read the duties, not the title.
- Kitchen porter / dishwasher. Pot wash, plate wash, floors, bins, deliveries. The entry point and the reason a kitchen keeps running. Porters who show up on time for six months get trained on prep.
- Prep cook. Mornings, before service: vegetables, sauces, portioning, labelling and dating. Speed and consistency with a knife, and following a prep list exactly.
- Commis chef. The UK term for a junior cook who assists a section; in the US the same job is often called prep or junior line cook.
- Line cook / chef de partie. Runs a station during service: grill, sauté, fry, garde manger (cold), pastry. Owns the mise en place for that station and the timing of every plate that leaves it.
- Sous chef. Second in command: orders, rotas, food cost, allergen records, training, and running the pass when the head chef is off.
- Head chef / kitchen manager. Menu, margins, hiring, compliance. In quick-service brands the title is usually kitchen manager and the job is more operations than cooking.
When you compare two offers, compare the station. Grill in a 300-cover steakhouse and grill in a 40-cover bistro are different jobs with different stress, and a head chef knows which one you have done from the numbers you give.
Shifts, split shifts and how the pay packet is built
Kitchens run on split shifts, doubles and late finishes, and the difference between two offers with the same headline rate is usually in how the hours are paid.
Base rate is what everything else is calculated on. Overtime multipliers in the US, holiday pay in the UK and any future rise all start from the base. A high base with no tips beats a low base with a promised tip share that depends on the front of house having a good month.
Split shifts cost you hours. A shift from 10:00 to 15:00 and 17:00 to 23:00 is eleven hours paid across thirteen hours of your day. In the US a few states add a split-shift premium at minimum wage; in the UK and Nigeria the gap is unpaid unless the contract says otherwise. If you cannot get home in the gap, the shift is worth less than its hourly rate suggests.
Meals on shift, uniform and knives. A staff meal per shift is standard in most kitchens and is worth real money over a month. Uniform is usually provided; knives are usually your own. A house that charges you for the uniform or deducts breakages from pay is telling you how it treats staff.
Nights, weekends and public holidays. No law in the three markets sets a statutory night premium for cooks. If a premium is not written into your terms, it does not exist. Ask for it as a figure per hour.
Nobody legitimate charges you to start a kitchen job. Not a uniform deposit, not a knife-set fee, not a “registration” or “processing” payment to an agency, and not a medical or certificate fee paid to the recruiter rather than to the clinic or training provider. In the US and UK you pay the food handler or food hygiene course provider directly, and the fee is small. In Nigeria the health certificate is paid to the health authority, not to an intermediary. The other pattern to refuse is sending copies of your ID, bank details or tax number before a verified written offer from a business you have checked exists at the address it gives.
An application a head chef can read in five seconds
The person reading your application is between services with a rota that has a hole in it. They want to know whether you can hold a station on Friday. Put that in the first four lines.
- Line one: your food safety paperwork, with dates. US: the state or county food handler card and its expiry. UK: Level 2 Food Safety and Hygiene, and allergen training if you have it. Nigeria: food handler medical certificate and its date.
- Line two: the stations you have run, with covers. “Grill and sauté, 200 to 250 covers a night, hotel restaurant” tells a head chef where you fit. A list of restaurant names tells them nothing.
- Line three: availability in kitchen words. Doubles, splits, late finishes, weekends, Sunday service. Rotas are built from exactly these words.
- Line four: where you live and how you get home after a 23:30 finish. The most common reason a new cook leaves in the first month is transport after the last bus.
- Then your progression. Porter to prep to line, with dates, shows a chef you stay and get better. Job-hopping every three months shows the opposite, so if there is a reason, give it in one line.
- Finally, a reference from a sous or head chef, and a working phone. Kitchens hire fast and by phone; an unanswered call goes to the next name.
The trial shift, and what it is actually testing
Almost every kitchen hires on a trial rather than on an interview. In the United Kingdom it is called a trial shift, in the United States a stage or a working interview, and in Nigeria it is often simply your first few days. Two things are worth knowing before you agree to one.
The first is that you should be paid for it. In the UK, HMRC guidance is that a trial shift where you do real work that benefits the business attracts the National Minimum Wage; a very short observational trial may not. In the US, an unpaid working interview where you produce food that gets served is difficult to justify under the Fair Labor Standards Act. A kitchen that asks for a full unpaid Saturday service is not testing you, it is staffing a shift. Ask before you agree: how long, and is it paid.
The second is what they are watching, which is rarely your cooking. A head chef spends the trial looking at whether you clean as you go, whether you label and date, whether you taste, whether you ask when you do not know something, and whether you stay calm when the tickets stack up. Knife skills are checked in the first ten minutes and then largely forgotten. Turn up early, bring your own knives and a clean set of whites, listen to the sequence before you start moving, and repeat back the order you were given. The person who does that gets offered the job even when their food was ordinary, because everything else can be taught.
What the job does to your body, and how people last
Kitchen work has a high turnover, and the reasons are physical as often as they are financial. Ten to twelve hours standing on a hard floor, heat, steam, repeated knife work and carrying stock are the daily load, and burns and cuts are routine rather than exceptional.
The people who stay in the trade tend to do the same small set of things. They buy proper non-slip kitchen shoes and replace them, because slips are the most common serious kitchen injury in all three markets and worn soles are usually why. They drink water through service rather than only after it. They learn to lift stock properly, since backs are what end kitchen careers. They take the break they are entitled to, and in the UK that is an uninterrupted rest break where the shift exceeds six hours. And they report burns and cuts in the accident book, because an injury that is not recorded cannot be claimed for later.
Ask about the practical side at interview and you learn a lot about the employer. Is there a first aid kit and a trained first aider on shift. Is the extraction working. Are there enough people on the section for the covers, or is the rota built on everyone doing an extra hour unpaid. A kitchen that answers those questions comfortably is one that keeps its staff, and a kitchen that keeps its staff is a better place to learn.
Where kitchen jobs are listed on Hirovo
Listings are grouped by country, then region, then county or local government area, so you can search where you can actually get to after a late shift.
- United States: Cook County · Clark County · Miami-Dade County · all locations in Florida
- United Kingdom: Greater London · Birmingham · all locations in England
- Nigeria: Kosofe, Lagos · Port Harcourt · all locations in Lagos State
Summary
The paperwork is small and local: a food handler card in the US, a Level 2 certificate in the UK, a health certificate in Nigeria. Get it before you apply, because it is the one thing standing between an interview and a start date. The money is in the structure, not the headline rate: base, split shifts, tips or tronc, meals, and whether overtime and public holidays are paid at all.
Then let the work speak in numbers. Stations run, covers per service, years on the line, and the shifts you can do. A head chef who reads that in the first four lines calls you first.