Case Study: Executive Chef & GM Recruitment – Pre-Opening Venue
Supporting the appointment of both an Executive Chef and General Manager ahead of a premium venue launch.
The most important recruitment decisions in hospitality are not made under pressure during service. They are made months earlier, when structure, systems, and leadership are still being defined.
We were engaged to deliver Executive Chef and General Manager recruitment in Melbourne for a high-end bayside venue scheduled to open within six months. Ownership made a deliberate decision to appoint senior leadership early and embed them into the pre-opening phase, rather than hiring late and asking them to inherit operational decisions already made.
The brief was clear. This venue is entering the premium south-side steakhouse market with intent, and positioning itself as a serious operator from day one.
At this level, recruitment is not about experience alone. It is about leadership capability, operational discipline, and the ability to work directly with ownership to build a venue from the ground up.
The roles required involvement across all core areas of pre-opening hospitality operations, including kitchen design and equipment selection, service flow planning, reservation and booking systems, labour and staffing models, policy development, and the creation of operational frameworks that will hold under volume.
The brief centred on leadership capability, operational discipline, and the ability to work shoulder-to-shoulder with ownership through the full build phase. Not just opening the venue, but building it properly.
Our recruitment process was built to identify senior hospitality leaders with the judgement to operate at this level. Candidates were assessed on how they think through structure, decision-making, and trade-offs in a pre-opening environment, not just their past roles or tenure.
The Executive Chef and General Manager appointed bring hatted-level culinary experience, strong operational credibility, and established networks across Melbourne and the Mornington Peninsula. More importantly, they bring the ability to build systems early, test them, and refine them before the pressures of service begin.
By completing both Executive Chef and General Manager recruitment well ahead of opening, ownership has created early alignment across leadership. Decisions are being made with time to challenge assumptions, stress-test systems, and refine execution before they become costly to change.
The outcome is reduced operational risk. Standards are defined before the first service, expectations are set before teams are hired, and systems are built deliberately rather than reactively.
This is what effective hospitality recruitment in Melbourne looks like at the senior level. Not speed, and not last-minute hiring, but early leadership appointments that shape the venue long before the doors open.
