A cook placement agency finds home cooks and kitchen helpers for families and small establishments. Its trade is matching and trust, and its own team is small. The owner needs a clear way to assess cooks, record placements and handle replacements.
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Share your requirementsA cook placement agency supplies home cooks, regional-cuisine specialists, tiffin makers and kitchen helpers to families, hostels and small offices. Customers have strong views on taste, hygiene, timing and diet, and a cook who suits one family may not suit the next. Most cooks come through word of mouth and move on easily to better offers. The agency's own staff are a few coordinators who talk to customers and cooks, assess skills, arrange trials and chase replacements. Families call at once when a cook does not turn up, and expect a stand-in the same day. Cooks may not have written records, and the agency keeps most of what it knows on phones and in memory. See also HR for facility management.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in cook placement agencies. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
A cook says he makes a cuisine well, and the family finds out on day one that he does not.
A cook is sick or away, and the agency has no one who knows the family's tastes.
A better offer from a neighbour is enough, and the agency loses both the cook and the fee.
Jain, vegetarian, diabetic or allergy needs are told once and fall out of mind.
Whether a trial is paid, how long it lasts and who decides to continue are not agreed up front.
Who was placed where, at what pay and since when is in several coordinators' phones, and is lost when one leaves.
A family says something is missing or a cook was rude, and the cook says the opposite, with no neutral record.
They handle calls from both sides late into the evening, and the best ones leave to start their own agency.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Recruitment and Talent Acquisition; Employee Administration; Employee Relations. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for facility management, not in general.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a cook placement agencies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A short practical trial on a basic menu, with a checklist for hygiene, taste and timing, noted by the assessor.
A short practical trial on a basic menu, with a checklist for hygiene, taste and timing, noted by the assessor. See HR documentation.
Cook, family, pay, hours, start date, diet needs and trial result in a shared sheet.
Cook, family, pay, hours, start date, diet needs and trial result in a shared sheet. The employee information management work shows how.
A few trialled cooks who can step in for a day, and who have seen the family's menu note.
A few trialled cooks who can step in for a day, and who have seen the family's menu note.
Duration, pay, who judges and what happens at the end, told to both sides in a message.
Duration, pay, who judges and what happens at the end, told to both sides in a message. The recruitment process can hold the template.
Allergies, restrictions, likes, timings and kitchen rules, shared with the cook before day one.
Allergies, restrictions, likes, timings and kitchen rules, shared with the cook before day one.
A written account from both sides, a neutral coordinator to hear it and a clear outcome.
A written account from both sides, a neutral coordinator to hear it and a clear outcome. The grievance and disciplinary process supports this.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A way to assess, trial and list cooks so the first placement is likely to last.
One record of cooks, families and placements that survives a coordinator leaving.
A calm route for complaints from families and cooks.
Trial terms, diet sheets and placement notes in writing.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in facility management, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Housekeeping, technician and security staff at client sites leave for reasons head office rarely hears. How to ask, what to look for and how to act on it.
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How a D2C founder can test a performance marketing hire on real work, ignore weak signals such as dashboard screenshots, and run a fair process.
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Payroll says one joining date, the personal file says another and the manager remembers a third. How to establish a single trustworthy employee record and keep it that way.
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An employee brings you a complaint about their supervisor. What happens next should not depend on who is in the room. A grievance procedure a small company can actually run.
8 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Run a practical trial with a short checklist covering taste, hygiene, speed and behaviour. Ask for a family reference, and write down what you observed so the next person can use it.
A fixed number of days, agreed pay, a menu, a named person who judges and a rule for how the trial ends. Tell both sides in writing.
Keep your fee fair, keep in touch, offer regular work and be open about pay ranges. A cook who trusts you rarely leaves for a small difference.
Listen to both sides, record what each says and avoid conclusions. Suggest the family seek advice if the matter is serious. Do not accuse without evidence.
Many agencies offer one. Set its length and terms in writing and apply it the same way every time.
We would ask how you assess a cook, where placement records are kept and how replacements are found. A good opening project is a trial checklist and a shared placement record. Scope is written down for you to accept or change.
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