Job Spotlight: Aprons

Did you know, we have many different chefs who make up our Aprons crew? With thousands of recipes, 11 cooking schools (eight of which have full-service catering), and our online cooking school offerings, this team stays busy working to develop delicious new recipes for our customers. Let’s take a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to be an Aprons chef at Publix!

Aprons® Cooking School Chefs

Most Aprons cooking schools are staffed by a managing chef, assistant managing chef and sous chefs. These chefs are trained to teach demonstration and hands-on cooking classes and usually have a degree in culinary arts or the equivalent work experience.

You might think that a typical day for our Aprons cooking school chefs consists of a lot of time in the kitchen, right? It does, but there are many additional duties our chefs are responsible for outside of teaching cooking classes. Some of those include:

• Hiring and training assistant managing chefs and sous chefs. This means they also complete all administrative duties that are tied to our cooking schools and catering areas.
• Managing all catering functions. They meet with potential clients, book the event, prep the event and execute off-site events. They work with our sous chefs and the catering consultant to plan catered events.

Of course, our chefs also focus on our Aprons cooking school classes. They also work on new class ideas and participate in local media, food and social events. Some of those events include the SAVOR St. Pete Food and Wine Festival, A Taste of Boca and the Virginia State Fair, just to mention a few.

Publix Corporate Recipe Development

Our cooking schools aren’t the only places with chefs! We have chefs at our corporate office in Lakeland, Florida, as well. The main function of the corporate recipe development team is exactly that — to create new recipes for our customers.

This team consists of our corporate chef, technical managers, recipe development managers, recipe development technicians and meals editors who are responsible for all our recipes. These recipes are used for our online recipe catalog, recipe cards found in our fresh departments, Meal Kits, cooking school classes, in-store special events, divisional marketing activities (such as marathons and food festivals), customer wellness, social media, liquor store, Publix brand private label recipes (Publix products with a recipe on the package) and new products, such as GreenWise burritos, bowls and fresh sausages, to name a few.

When this team isn’t working on new recipes for our customers, they are developing class materials for ideas submitted by the cooking school chefs. That means they write and test recipes for each class!

So, what does it take to be part of our meals department team? Experience! Recipe development team members gained experience working in our stores before joining the meals department. The team attends symposiums, seminars, conferences, and food shows throughout the year to stay up to date on current food trends.

Product Innovation

Keeping up with current trends is crucial for our meals department. The product innovation team is a group of associates from our marketing, emerging business, business analysis and reporting, and meals departments. This team focuses on industry, restaurant, flavor, concept and ingredient trends. This team uses new trends to create new prepared foods while refreshing or enhancing the quality of existing offerings at Publix. These exciting creations further promote Publix as the premier food retailer!

To apply for corporate and cooking school positions, visit https://corporate.publix.com/careers.