Pastry Prep Cook

Prep Lead / Prep Manager — Wholesale Bakery

Out of Thin Air Bread is a growing wholesale bakery in Los Angeles producing thousands of croissants each week, alongside a full range of laminated pastry, savory items, and bakery products for cafés, restaurants, and retail partners.

We are looking for a highly organized, systems-minded Prep Lead to take ownership of the pastry prep operation. This person may begin in a hands-on prep role and grow into a Prep Manager position as they learn our production systems, team, and product standards.

This is not simply a prep position. We are looking for someone who can help build, maintain, and improve the systems that allow a high-volume bakery to run smoothly every day.

What You’ll Own

• Prepare ingredients, fillings, mixes, and components for daily pastry production.

• Maintain prep schedule, pars, labeling, dating, storage, and inventory organization.

• Ensure pastry teams have the correct ingredients and components ready at the right time.

• Help build clear, repeatable prep systems that reduce waste, prevent shortages, and support consistent production.

• Monitor ingredient usage and flag upcoming shortages, production issues, or ordering needs early.

• Assist with inventory counts, ordering, receiving, and vendor communication as the role grows.

• Train and direct prep staff on standards for organization, sanitation, labeling, storage, and recipe execution.

• Maintain a clean, food-safe, efficient prep environment.

• Work closely with pastry leadership and production teams to improve communication and workflow across departments.

What We’re Looking For

• Strong organizational skills and genuine ownership over systems, details, and follow-through.

• Experience in a bakery, commissary kitchen, production kitchen, catering operation, or other high-volume food environment is strongly preferred.

• Comfort working with recipes, batch scaling, prep lists, production schedules, and inventory.

• Ability to anticipate needs instead of waiting to be told what is running low or what needs attention.

• Experience with ordering, receiving, inventory management, or vendor relationships is a major plus.

• A practical problem-solver who can create systems that are simple, clear, and actually work in a busy kitchen.

• Strong communication skills and the ability to lead by example.

• Reliable, punctual, and comfortable in a fast-paced production environment.

• Food safety knowledge and ServSafe certification are a plus.

We are open to candidates at different levels of experience. Someone with strong prep and production-kitchen experience can begin as a Prep Lead and grow into managing the full pastry prep system. For a more experienced candidate with demonstrated leadership, inventory, ordering, and systems-building experience, this role may begin closer to a Prep Manager level.

The right person will become the point person for ensuring our pastry prep department is organized, stocked, accurate, and operating ahead of production needs.

Compensation - will depend on experience, demonstrated leadership ability, and familiarity with high-volume bakery or food-production systems.

Please include your relevant kitchen, bakery, production, inventory, ordering, or team-leadership experience when applying.