Pastry Chef
Couplet Coffee - Downtown LA
Job Description
Couplet Coffee is a specialty coffee with eight cafés across Los Angeles — Echo Park, Santa Monica, Hollywood, West Hollywood, and Downtown with two more on the way. We started as a pop-up and built from there.
About the role
We're building out our in-house baked goods program and looking for a pastry chef to own it. This is a build role, not a maintenance one. Twelve months in, you'll have a pastry menu across eight cafés that's built alongside our chef and owner — recipes you help develop, standards you set, and production dialed in so it runs consistently every morning.
You'll work closely with chef and ownership on direction, then have real latitude to execute. If you've been the person quietly fixing recipes on someone else's menu, this is the job where the menu is yours.
What you'll do
- Develop and own the pastry and baked goods menu across all Couplet locations
- Run daily production — mixing, scaling, lamination, baking, and finishing
- Write, test, and standardize recipes, including scaling them for multi-café volume
- Set and maintain quality standards, portioning, and consistency across locations
- Manage prep flow, ordering, and waste for the pastry program
- Build seasonal offerings and specials alongside our coffee and matcha menu
- Keep a clean, organized, health-code-compliant station
Required
- 2-3+ years in a bakery, pastry kitchen, or food production environment
- Lamination experience
- Recipe development experience — you've written and tested your own, not just executed someone else's
- Comfortable working with doughs, piping, glazes, mousses, and finishing techniques
- Able to work independently with direction, and manage your own time and priorities
- Strong attention to detail and consistency
- Clear communicator who works well with a team
- Able to lift 50 lbs and stand for extended periods
- References from prior roles
Preferred
- Bread experience — a significant plus for where we're headed
- Bilingual Spanish speaker
- High-volume or multi-location production experience
- Specialty coffee or café background