About the Role
HEAD CHEF
Yoke Goa · Agonda, South Goa · Season 2026/27
Reports to: Founder. Working alongside Operations Manager, who is the daily point person at the same level.
Line manages: The kitchen team, which you will recruit and build
Location: On site, Agonda, South Goa.
Contract: Six months, October 2026 to April 2027. Potential to stay for May/June, depending on bookings.
Salary: [₹35k - ₹50k] per month, paid by bank transfer on the 1st, plus end of season profit share and opportunity to host fully owned supper clubs and special events to showcase your talent and boost your income.
THE OPPORTUNITY
This is not a role where you inherit somebody else's menu and keep it warm. We are handing over the food at Yoke and asking you to build something that is recognisably yours, inside a brand that will back you and market you properly.
If you are a chef who has been quietly working towards your own place, read this twice. You will get a kitchen, a budget, a team you choose, a genuinely engaged audience of guests and trainees from all over the world, and a founder who wants your name attached to the result. What you build here becomes portfolio, proof and story. That is worth as much as the salary, we know that as much as you do.
The food at Yoke is entirely vegetarian. That is not a constraint we apologise for; it is the point. Our guests are here for deep rest, nervous system recovery and week-long trainings - our trainees they eat with us twice a day for that whole week; we have full board retreats as well as B&B guests to service too. The food is not a side dish to the experience, it is a fundamental part of it and any retreta host will tell you it's what makes or breaks success.
The FOOD
• Fully vegetarian, with plenty of vegan and plant-forward range. No meat or fish on site.
• Sri Lankan or Balinese influence would be a genuine delight; both sit beautifully alongside where we are and what we do. Bring whatever your own cooking actually is, though.
• Sattvic principles and an understanding of how food supports rest, digestion and nervous system regulation. You do not need to be dogmatic about it, but you do need to understand it or be willing to learn and integrate.
• Local and seasonal sourcing wherever possible, and direct supplier relationships you build yourself, with support from our local staff where needed for best prices and translation.
• Menus that flex around retreat groups, trainings, dietary requirements and the day a group of twenty arrives with a list you have never seen before.
• Special events alongside the founder: pop-ups, supper clubs, festival dinners and market offerings. This is where you get to show off.
WHAT YOU'LL OWN
Kitchen and team
• Recruiting, training and leading your own kitchen team. You choose your people. We can help.
• Rotas, standards, prep systems and the kitchen culture, which is set by whoever runs it whether they mean to or not.
• Service across breakfast, lunch and dinner, including retreat and training group timings that are not the same as guest timings.
MENU & BRAND
• Designing and evolving the full menu in line with the Yoke brand, with real creative latitude.
• Working with the founder and Operations Manager so the food story sits alongside the sound, movement and rest story rather than beside it.
• Providing what marketing needs: dish names, descriptions, the occasional willingness to be photographed.
Commercial
• Food cost, portion consistency, wastage and stock control. You will know what every plate costs and what it earns.
• Weekly stock counts and supplier negotiation, working to a gross margin agreed with the Operations Manager.
• Hygiene, storage and food safety at a standard that survives an unannounced look in any fridge on site.
WHAT GOOD LOOKS LIKE
Guests talk about the food unprompted, in reviews and to each other. Retreat hosts book us partly because of what comes out of the kitchen. Non-resident locals and travellers come in on purpose. Margin lands where we agreed it would and stays there. And the kitchen runs to the same standard even on the days you are not in it.
WHAT WE OFFER
• Full creative ownership of the food at a brand with real reach and marketing people who will use it.
• Your own team, chosen by you.
• Meals on site (you'll be in charge of feeding the team, btw - choose your CDP with this in mind) and free access to our classes and facilities when service allows.
• A founder who will actively help you build towards your own place, and will say so publicly.
• Profit share on net cafe income payable at end of season, plus event upside on pop-ups and supper clubs.
HOURS & LEAVE
• Full time across a six-month season, with hours shaped by service and by the retreat and training calendar.
• Our goal is a day off each week once the site is running, but as a key lead role, you'll need to be contactable unless it's an emergency situation.
• During super peak, roughly 15 December to 11 January, full days off cannot be guaranteed.
• Short leave outside super peak is usually granted with at least seven days' notice.
CONDUCT
The site is non-smoking. Staff do not drink alcohol on site except at hosted events with the founder's approval, and turning up to work under the influence of anything is gross misconduct. As a foreign-owned business we are under additional scrutiny from the authorities, and kitchen hygiene and licensing standards are part of that. Guest safety and comfort come before everything.
HOW TO APPLY
Send your CV to hello@yokegoa.com, with two things: a sample three-course retreat menu you would put on at Yoke, and a short note on why that food belongs here rather than anywhere else. Photographs of your work are very welcome.
Applicants from anywhere and of any gender identity are welcome to apply. We are a non-discriminatory business. If you do not have a legal right to work in India at point of application we will discuss your visa options and ensure you can come to us legally compliant at point of offer.
Requirements
Who we are looking for
A Head Chef, Sous Chef ready to step up, or kitchen owner with real section-to-service experience.
Demonstrable experience in vegetarian, plant-based, wellness, retreat or sattvic cooking. Not a passing interest, actual practice.
Experience recruiting and managing a kitchen team, including in a setting where staff turnover is a live risk.
Commercial literacy. Costing, margins and stock are your job, not somebody else's - although there is huge support from our Ops Manager and Founder on this front. We're on your team when it comes to the business side.
Flexible, unflappable, and able to work with what the market has today rather than what the menu says.
Experience in Asia is preferred. Hard time on international retreats, and in the wellness world is a bonus. Goa sourcing knowledge is close to a superpower.
Genuine creative appetite. If you would rather be told what to cook, this will frustrate you.
Who this isn't for
Anybody who needs meat on the menu to feel like a chef.
Anybody who treats costing as an accounting problem rather than a cooking one.
Anyone with a major patience bypass - things in the tropics can be frustrating and unpredictable. We see our life and space at Yoke as a beautiful, if occasionally unwieldy love affair, and it needs a degree of tenderness and understanding.
And anybody who runs a kitchen by shouting; we have guests forty feet away trying to find their nervous system.
About the Company
Yoke is a fourteen room retreat (capacity of 24 guests) in Agonda, South Goa, sitting in the gap between the beach and the jungle. There is a cafe the whole village is welcome in, a rooftop yoga space, a sauna & ice space tucked under the jungle canopy and a sound studio in the trees where most of the interesting things happen.
We run our own sound and movement trainings, host retreats for teachers and schools from all over the world, and keep an evening schedule that pulls people in from up and down the coast. Guests come to us for deep rest, nervous system recovery, and the kind of week that quietly rearranges something. Adults only, three nights minimum, closed through the monsoon.
We are small, independent and founder led. That means genuine influence over how things get done, and it also means everybody occasionally does things that are nowhere near their job description. If that reads as freedom rather than a warning sign, we should probably talk.