Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center Hiring for Cooks at Finland, Minnesota Full Time

Our cooks provide breakfast, lunch, and supper to a few hundred people every day.  Your work occurs in a large well equipped kitchen with pressurizing ovens that can also serve as canners or smokers, tilt skillets, a baking station, and no deep fryers.  These are not plated meals, rather more of a cafeteria with food preparation that is more akin to catering styles.  With an onsite organic vegetable farm providing about 20% of annual produce needs, we prioritize healthy and locally sourced foods.  We see the farm and kitchen teams as linked to each other… the cooks driving the farmer in what to plant and grow, and the farmer driving the kitchen in what is about to be harvested thus what the ingredients for future meals will be.  Our dining is incorporated into our teaching strategies, as seen in classes such as Food and Farming 101 or Seeds of Change. As we build our staff team we desire to provide our cooks with opportunity to become teachers in the culinary arts… such as with our organic farm camp for kids, or adult programs such as canning or preservation of foods.

These Cook roles are year round positions.  We are busy most every week of the year.  Work weeks are five 8 hour days.  Wages are good and the benefits are outstanding: 90% paid premium for employee and dependent health insurance; 7% retirement match; fully paid life and disability insurance premiums; paid vacation, holidays, and community service time; and discounts on outdoor gear and Wolf Ridge programs.

If you ask anyone in our kitchen, or for that matter on our entire staff, what’s best about this place… it’s the people.  It’s a really nice place to work with staff who are happy to be here and love that their work makes a difference in the lives of thousands of kids and families each year.  The social community and culture is rich and the social calendar of events fills up quickly, from a staff Halloween party, to a ski adventure, or nerding out together identifying and collecting wild edibles. 

Collectively, our team leaves a legacy of environmental learning and outdoor ethic development for future generations.  Then, it’s the location, as the North Shore is a beautiful blend of the mountains and the Northwoods.  Paddling on Wolf Lake, completely contained within our property, with cliffs rising a 100′ above the lake one feels like you’re in the mountains.  With coastal sea kayaking and rock climbing, truly right on Wolf Ridge property, or hunting and fishing in 3 million acres of the Superior National Forest that is 5 miles away, it is an outdoors person’s paradise.