Head Chef | Year Round | A Return to What Matters
Sundance Trail Ranch
What you’ll love about this role.
The way guests light up when the food hits the table.
Most of them haven’t eaten a real meal in months. They’ve been ordering, scrolling, reheating, and grabbing things on the way to the next thing. They sit down at our family-style table — kids present (in the moment), adults chuckling, mountain through the window — and within three days the gratitude is palpable.
The mom who cried a little on Wednesday because she didn’t have to plan a meal, cook it, clean it up, or think about what’s in it. The dad who ate a salad without complaining. The kid who tried a beet. The grandparents who said it was the best week of their year.
That’s what this kitchen does. And nobody on the team takes that for granted.
You’ll cook for everyone the same way.
Staff eat what guests eat, every meal. No back-of-house pasta while the dining room gets the good stuff. Every human on this ranch is equal at the table — that’s a core part of who we are.
You’ll get to build a brand for the way we cook.
Whole food. From scratch. Clean. The kind of cooking that’s actually a return to what matters — and one of the strongest expressions of the 5 R’s our guests come here to experience: Recover & Rejuvenate, Remember & Reconnect, Reimagine Life. Food is one of the loudest ways we deliver that arc.
And you’ll get to co-create the off-season.
This is where it gets fun. Off-season, we’re opening the doors to the community — locals, day visitors, road-trippers, the short-drivecation crowd from Fort Collins and Denver. We want to become the kind of destination dining and ranch stay that people block out a Friday night for. That hasn’t been built yet. You’d be the chef who builds it with us.
The role, plainly.
Year-round Head Chef at a 24-guest boutique ranch in the Colorado Rockies. New ownership, building intentionally.
Dude ranch season is the heart of the work. Family-style breakfasts that fuel a day on horseback. Trail lunches that hold up at the top of a ridge. Dinners that bring 24 guests around one big table — plus up to 15 staff eating the same food. One plated adult-only dinner mid-week — the night the parents booked the trip for. Built around a weekly arc, not a static menu.
Off-season is where you get to build something rare. Ranch days and destination dinners for the drivecation crowd from Fort Collins and Denver. Afternoon tea for day riders coming off the mountain. The restaurant we open to the community — your menu, your following.
Plus the occasional full-ranch buyout — destination weddings and small group bookings where you and the Head of Hospitality co-design the food story for the event.
You report to the Head of Hospitality and sit at the leadership table — not in the back of the kitchen. You own menu, ordering, food cost, and your kitchen team. Stocks from bones, bread from flour, the land sets the menu. We don’t open bags here.
The package.
$30/hr (dependant on skills) + tips, year-round, hourly
Private room on-ranch, year-round (shared apartment off-season, 2 housemates max)
Three family-style meals a day, provided — the same meals every human on the ranch eats
Lodging and meals provided per IRC §119 — almost every dollar you earn is yours to keep
HFWA paid sick leave, FAMLI, paid time off
ServSafe / ANSI Food Manager cert covered if you don’t already hold it
Full ranch access on days off — riding, hiking, jacuzzi, disc golf, shooting range, miles of forest out the back gate
The place.
138 acres at 8,000 ft, surrounded by 800,000+ acres of Roosevelt National Forest. An hour from Fort Collins, two from Denver. Across the road from the University of Denver’s mountain campus. WiFi limited, cell service patchy — by design. Tobacco-free, drug-free, random screening. Chef whites in the kitchen, western when you step out. Uniform provided.
You’ll thrive here if:
3+ years leading a kitchen, or a strong senior sous ready to step up
Calm under pressure, generous with your team, ruthless on standards — the holy trinity
Confident across modes — family-style, plated, casual restaurant, tea, occasional event
Real ownership of food cost, ordering, and inventory — you run the kitchen as a P&L, not a hobby
You believe whole food, scratch cooking, and clean eating actually matter
You actually want to live in the mountains. This isn’t a job you commute to.
You won’t if:
You think hospitality is performance instead of care
You need a 25-cook brigade to feel like a chef
You want to run a kitchen from behind a desk
“From scratch” means defrosting it yourself
The dishroom on a Tuesday night feels beneath you
You think staff eat differently than guests
Who you’ll work with.
We’re Jade and Monty — partners in life, in business, and in this ranch. We bought Sundance Trail Ranch because our shared love of nature, adventure, and what land does to a human soul finally pulled us here for good. We left other industries we loved to come build this on purpose.
Monty has spent 25 years in the ski industry, working with some of the most iconic mountain resorts in North America. These days, he is a remote P/T CFO of boutique destination, cat, and heli-skiing operations — mainly across British Columbia and Colorado, including Silverton Mountain. He chose to step out of the corporate rat race and the craziness of commercialism to live a life more connected to nature than to noise. The bar he holds for guest experience is high, and the standards he’s brought to STR have raised everything. Stalk away: [Monty’s LinkedIn]
Jade has spent two decades in business consulting and people strategy — building high-performance, human-centred organisations across Australia, the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia. Her massive transformational purpose is to create spaciousness to unlock human potential — to help people drop into flow state and reimagine what work, life, and being human can actually feel like. STR is the most direct expression of that purpose she’s ever built. She wants this to be the ripple — the kind of place that changes how guests live, how the team grows, and how the industry sees what’s possible. Stalk away: [Jade’s LinkedIn]
The result for you: life and career coaching, real feedback, and the kind of mentorship most chefs never get. You’ll be developed on purpose. You won’t just grow as a chef. You’ll grow as a human.
Read the full role, our food philosophy, and what life here actually looks like:
👉 Deep Dive Job Ad
Then send to jade@sundancetrail.com:
1. Your resume
2. Three references (one peer, one report, one boss)
3. A short note — why this, why now, why a ranch
We’re looking for the right person to start as soon as possible. Don’t delay. Strong fits get a call within 5 business days. The right human comes to the ranch for a half-day working interview — that’s where the hire actually gets made.
Sundance Trail Ranch is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We hire on character, capability, and culture fit — full stop.
Perks
We're not just a dude ranch. We're a movement.
Sundance Trail Ranch is a boutique guest ranch tucked into 138 acres at 8,000 ft in the Colorado Rockies — next door to one of the biggest boy scout ranches, surrounded by 800,000+ acres of Roosevelt National Forest, and embedded in a pocket of wilderness most people never get to live in.
We're leading what we call The Great Reconnection — a movement back to what makes us human: nature, presence, play, challenge, connection, a life fully lived. Our guests come to us burnt out, overstimulated, and disconnected. They leave kinder, calmer, closer to the people they love. That's the work.
Our team is the engine of that work.
Twenty-four guests max. A small, deliberate crew. Every single person on this ranch is either energizing or draining the culture — there is no neutral. We build for energizers. If you bring it, we'll match it tenfold.
What you'll actually get:
The Colorado Rockies as your backyard. Trails out the back door. Elk in the meadow. Stars so loud you'll forget what your phone looks like.
Real coaching and mentorship from leaders with backgrounds in leadership development, organizational culture, and high-performance team design. Most people pay thousands for what we give our team weekly.
Western horsemanship culture rooted in respect — horses are partners, not tools.
Bunkhouse-style on-ranch housing, three family-style meals a day, full ranch access on your days off.
A team that operates like owners, not employees.
What we hire for: character first, capability second, skill third. We can teach you how to lead a trail ride, plate a dinner, run a kids' program, build a campfire. We cannot teach you how to care.
Our principles:
Safety first. Always.
Hospitality is love in action.
How you do one thing is how you do everything.
Clear is kind. Direct is respectful. Silence is corrosive.
Own the experience. Ride for the brand.
Be the ripple — leave it better than you found it.
A few things to know going in:
Tobacco-free, drug-free environment with random screening. Western dress code. Limited WiFi (we have a no device in public spaces policy), patchy cell service — by design. This isn't a 9-5. Some days start early, some nights end late. You'll eat with guests, sit at campfires, and wash dishes with the team. There's no back-of-house here.
If that just lit you up — welcome. If it sounds like a lot — it is. And it's worth every second.
Where Wild Meets Warm. The ripple starts here.