News

April 15, 2014 By David Hall

Chef Recruitment Costs: 5 Ways to Lower Them

Keeping Chef Recruitment Costs low isn’t a “thing” it’s a strategy, a set of tactics, and most of all a state of mind. Some catering and hospitality businesses do this very well, and for others it is a constant struggle. The more noteworthy or outstanding your business, the less you are likely to struggle with Chef recruitment.

Yet even noteworthy kitchens, and restaurants, are finding that the going is becoming tougher over time. Being noteworthy or highly praised as a destination dining business, while helpful, isn’t a passport to the land of the chef abundance. But chef abundance doesn’t begin and end with chef recruitment, the most important component is chef retention.

February 21, 2014 By David Hall

Chef Job Advertising: Expert Tips on Getting it Right!

We’ve chewed over the subject of chef job advertising together before, recently I was inspired [translation:enraged] by a chef job ad that encapsulated everything that’s broken about chef attraction strategies in the catering industry. Having fully vented on that episode, this time I’d like to suggest a more positive and constructive approach to the matter, with, hopefully, beneficial results for you i.e. the chef job advertiser. Perhaps a less misleading title for this post would be Chef Job Advertising: why you should at least make an effort, or maybe even, Chef Job Advertising: make me want to work for you.

February 5, 2014 By David Hall

Improving Chef Retention Dramatically: The Secret

You should help your best chefs to leave you and get a new job. As advice for dramatically improving chef retention that statement, at least on its face, is pure insanity; especially coming from anyone working at a Catering Recruitment Agency. Isn’t it? However, this is not about what is best for us, we’ll survive just fine, this is about what is best for you as a hospitality employer and improved chef retention rates is something I’ve yet to hear anyone complain about. However I know you’re not in the least bit convinced so I encourage you to persist and read on, even if it’s for no other reason than to confirm that you’re right and that I’m off my head. Naturally I’m hoping to convince you I’m not, off my head that is, so please bear with me a while.

Chef Job Retention — It’s Beautiful – But Useless Without Chefs

February 3, 2014 By David Hall

Private Chef to Royalty: Serge Burckel On Cooking for Gulf Royalty in Qatar

Serge Burckel is a Chef with an extremely rich kitchen pedigree which has seen him master his craft with the culinary royalty of French cuisine before going on to win recognition for his own kitchens, on more than one occasion, with both Michelin Stars and enviably high Gault Millau scores. When I first came to learn of Chef Burckel it was to see him referred to in the French press as “L’enfant terrible de la gastronomie française, l’Alsacien Serge Burckel,” in a story about a banquet he was putting coordinating, with his friend Jean-Michel Turin, at the Al Wajbah Palace Qatar.

The Burckel"s at their Beautiful New Restaurant in France — The Burckel”s at their Beautiful New Restaurant in France

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January 30, 2014 By David Hall

Catering Recruiters, Why Always the Same CVs?

Why exactly do catering recruitment agencies keep sending me the same curriculum vitae’s, why do I always end up with the usual suspects? Okay, so that is how I am phrasing a statement made to me by a head chef recently, it’s not verbatim but it’s close enough. In fact it was said in a backhanded complimentary way; as an explanation for why this chef was seeking my help with the suggestion embedded that we were likely to be, somehow, a cut above these slovenly under performers. But, as the song goes “it ain’t necessarily so.” Sometimes “how” you use catering recruitment agencies is as important, if not more important, than “which” agency you use.

December 1, 2013 By David Hall

Chef Job Trials – What Are They Good For?

Can you ask that Chef when would it suit him (or her) to come in for a Chef job trial? That was the sentence which told this budding, as I was then, Chef Recruiter that things had changed quite a lot in the chef job game since I was last working in kitchens. Since then as a Chef Recruiter I’ve set up countless chef job trials and with one exception these have been at the request of a client. As a Chef Recruiter I quite like these trials as they’re almost always a positive signpost in any chef recruitment assignment. Clients usually only ask Chefs in on trial that they’ve a serious interest in and often this leads to a level of comfort being established between Chef and prospective employer conducive to a job offer being made. This we like.