Shortage of Cooks in the Restaurant Kitchen

Many restaurants are feeling the pinch from a shortage of cooks that’s credited to the growing food craze. The food industry has truly boomed in the last few decades, giving rise to the problem of availability of highly trained kitchen staff to keep up with the renewed and increasing interests of patrons in the food industry.

The countdown began half a decade ago, when the restaurant industry got back on its feet after the hard economic recession. Restaurant owners realized the great potential of the restaurant industry and began looking out for chefs and kitchen staff. The wide employment vacuum created room for aspiring cooks who were able to get the jobs they were begging for, a few years back. Chefs had to constantly deal with the surge of junior chefs with no more than 2 years of experience or fresh culinary graduates who demanded the jobs suited to veterans with at least 10 years of experience.

With the rise of fusion food and ambitious culinary dreams, the restaurants that emerged, had to deal with the crisis of an ever growing shortage of innovative cooks as well. Many chefs today, also worry about this fact and try to keep their menus simple and uncomplicated as a result, so that they can be managed and prepared by cooks who are fairly new to the industry. Some chefs do realize that the shortage of cooks has affected the quality and the complexity of their food in this way.

This has significantly increased the number of hours spent in the kitchen for the executive chefs who cannot rely on their line cooks to season and mimic the flavor profiles correctly. They have to prepare the dishes in advance which can be heated after an order comes through. Many restaurants in Las Vegas and New York have also been the victim of this problem.

Ambitious and aspiring cooks are highly coveted but even after months of looking and weeding out cooks with mediocre skills and experience, chefs are often left with a new hire that asks for barbaric rates of pay and unfathomable fringe benefits.

The limited supply of cooks has become a big problem due to the small pool of applicants. A chef who can produce high quality food, with the perfect plate design and flavors synchronized with a modern twist are now scarce. The important concern raised with this whole scenario is the severe working conditions and long hours, that a chef needs to put in to produce a plate of food that he is proud of.

Another issue clouding the minds of restaurant owners is that the increasing food inflation has forced them to raise their price bracket and the sous chef is undertaking the responsibilities of the dessert chef as well. Some restaurants are however, sticking with the big guns in the industry. Without sacrificing the quality of their food and their rating, they have maintained a good standing in the restaurant industry. They often pass over the opportunity to maximize profits by hiring low level cooks on minimum pay and stick with the professional staff that has been trained for several years.

The shortage of cooks has also opened the door to beginners to gain a unique skill set and advanced training due to the fact that the food industry isn’t concentrated in one place anymore. The scattered destinations cause young cooks to develop unrealistic expectations and becoming hungry for more. They frequently look down upon the generational training of chefs who start out by peeling potatoes. This causes them to search for restaurants offering better wages.

With time, this broken restaurant industry may be mended but will be hard to achieve until the restaurant owners improve the working conditions and benefits to keep their businesses afloat and prospective cooks interested.