The rise of consultant chefs and conveyor belt cuisine
In the quest to contain wage costs, more and more business owners are choosing to structure their kitchens without the use of expensive executive or head chefs.
We use to only see this in the lower levels of the industry, but now we’re starting to see it happening among the ranks of the higher profile restaurants.
Before you jump to any conclusions about the wisdom of this, I’d better explain the full picture. It’s not that these businesses are doing without the skills of qualified chefs – they still need them, but not necessarily full-time.
The normal day to day food production can mostly be handled by well-trained, unqualified staff once the menu, costed recipes and food presentation standards have been defined and the knowledge around that transferred to junior staff.
Ensure the services of a top consulting chef two or three times a year for a couple of weeks to develop menus and teach and train kitchen staff the basic principles behind the success of the menu items.
It will work well and save you a lot of money.
This attitude all stems from a basic bit of mathematics and a willingness to think outside the box. You have to sell a hell of a lot of meals to cover the cost of a R 400,000 exec or head chef’s salary as it is quite common to find the chef in a hospitality business is being paid a higher salary than the general manager, or indeed the owner.
I can’t really blame business owners and managers for taking this attitude. If your business was only producing marginal profitability, I bet you’d be reviewing all your major expenses with a view to reducing costs wherever possible.
Some clever restaurateurs have adopted a compromise. They still have some junior chefs or qualified cooks to handle the food production, but no expensive or high-profile chef at the helm – just a manager or supervisor to keep things organised and maintain quality. It makes sense to bring in the expertise when you need it.
It’s not all bad news for chefs either. What this change really does is open up a new lucrative career path for those who have entrepreneurial flair and more than just basic cooking skills. If you can create good food within strict cost guidelines, document its recipes, make it look good, set up supply lines where necessary, act rationally and sell yourself, you may be able to carve out a rewarding career as a ‘consultant chef’.
This offers benefits both parties in the transaction. For the business owner it means jobs are quoted and payment is made for a pre-determined outcome. For the chef it means an income without the requirement to work the killer hours and unsociable shifts.
More interestingly to me, it offers the potential to provide a career step beyond the head chef or executive chef role, while still staying in the cooking profession. If you look at the choices for a chef today, it’s not too clear where you go after you reach your late thirties.
The emergence of a self-employed specialist role for these people to move on to would be a good thing. While the kind of kitchen system I’m talking about here has been in existence for a long time in the franchise restaurants, it is now reaching much higher into the more rarefied levels of the industry.
So, if you’re looking for a boost to your bottom line, you might like to carefully consider the option to restructure your kitchen. If you assume you need an expensive, full time chef and you don’t really, you’re going to cost yourself a lot of money.
Alternatively, talk to us at your earliest convenience!