 101 tips to keep your Chefs!
This is going to be the start of a long page! Which I will finish eventually! But it starts like this:
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To open the door of your restaurant without a chef in the kitchen might be a tiny bit annoying!
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To use Recruitment Agencies all year round might be a tiny bit expensive!
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A Chefs Job is a beautiful job!
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We, Chefs, do love it from the start! We get the buzz from the busy service, preparing tasty food and presenting attractive dishes as well as making customers happy and management content! We take so much pride in doing it.
When we start, at 16 or 17 years old, it is exactly as we imagined it. Great, we love it. We all admire and follow our first Head Chef in those crazy 15 hours a day work.
We go home happy and can't wait for the next day!
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But then…Something goes wrong!
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Read our hot tips for a good guide to what goes wrong and how to avoid it…
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You found yourself a chef, good!
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The first priority is to have faith in your Chef.
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He will be the one helping you to succeed and second person after you for the reputation!
In order to keep your Chef and ALLOW HIM TO DO HIS JOB.
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Try paying attention to these HOT TIPS:
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Chefs are not all mad!
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They were not born mad either. They are not all instable just sometime push to leave because of the crazy demand they have to go through, inflexible hours, unsociable hours, heat, You will find some example below of what being a Chef means!
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The Kitchen
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Most of the time, when a restaurant is designed, the kitchen, which by the way is often the " main provider for your sales ", is looked at last, usually with what spare space is left. (After loos are sorted out that is!).
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Then the chef's vacancy is advertised as:
“Busy trendy restaurant is looking
for a chef (very slim and not too tall cause
kitchen size”
If you want good service in your kitchen avoid it being cramped and not user friendly. Often the Chefs are the only professionals you have in the building (i.e.: School diploma, years of training, apprentice…), so give them the space in which to work professionally!
This is bound to add to your profit rather than add to your loss.
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A Chef cannot cook without equipment!
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Neither can a Chef cook in a kitchen where 75% of the equipment does not work!
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I have often seen a so called “kitchen”, with barely a table to work on, two gas cookers and a mini fryer and when you have to admit that you can not cook for 20000 people the boss looks at you as of to say:
“I don't understand, aren't you a Chef"!
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So Try Providing:
*Cooking equipment (Ask your Chef for details)
*Cleaning equipment.
*Proper preparation & service tables.
*Big enough fridges.
*Big enough freezers.
*Adequate and ventilated storage space.
"A Small fryer for small restaurant. Big fryer for big restaurant remembering that: 2 litres fryer cannot cook twenty portions at the time!" (True argument story!)
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I have seen kitchen with the oven not working but still dauphinois potatoes had to be made (it was on the menu and no way would it come out! Boss orders!)
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Health & Safety?
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I have seen gas leak not fixed for days but still the restaurant had to open!
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*Provide training courses (Save so much money and trouble!).
*Provide Health & Safety information.
*Provide clean laundry.
*Make sure your cooling system works
*Bad conservation leads to wastage and contaminated food.
Remember a lack of these things leads to food poisoning & then the Chef gets the blame!
I worked in a kitchen where water was dripping from ceiling onto my head every time it was raining outside! And another where we had water up to the ankles because of blocked drains!
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Try Communicating
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Your Chef will perform well and with pleasure if he or she feel part of a TEAM not just thrown in a basement and talked too when someone is hungry.
*Have regular meetings with your chef.
*Advise your chef when advice is needed.
*Tell your chef when big tables are booked.
*Allow time for the Mise-en-place (preparation and setting up before service).
Once a manager turned up late to work, when he arrived the staffs and some customers were waiting outside the restaurant for him to open the doors as soon as the restaurants lights were on, food orders were coming to the kitchen! The poor chef did not even had time to lit his oven!
*Do not think your chef is being ‘difficult': when you ask him/her to provide high quality food (do not expect less) for a crazy amount of people.
*Understand the pressure of working in a basement all day.
*Understand the pressure of working in the heat all day.
*Understand the pressure of having to perform during "busy service".
*Remember not all Chefs are mad – they are creative.
*Remember not all Chefs are unstable- they work under immense pressure.
*Praise your chef!
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Staff
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A chef is like a soldier, cannot go on the battlefield by himself!
Find out if you have enough staff – Commis, kitchen porters etc. If the kitchen is dramatically short staff, do not ignore it! Talk with your Chef, change or shorten the menu, anything to temporary ease the situation. Train your young talent where necessary: A lot of advice can be found on various training sites. Do ask anybody at Le Bon Chef for advice.
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Shifts
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Just because someone is called a Chef, doesn't mean he or she Will automatically work 24 hours a day whilst being paid for a 6 hour shift!
*Splits Shifts - who came up with that!!
*Of course you think it works out so much cheaper but do we really think it is Chef friendly! *More like slavery if you ask me!
*Try the seven shifts a week (two splits and three straight shifts) where two teams can work back to back so that the restaurant is open seven days a week.
*Avoid that “love of the work well done” thing approach! To much abuse from it!
*Remember there is a sensible limit to good will!
*Offer day off in the week, at least one (please!)
*Chefs have a life too!
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Wages
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*Pay you chef fairly (!)
*Check the wages/rates of pay in your area.
*Work on a bonus system (it works!)
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Professionalism
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"I have seen a restaurant where the food had to be Michelin* level , the chef had to work on his own (believe it or not) for at least 50-60 people a service (at ?40 per head average ?2000 service) - 6 days a week and with of course 5 or 6 waiters “on the floor” (that means in the restaurant), as we have to look professional in front of the customer, don't we!
It was up to the Chef to maintain professional standards!
One day, the owner called me to replace the one and only chef as he started drinking! Are we surprised!?
The head Chef loves leading, training, briefing his Chefs. But for the Front of House (F.O.H) How many time did I had to, when I was the Head Chef, in the middle of a busy service (of course) explain to the F.O.H staff (waiters/esses or even managers!) what the menu of the day was as nobody from the F.O.H thought it would be useful to know until (Managers pls say something!) a customer ask more details about a dish! Panics from F.O.H, run in the kitchen, try to get an answer! The Head Chef (sweating as busy & hot service) struggling to get his dishes out will be blame for issue if he does not stop whatever he is doing (and believe me stopping the rhythm of the service in the kitchen is the worst thing that can happen) and explain that the pork today is serve with mash potato! The following day do you think the lesson was learnt? “Nope” here we go again. Leave the Chef alone once the service has started!!
Daily Briefing. (Before service)
The difficulty of running a business might lead you to cut corners and of course cutting corners means cutting them in the Kitchen –*Virtually the most important part of the business –Not a good idea! Did you notice!?
In the catering classified pages when in search of a Manager (General or assistant) half of the page, sometime even more is use to advertise the vacancy. When in search of a Chef even Executive Head Chef, a little 1/8 of the page or sometime less is the vacancy advertises. Why?
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On A Personal Note:
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To try to push a business forward ignoring all these facts will cost you more in the long run.
Before opening your restaurant check out:
*The Kitchen. Is it efficient? Is it friendly? Would you spend your day in it!
*Think of the conditions of work you are offering.
Above all remember - Chefs are only human!
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To be Continued …..Philippe
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