What Does the Chef Shortage Mean for Your Culinary Arts Career?

What Does the Chef Shortage Mean for Your Culinary Arts Career?

'Forcing functions' are events that compel a change in behavior, causing people, classes of people, or sometimes an entire society to take action. Even when they don't want to. Even when they resist with institutional, mule-like stubbornness. A classic example of an historical forcing function: the bubonic plague halving and halving again the available labor supply, who, no longer peasants tied to their lords' lands, asked for and got actual pay for their work.

Today's chef shortage is no plague, but the ills it inflicts on restaurateurs and franchisers no doubt hit them nearly as hard as feudal lords wondering how to save their wheat crops rotting in the fields. Just as the peasants of the 14th century benefited from a tight labor market, today's smart, well-educated chef could benefit from the apparent shortage of quality kitchen talent. 

Is There a Chef Shortage? 

Wile. E. Coyote, awash in anvils and electromagnets, never ordered Acme's Crystal Ball because even he knew it would never work. To peer into the future, we will try the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), an arm of the U.S. Department of Labor (and a group not known for flashy gowns, flashpots, or turbans!).

Their straightforward message: 

Population and income growth are expected to result in greater demand for high-quality dishes at a variety of dining venues, including many upscale establishments. However, employment growth should be limited, as many restaurants, in an effort to lower costs, choose to hire cooks or other food service workers to perform the work normally done by higher-paid chefs and head cooks. [Emphasis added by us]

Ah. Above, the BLS politely reminds us that any chef shortage is self-inflicted, as restaurants try to pry extra profit by decreasing pay. So, how is that working out? 

Not well. A recent article in Fortune magazine examined the shortage and diagnosed the restaurant industry's ills: 

  • Too many restaurants
  • Low pay
  • A sense of entitlement among entry level workers

We will take a look at each symptom, prescribing chicken soup, offering sound advice, and leave you feeling full and satiated. 

Too Many Restaurants?

Any major metropolitan area sees crops of new restaurants rise, flourish, wither and die in regular cycles. Each restaurant needs at least a head chef and several sous chefs. Where once a top-shelf restaurant might have had a pick of a dozen chef candidates, today's market brings us a chef with her or his pick of a dozen restaurants in which to work. 

Television with its food channels and celebrity chefs gave rise to the retirement fantasy of opening one's own restaurant as though such a task is as easy (and successful) as buying a beach house. Once those daydreaming restaurateurs ring their last napkins, the number of chic eateries will drop. Until then, we will see too many restaurants with not enough staff, and a market ripe for chefs to reap handsome rewards.   

Chefs Receiving Low Wages?

chef median salaryThe BLS reports that the top 10 percent of chefs in May, 2012 earned $74,120 annually, while the lowest 10 percent earned less than $24,530. As a matter of fact, the median annual salary for chefs and head cooks in 2012 was $42,480. That was three years ago, and restaurants are increasing their pay to attract talent. 

Not only are wages rising, owners are finding intriguing ways to entice talent. Some restaurateurs pay up to $1,000 a month of their chefs' culinary student loans. Some give stock in the business to increase personal vesting. 

A Sense of Entitlement?

Fortune's article bemoans young people looking for the quick buck instead of investing in their future, but then mentions the 70-hour workweeks chefs and other kitchen staff routinely endure because of the chef shortage.

You cannot simultaneously disdain millennials as lazy while also expecting them to work, often seven days a week, 70 hours out of 168. 

If well-trained, educated chefs have their pick of restaurants, they also can choose to leave for a larger paycheck. By leaving for better working conditions and more income, those educated chefs are investing in their future exactly the behavior Fortune's article encouraged. 

Zero Sum?

For all the crabbing by the restaurant owners and we suspect they would have plenty to beef about no matter how much dough they made the beneficiaries of any perceived or real chef shortage are the talented, creative chefs, emerging well-trained from quality schools, eager to sharpen their skills and knives in fine kitchens. 

For the supposed loss by restaurant owners forced to increase wages, the chefs win through greater demand for their skills, higher starting salaries, and more opportunities for bright career paths. It is a zero-sum game in that the owners loss and nobody really believes they are losing when their restaurants are packed by hungry customers following hot chefs becomes the employees gain.

Go to Culinary School and be a Part of the Solution!

If you want to tap into the supply-side of this equation, begin with a sound career move. Begin at ECPI University's culinary arts associate degree program. Contact ECPI University's College of Culinary Arts today to learn more about how you could benefit from the chef shortage. It could be the Best Decision You Ever Make!

Learn more about ECPI's College of Culinary Arts TODAY!

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