Career Mapping- Chef Edition
Tips on shaping your future within and around hospitality
“I am looking for something with work life balance, but still within the industry and still working with my passion, food & drink”. This is the format of daily messages we find in our inbox, has been for years. And so, I thought it might be wise to write some advice down somewhere for those who haven’t reached out, in case it helps.
I want to caveat this whole conversation with:
*An in-service role doesn’t need to be unworkable as a career, it can be fair, balanced and reasonable. If you are in an in-service role and the requirements and the expectation of you is completely unreasonable and you are absolutely not able to do your job well within the hours contracted to you, then you are in the wrong job or you need to speak up and share your concerns.
Here I have outlined the type of long-term roles possible for chefs outside of service and how to try and bag yourself one.
Development Chef
What :
Developing menus for restaurants or food for supermarkets, bakeries, shops, cafes, catering companies and food suppliers. This role is usually based in a central kitchen or development kitchen and often has office hours, but not always.
All bigger restaurant groups will have a development chef, and some smaller restaurants also have chefs focussing solely on development, such as Fallow. But in some cases, these chefs are actually paid less and are less experienced than the back of house management team. This will however, be highly creative. So it isn’t always necessarily that you must go through all the mgmt level roles before getting a development job, although it would never hurt.
Check out our Actually Good Chef Jobs newsletter takeovers featuring the accounts of Dev Chefs we know and how they got into it.
Pay:
The pay for a role like this can vary greatly, due to the high demand for this positions, but anything from £32k up to £120k-ish or more for the best dev roles.
How :
Regularly check and apply for development chef jobs on Indeed, Caterer and LinkedIn and obviously Home & Actually Good’s Instagram. Reach out to founders directly on Instagram if the restaurant is small (and the founder is likely to be on the DMs) and choose LinkedIn if the restaurant group is bigger. Reach out to founders who aren’t even looking necessarily and if you can pitch your services on a part time or consultancy basis to begin with, great. Make sure your Instagram (if it is an open account) is looking great with only good-looking food on there. Delete old, bad, or dated plates if you want to impress. If your food doesn’t match their style, then acknowledge that and explain what makes you qualified to support them.
Create a portfolio of your best work to send them, but also send it to your peers, colleagues or work mentors to look at first and ask for an honest opinion. A bad food portfolio is a lot worse than no portfolio.
Be prepared to send a lot of messages and make a lot of applications and not hear back. Always keep going though because often people will remember that message a few months later and come back to you. Also, don’t be afraid to apply for dev jobs that you don’t necessarily feel qualified for, everyone else does 😊
Executive Chef
What :
Overseeing all aspects of running kitchens, usually for numerous sites. Some Exec roles are creative, and you are responsible for all menu development for a small group, but some are not, and you work alongside a Dev Chef or creative owner. They almost always include the management side of running kitchens with a focus on H&S, training, recruitment, standards, food costs etc. This role can be very hands on in smaller groups and you can find yourself still working in service, or less hands on in a bigger business which come with office style hours. Be warned, often jobs are called Exec Chef but there aren’t any Head Chefs in the restaurants... so you are just a Head Chef of more than one site. This is fine if you know that upfront but defo make sure you know when taking the job. This is the most common ‘career’ job for chefs really as it is the back of house version of Ops. It can pay well and can usually bring you out of service in the end, if not straight away. A note with this one though, like with the phrase ‘Ops never stops’, same goes for this, you are usually the one everyone calls when shit hits the fan. So, you are signing up for a world of ‘logged on’ in with a role like this due to the hours of service for those working for you.
Pay:
The pay can get really huge, but usually starts at around £55k.
How :
There are way more exec jobs out there than dev jobs, so many more. So again, check them all on Indeed, Caterer and LinkedIn (and us) and get applying. Read the Dev Chef ‘how’ guide above and follow that really, it is a similar role but with slightly less focus on your food and more on your management experience. Again, if you have a great CV but less experience than the advert says you need, just apply anyway. The people who put themselves out there, get the good jobs, you must be bold.
Procurement
What :
This one is for the spreadsheet loving gals & guys. If you work in procurement you can take care of buying everything a business needs. All the food, drink, serve-ware, non-consumables... even services like energy. Some of the coolest people I know have worked in procurement, my husband 😊, and Lorraine Copes, founder of Be Inclusive Hospitality.
This role usually office based and usually within bigger companies (10 sites +). Buying isn’t just spreadsheets though, you are responsible for all supplier relationships, day to day management of the supply chain and making sure that the prices you are paying, are fair ones. It’s not rock and roll but it’s a nice, relatively drama free, stable job.
Pay:
Junior roles start lower at around £32-40k but as you gain experience pay can go wild for a role like this. The positive impact you can have on a business's finances is quantifiable, so those businesses often pay accordingly. I think £100k is likely when you have quite a few years under your belt and you are achieving targets.
How :
This one is less about hustling. It’s about applying, as most businesses advertising will already have a procurement ‘department’. If they don’t, the role will almost always come internally so if you are working for a growing business, make your interest in this area known. If applying, you can afford to work somewhere uncool for a bit to get on the ladder, no-one will judge you on your CV. Once you've gained the skills, you can then look to make moves to where you like the product.
Account Management
What:
One for the would-be salespeople, there are opportunities in all areas, food suppliers, catering suppliers, equipment manufacturers etc... Most suppliers such as this love the idea of having a chef work for them in a sales role. Knowing your way around a kitchen, and knowing what is important to chefs day to day, is worth it’s weight in gold.
This one will almost always have office hours and be drama free (compared to kitchens anyway). Many are interested in making this switch as it still allows you to be heavily involved in the world of food & drink, although within a niche area potentially. The obvious point with this one is that you have to be a good salesperson, both talker and listener, and be happy to be held accountable to targets. The roles are almost always commissioned based when it comes to pay, so your base rate will often be very low and you rely on sales volume to make up the rest. This can feel scary initially but if you are good at it then you will be fine and can make a good wage. You’ll definitely need to be able to drive and not mind travelling for big chunks of your day.
An account manager job with a large supplier can lead to so many other roles within their business. So that is why it is a great idea for many. You could start in sales and end up in marketing/HR/product innovation and way more. Joining a very small supplier can be a risky move now though, it is not a secure landscape for the really little ones.
Pay:
The base pay can be minimum wage but with commission can get high, possibly £50k + for an entry level role if you are great at it.
How:
Speak to all the suppliers you love, especially the ones you work with now and like. Express your interest in moving into that area one day. Also apply for account management and sales roles on job boards such as Grocer as well as all usual hospo ones. Suppliers will usually have their vacancies on their website too. Cover letters could help in this situation to help tell the story of why you are applying and highlighting your personality characteristics that make you good for it.
Chef Consultant
What:
This one is a common one but comes without the income security many people need. This is where you can support other businesses (usually smaller independents) on an ad hoc basis with all thing's kitchen related. It could be focused solely on menu development, or more often menu development alongside training, leadership, and supply chain management amongst many other things.
This is the one where you need to hustle the most! Needing to reach out to numerous businesses online every week to get any work. The amount of interest you get obviously depends on your CV and relevant experience, but also how much you charge.
Pay:
This, unlike the others, is up to you in a way. You’ll usually quote for jobs on a project basis (where you risk underselling yourself or out pricing yourself), or more commonly on a day rate. This however only usually works for businesses once they understand your work output. So many chefs entering this area start out with such high day rates and do themselves out of work by scaring off the client who has no idea how much value they’ll get in return. I highly recommend, if you do want to start out doing this, go low and build up a reputation. You’ll get more work via word of mouth allowing you to build up over time.
If you are an all singing and dancing chef consultant with a million projects under your belt, then you can confidently charge north of £600 per day but for you newbies, I recommend £200-300 max, depending on the length of the project (if it’s long, bring your day-rate down as security is worth a lot...). You have to start somewhere, and businesses are stretched for cash, so forget any ego. Also, there are a million consultants out there hustling, so worth remembering that.