Hiring a Chef for Your Restaurant in the UAE- Tips To Find the Best One
Are you running a restaurant in the UAE or planning to open one and struggling with hiring a chef? Or are you looking to hire a private chef in Dubai, UAE? To ensure that you find the ideal chef or one who has the skills and competencies you require, you would have to follow an efficient recruitment process. This blog gives the information needed for making a great hiring decision.
The United Arab Emirates is a country with a huge diversity in people, food, and tastes. The restaurant industry in the UAE has risen by great strides as there is a huge demand for cuisine from various cultures and immigrants from regions worldwide.
If you own a restaurant in the UAE, you would need to comply with high standards in food and beverage preparation and delivery. The chef is the key person in the restaurant business. No matter what kind of restaurant you own, having a high-quality chef with good knowledge of complying with standards can take your business to new heights.
There is no denying that customers lean towards food that is not only prepared in the right way but also presented and served in the right manner with the right sauces, dips, or other accompaniments. A chef who will make your restaurant more popular would be one who can wisely choose innovative methods to create exemplary dishes.
If you have a specialty restaurant dealing with the cuisine of a particular country like India, Greek, France, or a particular geographical zone like Mediterranean, South Asia, etc., your customers will seek the flavors, aroma, taste, and styles particular to the cuisine of the region. You would need chefs with specialized experience, certifications or training, and high expertise levels.
Not only restaurants but many residences and corporate houses too need chefs. If you seek to hire a private chef hiring in Dubai, you would need to know all the norms related to chef employment. It is best to first apprise yourself of private chef employment rules to avoid making mistakes that could land you in court.
Also, if you are hiring a chef on your own, be prepared to wait for quite some months to finalize the right one. There are many options to choose from.
Whether you need chefs for your restaurant or seek to hire a private chef in Dubai, UAE here is some food for thought.
The Different Ways of Finding and Hiring Chefs and Kitchen Staff for Your Restaurant in the UAE
1. Job Adverts – Paying for an advertisement space in the local newspapers and publishing ads involve time and money, depending on the size and other aspects. Would you need a quarter-page ad space or a smaller ad space, would you like a colorful ad or a black and white one, etc., will decide the costs.
Job adverts could also be placed on social media and websites focusing on chefs. Such ads could also give good results. The chances of finding a brilliant chef depend on who views the ads and responds.
The drawbacks of job adverts are that you might find 100+ applicants or just a few, and most of them might not meet 100% of your requirements. It will take you 100+ hours to go through all resumes properly and shortlist some chefs who are more or less better than the other candidates per their resumes. If you have very specific requirements and none satisfies you, you might have to place adverts again and repeat the entire process of screening and selection again.
2. Reference and Referrals – The second way to hire a restaurant chef or private chef in Dubai, UAE, is through reference and referrals. Many chef employers prefer to go with a chef who is referred to them from sources they trust. The point is that somebody is vouching for their work, and it would save restaurant owners less time in screening such chefs than totally unknown ones.
It is, however, not easy to find chefs who are the best fit for your restaurant and charge as per your budget.
There is also the aspect of the right skill sets. For example, if you are a South Asian restaurant owner looking for a chef with expertise in Indonesian and Malaysian cuisine, you might find some good chefs if you have the right sources for references. These chefs might, however, not have the required experience with the dishes your restaurant thrives on. You might have to offer the new hires the right training.
3. Campus Hiring – If you are looking for sous chefs and chef assistants, campus hiring is a great way to find chefs with the knowledge and skills you prefer. You could hire chefs as trainees for 3-6 months and then, based on their skills, offer them a long-term contract. The method would require you to spend quite a bit of time visiting the placement conferences or events held at different institutions at different times.
4. Word of Mouth and Informal Means – Further, you can always go with informal means or word of mouth. To hire a chef Dubai, if you prefer the word of mouth method, you usually have to wait longer to get the chefs you prefer unless luck favors you with an instant reference that works well.
Word of mouth is the oldest form of marketing, and it does give results many times. The concept of word of mouth also works this way – if people like something, they will brag about it. If a chef is good, then people love to post feedback or reviews about him. Considering that, you can try to reach out to that particular chef.
5. Through an Agency – If you would like to ensure hiring a best-match candidate with a track record, skill sets, and competency levels that win your admiration, you would need to hire through chef recruitment experts. When you hire a chef in Dubai through an experienced chef recruiter with a wide talent outreach, you find a chef that best satisfies your expectations.
Searching “private chef hire in the UAE” or chef recruitment agency in Dubai could get you any results. Choose an agency that has a good track record and expansive outreach within and outside Dubai, an agency can help you hire a French chef or a UK Chef, or a Japanese chef from anywhere in the world.
What to Look For When Hiring a Restaurant Chef Or A Private Chef in Dubai, UAE
Whether you are looking to hire a private chef in Dubai, UAE, or one for your restaurant or food takeaway center, your hiring process should be strategic and smart. There are many aspects you would need to check and verify.
1. Cooking Fundamentals
The first thing to always look for is cooking fundamentals. This is not just about making a chef candidate prepare a sample dish. If a candidate prepares one dish exceptionally well, that does not mean he or she could prepare most other dishes of that cuisine category with excellence.
You would need to put in place interviews that accurately judge a chef’s competency, knowledge, practical insights, problem-solving skills, etc. You could find out how much knowledge a chef has for a cuisine based on different dishes, garnishing styles, serving methods, preservation techniques, accompaniments, etc.
2. Experience and Skills
A number of people who hire a chef for their restaurants in Dubai check the number of experience of a chef. It is usually considered that the more years a chef has spent working in restaurants, the more competent he or she is. This is not true many times.
Professional chefs with less experience could have outstanding skills and insights into luring more customers than chefs with 2X the experience.
Skills in cuisine are not acquired just by working. The amount of dedication to innovation, trying new dishes, and forming a deeper understanding of many dishes gives a chef superior skills that cannot be judged by the number of hours worked in a year. When you hire a chef in Dubai, conduct specialized screening to assess skills.
3. Passion and Innovation
Good experience and track records do mean a lot when screening a chef application, but in a world where fusion cuisine and innovation is getting you more customers, you cannot miss out on these aspects.
We have known many restaurants that gained more popularity after the arrival of younger, brilliant chefs who offered dishes that intrigued and pleased customers so much that orders doubled month after month. The restaurants expanded their capacities or opened new food delivery branches to meet the rising demand.
When it comes to authentic traditional cooking, experience counts a lot. Here the focus is less on innovation and more on the exquisite manner in which the traditional, elaborate cooking can be managed to perfection and on time. If you seek to hire a private chef in Dubai, UAE, it is wise to hire through a chef recruitment agency when you need chefs with great knowledge and experience in native and traditional cuisine.
4. Training, Certifications, and Apprenticeships
If you seek to hire a chef in Dubai for a specialty in which knowledge and skills and your reputation depend on specific certifications, hiring one is not easy. A chef recruitment agency could source you, reliable candidates with specialized certifications within a few weeks. Searching on your own could take many months.
5. Knowledge of Safety and Hygiene Standards
With the pandemic, the value of health, safety, and hygiene best practices have reached new heights. Your restaurant will get more orders only when the health and safety best practices are correctly followed. The chefs you hire would need to have expertise in handling cooking equipment, food preparation process, and delivery methods that are compliant with the health and safety best practices.
6. Food Quality Management
Running a restaurant is a business that has some risks. You can’t compromise on the quality standards. You have to give more than what you expect in return. The food quality is the heartbeat of every restaurant; customers will write a good review if they enjoy the food. So it is the safest bet to go with a chef that knows his way around food quality management.
7. Time Management
What’s the thing one hates the most when they go to dine in? The answer is all the waiting they have to do for finally having a bite. Waiting can be annoying and intimidating.
But if the food preparation takes forever, then the customer will lose his or her cool. So a chef must be able to fulfill all orders in the required frame of time. They must be good with time management practice. Restaurants could get a flux or orders, and that is what restaurant owners like; a chef must know how to handle such situations.
In the case of private chefs, family members get increasingly irritated when they do not get their meals at the time they need them or are available at home. Time management is a skill to check even when hiring a private chef.
8. Ingredients Purchase and Material Management
The secret to good cooking is the ingredient. Every chef takes time when it comes to ingredient shopping. They know what will go best with their dishes. As an employer, you want someone who is good at budgeting too. A chef must be able to do proper ingredient shopping that can save you money rather than increasing the food budget.
9. Open to Feedback and Improvement
Positive criticism works as a motivation to do better. Honest feedback helps chefs to enhance their abilities and give a better experience to those consuming their food. Always test the candidate’s perspective when it comes to taking criticism. A chef with a short temperament when it comes to feedback might cause you more harm in the way of overall satisfaction of your costumes or guests.
10. Technical Skills – Digital Systems and Apps
Lastly, a chef must know his way around the technology he or she needs to use on a daily basis. In the case of a private chef, it might not be a necessity, but for virtual restaurants, food delivery centers, and other restaurants, food management is linked with the various technology platforms and apps giving them business.
The Best Way to Hire a Chef is Through Alliance Recruitment Agency in The UAE
Whether you seek to hire a private chef in Dubai, UAE, or a restaurant chef, hiring through a professional chef recruitment agency ensures an excellent hiring decision. Alliance Recruitment Agency has a robust team of chef recruiters for UAE, and our services help you find a chef that enhances your reputation.
1.No Hassles – Searching, Screening, Scheduling Interviews – Hiring Alliance Recruitment Agency for hiring a chef will take all the burden from your shoulder. All you have to do is focus on business. The agency will search for a chef that has the desired experience, skill sets, knowledge, and reputation. The process is pretty much straightforward. You just need to share the job requirements and budget.
Searching ‘chefs in Dubai” or “private chef hire in the UAE’ is one way of finding an agency. The process of identifying the right agency could take a lot of time. Through our agency, you can easily find the best chef recruiter team within minutes
2. Get Thoroughly Background-Checked Chefs – As an experienced manpower agency, we offer background and document check solutions. We also conduct professional reference checks.
3. Find Chefs That Exactly Fit Your Requirements – From cuisine type to preferred dishes, from specialized training to linguistic skills, from skills assessment to personality assessments, our chef recruitment services cover everything. Through a 360-degree approach in best-match chef candidate identification and screening, we ensure you find chiefs who best suit your requirements.
4. Cost and Time-Efficient – Hiring through us makes recruitment cost- and time-efficient. We have the resources to reduce recruitment time and costs when compared to most chef recruitment agencies.
5. Easy to Meet Urgent Professional Chef Hiring Needs – We have specialized teams to meet urgent chef hiring needs. In such cases, we source candidates within days and help you finish the recruitment process in the shortest time.
6. Succession Planning – All restaurants could benefit a lot from succession planning for your whole hierarchy of chefs, right from the head chef to chef assistants and trainees. Succession planning ensures that you are never short-staffed for long.
Alliance Recruitment Agency UAE
Alliance Recruitment Agency UAE has been a source of chef talent acquisition for hundreds of employers for a decade. Our global manpower agency has a huge network of chef talent resources across geographies and helps restaurants in the UAE hire a chef from within the Emirates and outside.
Whether you need a South Asian chef, an Australian chef, an Arabian chef with added experience in Lebanese cuisine, or a chef with a track record of roaring success in fast food delivery, finding the right talent becomes 10X easier when you hire through us.
Whether you seek to hire a chef for your restaurant in Dubai or a private chef for your home or business in the UAE, we are here to hire the best chef for you! Please get in touch with us for more information.