Trending Tips To Find The Best Chef Staffing For Your Restaurant
Restaurants have faced tough years since 2020, and there are projections for a surge in the restaurant business for 2023. Chef staffing is a key function of restaurants that decides how they are going to serve their customers and how their offerings can be managed to optimize revenue generation.
It is critical for restaurant business owners to identify new trends impacting the business in 2023. Accordingly, restaurateurs need to manage chef staffing to get the most benefits from the new trends.
Here are some insight-driven tips shared by top chef recruitment consultants and executive chef recruitment agencies to make chef staffing strategic, dynamic, and result-oriented.
Latest Trends and Tips To Manage Restaurant Chef Staffing in 2023
Virtual/Cloud Kitchens
The cloud or virtual kitchen market is projected to grow at a fast rate in 2023, and the trend is set to continue in the future. These are mostly delivery-only restaurants that serve other restaurants or food businesses. Many restaurants with massive kitchens have started to rent space to virtual kitchens to increase their business viability and financial productivity.
When it comes to chef staffing for cloud kitchens, the preference is for contractual staffing. There is a focus on finding chefs with experience in specialty dishes that are being offered for takeaway. You do not need high-end chefs but hard-working production line chefs with the expertise to quickly whip up fantastic dishes of the same kind.
Rise in Coffee And Casual Food Concepts
With an exponential increase in remote work and work-at-home models, there is a corresponding rise in the new coffee and fast casual food business. Owners of coffee and fast casual food businesses are reporting an amazing rise in the business, thanks to experimenting with new concepts that cater to the whims of their customers.
Chef employment agencies contexts is focused on candidates with incredible abilities for innovation. It becomes critical to hire chefs with expertise in preparing creative and photogenic dishes to ensure continued interest in the restaurant.
Rising Demand for Asian and Ethnic Cuisine
Home cooking for two years during the pandemic reportedly increased people’s appetite for spices. Across the world, there is a dramatic increase in Asian cuisine and ethnic dishes with more punch and flavor.
Executive chef recruiters and top chef recruitment consultants report that the rising trend for Asian chef hiring is projected to continue in 2023. There is also a huge demand for ethnic chefs from different countries who can experiment with spices and aromatic flavors to create innovative versions of ethnic dishes.
If you are planning to launch a new restaurant or a virtual kitchen, researching the preferences of the local communities for ethnic food and finding the right talent to cater to this demand is one surefire way to increase revenues and the popularity of your brand.
Versatility
Chef surveys indicate that versatility is gaining importance more than ever. Restaurants want their menus to cater to all budget price points. Menu engineering has transformed to meet the changing needs of the urban world. People like to have anything from a burger or a bagel to a high-end dish on any day, and they would prefer a restaurant that can take their orders for snacks as well as fine-during moods.
Global executive chef recruitment agencies indicate a shift in the focus on what restaurants want when hiring executive chefs. According to many top executive chef recruiters, the success of a restaurant business is increasingly dependent on how strategically they have curated a versatile menu that covers dishes across price points.
Employment agency for chefs need to possess deeper insights into local customer segments and the vision to curate a menu and include recipes that bring in clients across income groups. What can be sourced to virtual kitchens and what should be made available for restaurant visitors is a decision that executive chefs need to make. These business skills are most preferred by restaurateurs.
Freelance and Temp Chef Staffing
Many top chef recruitment consultants and executive chef recruiters have indicated the rising demand for freelancer and temp chef staffing in large and small restaurants. Freelancer chefs are becoming a preferred way to give time off to production line chefs or to meet an unexpected rise in work to fulfill a corporate contract or party order.
Executive chef recruitment agencies find that temp chef staffing is seen as a way to cut staffing costs. Restaurateurs prefer to maintain a smaller core chef team of permanent or long-term employees; for many production lines, contractual chef staffing is used to cut down on staffing costs and talent shortages.
Restaurant Employer Brand
Executive chef recruitment agencies advise restaurateurs to make serious efforts to make their employer brand visible and popular across social media channels and networks. It becomes equally important to create a great website through which they can build a strong employer brand. When sourcing chef talent from different locations, the website becomes a key point of reference.
Final Thoughts
Chef staffing has become more complex than it was a couple of years back. Restaurant business owners need to make dramatic changes to their chef talent sourcing funnels. Working with top chef recruitment consultants is one of the best ways to ensure access to diverse, best-qualified chef talent.
About Alliance Recruitment Agency-UAE
Alliance Recruitment Agency in the UAE is a global manpower agency offering chef recruitment and hospitality recruitment services across the Emirates, GCC countries, and 20+ other countries. By partnering with us, you will be able to find amazing chef talent from across the world. To learn more about our chef staffing services, please get in touch with us.