INDUSTRY TOPIC
by J o n a s Te s t e r
There have been lots in the industry press over the past 12 months about the chronic shortage of skilled chefs. Cooking has never been so cool and trendy it is everywhere we look, we have Jamie, Marcus, Hemsley & Hemsley, Nigella & Heston. We have restaurants with global profiles, cookery books that look like works of art, Jason Atherton has just launched a perfume, is this to make you smell like a chef?
W
e have Masterchef, Come Dine With Me, Food mags ’n apps, Chef The Movie and now yes Bradley Cooper in Burnt.
POINT 1. THERE ARE TOO MANY RESTAURANTS So where have all the chefs gone? Let’s look at a few stats…maybe there are too many restaurants…. There has been a huge increase in the number of eating out establishments in the last 10 years. In 2006 there were 259,000 registered restaurants in the UK that has risen by almost a third to 334,000 in 2016 (office of national statistics). This does not include every food outlet, café, street food, pop up and take away. There are now over 8,000 fried chicken shops in London. That’s about the same number of buses TFL has on the road. Wherever you are in London just 8
Is there really a shortage count the number of buses you can see at any one time, for each one there is a fried chicken shop…scary! Several key development areas in the capital are now visibly oversubscribed with restaurants. Kings Cross/St Pancras is a good example. The area underwent a massive redevelopment recently and all the big operators understandably moved in. Yes, there are days when the whole concourse is heaving with travellers but also times when you can walk round and count 8 customers in each restaurant. The going-in costs, investment, wage bill and rents will soon see some of these companies pulling out. It’s the old boom and bust ticket and its not just London. Arundel, a small market town in West Sussex, albeit with a fabulous castle, has less than 4,000 residents but Trip Advisor lists 50 places to eat, no surprise that there is a high turnover of leases.
Survival of the fittest does not always mean the best. POINT 2 DO I WANT TO BE A CHEF? Regardless of the high profile that food currently enjoys in our society historically catering is often a second choice career for school leavers and FE enrolment normally rises in years with poor GCSE results, it is often the parents and not the student who make these decisions. With the viral growth of fast food in the 1980’s we also now have a huge sector of the industry that require staff with basic food training and little more. These are the branded outlets that occupy prime locations on every high street in the country and deliver high volume preprepared food that we have all got so used to. McDonald’s, Weatherspoon’s, Ramada, Starbucks, the motorway service station. Colleges have
