PART 1: Tomorrow’s chefs – an investigation into their changing role

Now that we’ve closed the door on one of the most turbulent years of recent times, it seems an appropriate moment to take stock and consider how the industry is set to evolve and what it will be like for the chefs of tomorrow.

To glean an understanding of how the future of foodservice is shaping up and what the key concerns for young up and coming chefs may be, we spoke to four of the industry’s leading lights: Australian Culinary Federation President Karen Doyle, Global Hospitality Group Managing Director Peter Wright, consultant chef and culinary leadership expert Glenn Flood, and Australia’s Youth Chef Ambassador to the World Association of Chefs’ Societies and Australian Culinary Olympic Youth Team Captain Billy Fox.

The transition in kitchen

From her vantage point as Head Teacher at Le Cordon Bleu Sydney, Karen Doyle is well placed to track the changing nature of the industry and how this is impacting on young chefs’ expectations and awareness. “The very nature of food is evolving and consequently the skill sets of these young chefs needs to be very different from a traditional chef of 20 years ago. Today it’s all about flavour, taste, what you see on the plate - some venues are going back to getting the whole animal in and breaking it down, so complete mis en place with different teams, whereas cafes are now getting more pre-portioned and pre-prepared food so they can spend more time on their customer satisfaction needs - the whole theatre of dining is taking over.”

Peter Wright describes this as ‘the transition in kitchen’: “If you go back 20 years ago, a couple of chefs would buy in boxes of meat and portion it and trim it, cut it, all that sort of stuff, and if you go back 10 years ago they would buy it in already portioned and measured to their specifications. Today you’ll find they’re buying in meats already cooked, vegetables already cut up, sauces that are readymade - so the skills needed now are different.”

Peter points out chefs are still creating the dishes but no longer doing all the prep. “More and more that’s disappearing out of the kitchen, as labour prices rise and chef shortages as we know have been around for decades now. Hence this transition to potentially outsourcing most of your product and preparation. Which therefore means that the new chef has to virtually be self-taught in the old manual skills like trimming meats, boning out fish and birds. Yes, the hospitality schools still teach you all the principles of cookery, but to get better at the manual side requires repetitive motion - you have to do it over and over again. If you look at the best sushi chef in Japan, the guy has been doing it for 25 years and that’s all he does, that’s how he’s honed his manual skills so well.

“Today all the time is spent on the final cooking stage - the finishing and  the design of the movements on the plate. Which makes the job more creative because you’re no longer bound by the time constraints of prep. It used to be that a chef came to work, he did all his prep, then he switched to service and plated up. Now the chefs come in and it’s all about plating up and that final stage.”

Billy Fox adds: “I did my apprenticeship 10 years ago and even then the move towards pre-prepared product was prevalent. Skilled labour has definitely taken a hit, things like pastry skills are a dying art - there are still artisans doing it and I think they’re essential, but with the way operating costs are now, it does make it more and more difficult to do those things inhouse, and that’s partly the reason skills have taken a hit, because if the operating costs don’t allow for everything to be made inhouse then the skill is no longer required. I think chefs sometimes get caught up with wanting to do everything inhouse and artisanally, and while I love the passion and enthusiasm behind that, at the end of the day it is a business so if the costs don’t allow for that to happen then it is what it is.”

Are we dumbing down?

Karen Doyle argues the skills requirements are simply evolving: “Our young chefs now need to be good communicators, there’s a whole emphasis on leadership skills. Chef education and training is becoming more about nutritional needs, allergens – there’s so many diets now that it’s a fast changing field in terms of the skills and knowledge these young people need. You can see that moving forward a chef will need to be knowledgeable about allergens, nutritional values, diets, where your food has been sourced, what your food mileage is, sustainability, organic produce - you’ll think about your menus a lot more before writing them. There’s also a lot more emphasis going into social media training, building your personal brand online. When you look at the microcredentialing going on it’s all about how to present yourself and your business to capture your own niche of the market.”

Billy Fox adds: “Sometimes it seems as if every young chef in Australia initially wants to go into fine dining because it’s cool, it’s fun - but I think people need to dial it back and realise the foodservice industry encompasses so much more than fine dining, and with it having taken a hit from COVID, now more than ever it’s very important to look at what else the industry encompass. More and more of the Australian dining public want to go out on a Friday or Saturday night and have a casual meal with friends, rather than spend $200 on a fine dining meal. There’s also the whole club market, the pubs - the list’s endless when it comes to foodservice.”

Peter Wright says that far from dumbing down the industry, the changes in recent times have made it a more rewarding place to work. “Let’s be honest: is boning out a chicken really something you want to spend your day doing? Or peeling onions? Filleting a fish? Certainly these are skills you need to learn - but I spent the first year of my apprenticeship cutting up vegetables and now you wouldn’t be doing those things. I just think the modern kitchen is far more creative because you have more time to be.”

Is our training curriculum keeping pace with change?

This evolution is naturally driving new approaches to training, as Karen Doyle points out: “You still need to do your basic training to give you your foundational skills, but there’s so much else happening in training now – with so much happening online you can do short snappy courses at your convenience, there’s more opportunities for further development without having to be face to face.

“A lot of undergraduate certificates came out last year which provide avenues for professional development in gastronomy, the business skills, finance - no longer do you have to undertake a complete uni pathway to develop the skills you might want to develop as a chef or business owner. Now you can use those skills as building blocks to an overall qualification over a number of years, and you can do it in your own timeframe.”

Asked whether our culinary curriculums are keeping pace with these changes, Peter Wright acknowledges: “I sometimes think our courses struggle to keep up – there’s probably a bit of lag in the speed things move, but it’s constantly under review which is a good thing. We’ve transitioned to competency-based training, whereby you do something once and you’re signed off as competent in that skill.

“There are 14 basic principles of cookery and all the skills come out of those, so I don’t think you can say anyone leaves TAFE without having been properly trained. But when I look back at my career and others I’ve mentored, the real training is up to the individual – and how much you need depends on how far do you want to go.

“Everyone has a different destiny and a different motivation for where they want to be in their lives. I’ve worked with chefs who want to knock off at three and go surfing and others who don’t want to go home, they’d rather spend their whole life in the kitchen developing new food and new menus.”

Billy Fox asks the question: “Should the curriculum be overhauled? I did my training 10 years ago and I personally feel there’s bits and pieces that are probably not as important now as they may have been. Practical skills are one thing, but there should probably be more of an emphasis on hygiene, operating costs - what does it really take to plan and cost an effective menu, things like that.

“My thinking is your certificate three is probably adequate for a qualified chef that’s either working the line or running a service, and if you ask almost any chef they’re qualified to certificate three. But if you want to go into manufacturing or hotel service then certificate four may be what you need.

“Having said that, I don’t think we should be training our entire workforce to come out as culinary directors or operations managers, because that’s not what the workforce needs. The workforce needs people behind the line.” 

Karen Doyle adds that Government has been coming to the table in providing support for industry training at both state and federal level. “There’s been a lot of initiative in terms of fee-free courses and small suites of units being put together across a lot of states, not just NSW, and those are purely aimed at attainment of hospitality, supervision and leadership skills - lots of states are funding training of chefs.

“And many scholarships which can knock 50 per cent off the cost of your course are also being given out, so I think there’s a lot of effort being made to encourage more people into the industry.”

Peter Wright says: “We all know that some people coming to Australia use hospitality courses through TAFE as a channel to get work visas, as an avenue to becoming a resident, because after all there’s a shortage of chefs.

“But that’s the business side of TAFE. The side I know, the people I know who work in TAFE, are all very passionate individuals who are doing that job because they want to impart their skills to people. And I think as long as those people are in charge of the outputs, then we’re going to get a lot of good quality chefs coming through.”

Glenn Flood concurs: “It’s the government dangling a carrot as to how people coming to Australia can change their residency status, and that is one driver of chefs coming in from overseas.

“Of course it’s hard to say whether someone who’s come in to the country and worked in a kitchen for four years will leave the industry once they get residency. But even if they do, it’s still a four year investment in which they can also nurture other people who are working alongside them. And isn’t leaving your home country to settle here what Australia is all about?”

He adds: “There’s opportunity there if you want to do the work. To be an unemployed chef is just laziness when there’s so much work around. But we need the skills migration and the young talent coming from overseas is exceptional. Australia it’s a melting pot and always has been.

“Any kitchen I’ve ever worked in has been international - I’ve worked with great Nepalese chefs, Indian, Chinese, German, Italian – it’s all there and in my mind it always has been, there’s nothing new. But this means you’ve got plenty of people to learn from, access to great produce, and you can specialise and find your niche in a particular type of cuisine.“

Continue to PART 2 >