What Training Is Available for Chefs? Nothing Available? Think Again.
Updated: 1 day ago
“What training is available for the kitchen team?”
It’s a question I ask hospitality businesses more often than you might think.
And sometimes the answer is:
“Not really. We do a bit of menu training when we change the dishes.”
Hmm.
So, let me get this straight.
Your front-of-house team might receive training in wine, spirits, coffee, service, allergens, upselling, breakfast, fine dining, silver service, banqueting, corporate hospitality or even Michelin-style service…
And your chefs?
“The new menu is coming next Tuesday.”
That’s not training.
That’s Tuesday.
Chefs need development too
There is an enormous amount of training available to chefs — and it doesn't have to involve sending someone away on a three-day course costing a fortune - or even an unpaid stage for a month too!!
Some of the best development can happen right under your own roof.
And actually, some of it can be bloody good fun.
Think about building a development calendar around things like:
🧀 Cheese tasting and regional cheese days
🥩 Butchery masterclasses
🍞 Bread and pizza dough days
🥐 Patisserie and pastry sessions
🌿 Foraging days/classes
🥒 Fermentation, pickling and preservation
🐟 Fishmongery and whole-fish preparation
🦪 Shellfish days and catch trips
🍝 Pasta-making sessions
🍚 Risotto masterclasses
🍫 Chocolate and sugar work
🔥 BBQ and open-fire cooking - year round, not just the summer!!!!
🥓 Smoking, curing and dry ageing courses
🌍 Cuisine and culture days
🍸 Supplier-led product education visits and product tasting sessions
✈️ Overseas supplier visits and food-focused trips
And yes, that can even include things such as vodka, gin, wine, red, white, rosé or Champagne education.
If your FOH team can learn the difference between a Premier Cru and a Premier League footballer, surely your chefs can be given opportunities to expand their food knowledge too.
Training doesn't have to mean sitting in a classroom
One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is thinking training has to look like a classroom.
It doesn't.
For a chef, doing is often the learning.
Take fish.
Rather than telling someone how to fillet a fish from a laminated sheet, get a fish supplier in. Buy the whole fish. Learn where it comes from. Understand seasonality. Learn how to identify freshness. Break it down. Portion it. Cook it.
Then use the trim.
Now you've covered:
Product knowledge + knife skills + sustainability + yield + costing + cooking + waste reduction.
That's a training day.
And potentially a very tasty one. (That ALSO looks great on venue social media BTW!)
The same applies to butchery, bread, pasta, pastry, fermentation, smoking, curing and almost anything else happening in your kitchen.
Give chefs something to look forward to
Imagine putting together a simple annual development calendar.
January
Butchery & whole-animal utilisation
February
Pasta & Italian regional cooking
March
Fishmongery & shellfish
April
Foraging & spring produce
May
Bread & fermentation
June
BBQ & open-fire cooking
July
Cheese & charcuterie
August
Patisserie & pastry
September
Smoking, curing & dry ageing
October
Chocolate & sugar work
November
Game, preservation & winter cooking
December
Sauces, stocks, classical techniques & festive production
Suddenly, you've created a 12-month development programme.
Not another PowerPoint.
Not another tick-box.
Actual development. A full, detailed development academy? Not quite, but we'll get there - read on!
What about your suppliers?
This is another massively underused resource.
Your suppliers know an enormous amount about their products.
Your fish supplier knows fish.
Your butcher knows meat.
Your cheesemonger knows cheese.
Your flour supplier knows flour.
Your coffee supplier knows coffee.
Your equipment supplier knows how to get more out of the kit you've already spent thousands on.
Ask them to come in.
Ask them to demonstrate.
Ask them to train your team.
And in some cases, ask whether your chefs can visit them.
A supplier visit can turn into product knowledge, relationship building, sourcing insight, sustainability education and inspiration for your next menu.
And sometimes, getting chefs out of the kitchen is exactly what they need.
Don't forget colleges
There is also a huge opportunity sitting on your doorstep: local colleges and culinary schools.
Hospitality businesses should be building relationships with education providers rather than simply waiting for the next college leaver to appear with a CV.
Collaborate.
Invite lecturers in.
Take chefs into the college.
Create masterclasses.
Offer work experience.
Build progression routes.
Give students exposure to the reality of a professional kitchen — and give your existing chefs access to education they may not have had earlier in their careers.
The industry doesn't have a recruitment problem that training alone will solve.
But we absolutely have a development problem that better training could help solve.
But here's the important bit…
You can't just throw a few masterclasses at a kitchen and call it development.
Structure matters.
This is where I believe kitchens need to start thinking differently.
Training should sit alongside:
PDPs.
Assessments.
Objectives.
Regular one-to-ones.
Skills matrices.
Recognition.
Progression.
Accountability.
I've developed CDP system training specifically around this principle because development needs something more than good intentions.
A chef should know:
Where am I now?
What do I need to learn?
How am I going to learn it?
When will I be assessed?
What's next?
And importantly:
Does anyone actually notice when I improve?
Because if you want chefs to invest in their own development, you need to show them that the business is prepared to invest in them too.
Measure it
This doesn't need to become complicated.
You can measure:
Skills achieved
Training completed
Assessment results
Product knowledge
Waste reduction
Yield improvement
Speed and consistency
Menu development contributions
Promotion readiness
Staff retention
Employee engagement
And perhaps one of the most important measurements of all:
Do your chefs actually want to stay?
According to the [CIPD], learning and development remains an important part of employee retention and engagement - and in hospitality, where turnover can be particularly challenging, investing in people shouldn't be viewed as a luxury.
Because replacing a good chef isn't cheap.
And losing one because they felt they weren't learning anything?
That's an expensive lesson.
Culture is the secret ingredient
Ultimately, this isn't really about cheese.
Or pasta.
Or butchery.
Or Champagne.
It's about culture.
A kitchen where people are encouraged to learn becomes a kitchen where people share knowledge.
Junior chefs learn from senior chefs.
Senior chefs learn from suppliers.
Chefs learn from farmers, fishmongers, bakers, butchers and producers.
And suddenly, the kitchen becomes a place where development is part of the everyday environment.
That's powerful.
Because the best chefs I've worked with have never really stopped learning. AND say so daily.
I've spent around 25 years in kitchens and I'm still learning. From a very different place.
If you think you've learned everything there is to know about food, you probably need to change kitchens. BUT thats when, not for the 20 pence uplift a competitor for the same position offers because they are in the shit.... eye roll emoji.
So, what's available for chefs?
Quite a lot, actually.
You just have to look beyond “the next menu.”
Build a development calendar.
Use your suppliers.
Collaborate with colleges.
Bring in specialists.
Take your team out.
Give people PDPs.
Assess their progress.
Recognise achievement.
Create progression.
And make learning part of your culture rather than something you do when someone asks for a pay rise.
Because here's the uncomfortable truth:
If the only development a chef gets is learning your new menu, you're not developing chefs.
You're teaching people your recipes.
And there's a world of difference.
And if all this in a year is complicate for a business, what about each month, incorporating a supper club. and factoring in two of these each time, having suppliers talk about the course they collaborated with you on for sustainability, price point, provenance, quality and business development/relationships
The Chef Hub view
I believe every chef should have a pathway.
Not necessarily the same pathway.
Not necessarily the same destination.
But a pathway.
Learn. Practise. Assess. Improve. Repeat.
That's how we create better chefs.
That's how we build stronger kitchens.
And ultimately, that's how we build a better hospitality industry.
After all…
If we're going to keep asking chefs to raise their game, perhaps we should give them something to raise it with.
And if your kitchen's development programme is currently a little… half-baked?
Maybe it's time we put it back in the oven.
You can always borrow mine; CDP Development programme and even some observational PDP plans too
Is that all?
No, actually its not -
The Burnt Chef Project have a completely FREE online, e-Learning platform too, full of resources and training, courses from 15 minutes upwards, from unconscious bias, to money management, addiction, to workplace culture and much much more - yes, COMPLETELY FREE to anyone so download it now
For anything more tailored?
Always The Chef Hub.
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