The Right Ingredients

In several ways, the hospitality industry Down Under is thriving. Tourism in Australia and New Zealand is booming. Ben Shewry’s Attica in Melbourne and Dan Hunter’s Brae in Birregurra are ranked among the best restaurants in the world, and hoteliers are finding amazing ways to showcase beauty that cannot be found anywhere else. A chef shortage threatens to slow the momentum, but educational programmes aimed at getting people interested in the culinary arts and trained to be the next generation of chefs are fighting back.

- Damien Martin

Roots of the Chef Shortage

One source of the chef shortage is the elimination of the 457 visa in 2018. The 457 had been the most common way for Australian or overseas employers to sponsor skilled foreign workers for up to four years. Whilst the 457 has been replaced by two varieties of 482 visa, the changes made it more difficult for overseas chefs to stay the full four years.

“In the short term we need to relax visa restrictions for overseas chefs. In the long term we need to invest in training. New South Wales and Victoria are doing fee-free training, but in WA it costs an employer $6,000 over three years to take on an apprentice,” Iain McDougall, general manager of Hospitality Group Training, told the West Australian.

McDougall hit on another chef shortage cause: a lack of apprentices in culinary training programmes. “Within the next three years we will need an additional 3,000 cooks and chefs (in WA), but based on current numbers of apprenticeships in the system, we will only have another 60 chefs a year,” he said.

What’s behind that? Simply put, being a chef is hard work. The hours are long and the environment is stressful. “Our industry traditionally lacks any work-life balance,” chef Jordan Clay, formerly of Ôter and now at Cumulus Up told Broadsheet. At Ôter, Clay introduced a four-day work week for cooks, following in the footsteps of Attica and Bondi eatery Rocker.

Shewry instituted the four-day week at Attica in 2017 to limit chefs to 48 hours per week after realising he had spent an average of 75 hours per week in kitchens from age 14 to 40. “I’ve already worked roughly the same amount of hours as a person averaging 40 hours per week throughout their career to retirement age,” he posted on Instagram.

Training Future Chefs