How to Hire Great Chefs: A Guide for Restaurant Owners

Ask any restaurant owner about their biggest operational headache and you'll hear the same answer within five seconds: "We can't find good chefs."

It's almost universal. Fine dining or fast casual, London or Lagos, one site or twenty — the complaint is identical. And there's a grain of truth in it. The hospitality labour market is genuinely tight, culinary school enrolments are down in most Western countries, and the best kitchen talent has options.

But here's the uncomfortable reality: most restaurants are bad at hiring. Not unlucky — bad. They write vague job ads, post them in one place, take two weeks to respond, run chaotic trial shifts, and then wonder why the shortlist looks thin. The restaurants that consistently attract good people are not simply luckier. They've built a hiring process that works.

This guide is for everyone else.

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Why Chefs Don't Apply to Your Restaurant

Before fixing the process, it helps to understand why the pipeline is empty in the first place. There are four culprits that account for most of the problem.

Your job ad is generic. "Looking for a passionate, hard-working chef to join our dynamic team" tells a candidate nothing they can use. It doesn't tell them what station they'd own, what hours look like, what the cuisine actually is, or what the kitchen culture feels like on a Friday night. Chefs read dozens of these. They skip the ones that read like a template because they almost certainly are.

You're only posting in one place. Most operators post on one job board — usually the same one they've always used — and wait. This is passive hiring. The best candidates are not always actively looking; they're employed, heads down, thinking about the menu. You have to go where they spend time, not just where you're comfortable posting.

Your online presence doesn't show the kitchen. A chef considering your restaurant will look you up. They'll check your Instagram, your Google reviews, your website. If what they find is a PDF menu and a photo of the dining room from 2019, you've given them no reason to be excited. The people making your food are invisible. That signals something — and not something good.

You take too long to respond. A strong candidate who applies on Monday and hears nothing by Thursday has probably already accepted an interview somewhere else by Friday. Speed is a competitive advantage in hiring. The restaurants that respond within 24 hours and book a call the same week consistently get first pick.

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Writing a Job Ad That Works

A good job ad is specific enough that the wrong person self-selects out and the right person self-selects in. That's its entire job.

Lead with the role, not the brand. The first paragraph should tell the candidate exactly what position they're applying for, what cuisine they'll be cooking, and what team they'll be joining. "CDP — Japanese-Peruvian fusion, 6-person brigade, Brixton" is worth more than a paragraph about your restaurant's philosophy.

Include the hours and days off. "Full time" means nothing. "45–50 hours, Tuesday through Saturday, Sunday–Monday off" means something. Chefs are planning their lives around shift patterns. Be explicit.

List the salary range. This is the single highest-impact change most restaurants can make. Restaurants that include a salary range in their job ads consistently attract more applications — often significantly more — than those that don't. "Competitive salary" is not a salary. It's a placeholder that signals you'd rather not say. Chefs have mortgages and rent. Give them a number.

Mention what's unique about your kitchen. Do you butcher whole animals in-house? Make your own charcuterie? Work with a specific regional supplier? Have a chef's table where CDPs get to cook their own dishes? These details separate your listing from the forty identical ones above and below it. They're also a form of quality filter — the chef who gets excited about a whole-animal butchery programme is probably a better fit than the one who doesn't notice.

Include growth pathways. Will there be opportunities to develop dishes? Could a strong CDP move to sous within 18 months? Are there stages at other restaurants or supplier visits built into the role? These matter, especially to chefs under 30 who are still building their CV.

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Where to Find Chefs

The best candidates are rarely sitting on job boards waiting. You have to look in more places.

Your own team's network. This is, consistently, the best source of quality hires across the entire hospitality industry. Your existing team knows who is good, who is looking, and who would fit your kitchen. A referral from a trusted CDP is worth more than a cold application from someone who found you on a board. Ask your team. Offer a referral bonus if you can — even a small one signals that you value the introduction.

Instagram. Chefs are on Instagram in a way they are simply not on LinkedIn. They post their mise en place, their plating, their stages. Search the hashtags for your cuisine style, look at who's cooking at places you respect, follow the culinary school accounts. A DM that says "we saw your work on here and think you'd be a great fit for what we're building" will land differently than a generic job board alert.

Industry job boards. Caterer.com, Poached, and Harri are the most-used platforms in the UK and US markets respectively. They're worth being on — they capture the actively-looking pool — but treat them as one channel among several, not your entire strategy.

Culinary school partnerships. Externship partnerships with culinary colleges give you access to motivated students who want real kitchen experience and who, if treated well, often want to stay after graduation. It takes a bit of setup, but the pipeline compounds over time. Contact the placement office at your nearest college.

Platforms built for active applicants. Services like Kitchen Applications are building tools specifically for this problem — connecting restaurants with chefs who are actively looking and who have already indicated interest in the type of kitchen you run. The advantage here is intent: these aren't passive browsers, they're people who want to move.

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The Trial Shift: How to Run One Properly

The trial shift is the industry's de facto interview, and most restaurants run it poorly.

The most common mistake is treating it as free labour. You put someone on the section during a busy service, watch them sink or swim, and then make a snap judgement. This tells you something — but not nearly enough — and it's also a poor first impression of your operation.

A well-run trial shift looks like this:

Give them a real but bounded station. You want to see how they work, so give them something meaningful. But set them up to show you what they can do — don't throw them into a 200-cover Saturday without a proper briefing and expect them to perform.

Brief them before service. Walk them through the menu, the mise en place, the expectations. A candidate who performs badly after a poor briefing tells you little. A candidate who performs well after a thorough briefing tells you a lot.

Evaluate technique AND attitude. Watch how they move. Are they clean? Are they organised? Do they communicate with the team around them? When something goes wrong — and something always goes wrong — how do they respond? Attitude under pressure is often more predictive of long-term fit than technical polish.

Get your team's feedback. Your existing brigade worked alongside this person for a service. Ask them. They'll tell you things you missed. Kitchen culture fit is difficult to assess from the outside; the people already inside it have the best read.

Make a decision within 48 hours. Good candidates do not wait. If you loved the trial, say so quickly. If it wasn't right, say that too — a brief, kind message is better than silence.

Pay them. At minimum, cover their travel and feed them a meal. Many restaurants now pay a trial day rate. This isn't just fair — it signals how you treat your team. Candidates notice.

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Evaluating Candidates: What Actually Matters

CVs are a starting point. They tell you where someone has worked. They don't tell you whether they can work.

Here's what actually predicts whether someone will be an asset in your kitchen:

Attitude. Does this person want to learn? Are they coachable? Do they take ownership of their section? Attitude is harder to teach than technique, and a chef with great attitude and developing skills will almost always outperform a technically gifted chef with a chip on their shoulder.

Speed and efficiency. Not frantic — efficient. How they move in a section tells you a lot about how long they've been doing this and whether they've been properly trained.

Cleanliness and organisation. Mise en place philosophy varies by kitchen, but someone who keeps a clean station during service is someone who has been drilled well. This is a proxy for the kitchens they've come from.

Palate. Ask them to taste something and describe it. Ask what they'd add. Ask what feels off. A chef with a good palate is easier to develop; a chef without one is almost impossible to train around.

How they handle pressure. The trial shift is the best test of this. Watch for composure. Watch for whether they communicate or go quiet when the pass gets backed up.

Cultural fit. A great CDP from a serious one-star kitchen is often a better hire than a mediocre sous from a three-star. The credential matters less than the person. Be honest about what kind of environment you're running and hire accordingly.

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Retaining Your Team

The cost of a good hire is significant. The cost of losing them is higher. Retention is not a soft concern — it's operational and financial.

Pay fairly. This is the most direct lever you have. If your rates are below market, no amount of culture or mission will paper over it for long. Know what the market is paying for every role in your kitchen and stay competitive. Do not expect loyalty from underpaid staff — it's an unreasonable expectation that almost never holds.

Give regular feedback. Chefs — especially junior ones — want to know how they're doing. Not just the occasional dressing-down when something goes wrong, but genuine, structured feedback. A ten-minute check-in every month costs nothing and communicates that you're paying attention.

Create development pathways. The question "what does a good year look like here?" should have a real answer for every member of your team. If a CDP has no visibility on what it would take to reach sous, and no timeline for getting there, they'll find a kitchen where the path is clearer.

Respect days off. Calling people in on their days off is a kitchen norm so embedded that many managers don't even see it as a problem. It is. The quickest way to erode trust and goodwill is to treat the schedule as aspirational. Protect your team's time off as a matter of culture, not just compliance.

Invest in their growth. Send your CDP to stage somewhere for a week. Pay for a course. Bring in a guest chef and let your team cook alongside them. These investments are not charity — they're retention tools and recruiting stories. The kitchens that are known for developing their people attract people who want to be developed.

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The Numbers Behind a Bad Hire

It's worth making this concrete, because the instinct in hospitality is often to keep labour costs as low as possible and absorb the churn. The numbers don't support it.

When a chef leaves your kitchen, you face: the cost of advertising the role (job board fees, time spent writing and posting), the management time spent sifting applications and conducting trials, the productivity loss during the gap (the remaining team absorbs extra shifts or quality drops), the training time for the replacement (typically 4–8 weeks before they're fully productive), and the service disruption that ripples through to the guest experience and review scores.

Across all of that, a conservative estimate for replacing a mid-level chef puts the total cost at several thousand pounds or dollars. A generous one puts it significantly higher, especially if the vacancy sits open for a month or more.

The return on investing in a proper hiring process — writing a better job ad, broadening your search channels, running a structured trial shift, paying fairly — is not abstract. It pays for itself many times over the first time it helps you retain someone who would otherwise have left.

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Hiring well is a skill. It takes time to build, and it compounds. The restaurants that are consistently staffed well are not operating in a different labour market from everyone else. They've just decided to take the process seriously.

Kitchen Applications is building tools for restaurants too — from streamlined applications to direct candidate search. Join the waitlist for employer features and be first to access them when they launch.

Looking for context on what candidates are actually looking for? Read our guide on what Michelin restaurants look for in the chefs they hire.