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What would it take to become a head Chef?
Rderdall
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey everyone,
I am experiencing a sort of 'career crisis' and am no longer passionate about what I do for a living. Chances are good that it's because of my boss that I've lost my passion, and my doldrums could be solved by changing companies. This has had me contemplating a career switch. I've always had a huge love of food and cooking, and have a huge list of cooking shows that I regularly watch. If I ever were to switch careers, I would seriously consider going to school to become a chef.
What I'd like to know is how long I can expect to have to go back to school for, how much I can expect to get paid, and what kind of hours I'd be expecting to work. Basically, what will my life be like, and what will I be sacrificing?
My wife and I are expecting our first child in Feb 2011, so it's very important to me that an irrational, impulsive decision doesn't negatively impact my family.
If any of you are chefs, please let me know what your experience has been.
Thank you,
I am experiencing a sort of 'career crisis' and am no longer passionate about what I do for a living. Chances are good that it's because of my boss that I've lost my passion, and my doldrums could be solved by changing companies. This has had me contemplating a career switch. I've always had a huge love of food and cooking, and have a huge list of cooking shows that I regularly watch. If I ever were to switch careers, I would seriously consider going to school to become a chef.
What I'd like to know is how long I can expect to have to go back to school for, how much I can expect to get paid, and what kind of hours I'd be expecting to work. Basically, what will my life be like, and what will I be sacrificing?
My wife and I are expecting our first child in Feb 2011, so it's very important to me that an irrational, impulsive decision doesn't negatively impact my family.
If any of you are chefs, please let me know what your experience has been.
Thank you,
Xbox Gamertag: GAMB1NO325Xi
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Even if you did have the capital to start your own business, are you a savvy businessman? One of the "chefs" who is a family member ran a fairly successful restaurant and catering company for several years, before she was forced to close her doors because of the gradual decrease in American spending on eating out. It is not a good market by any definition for food service.
In short, this is a terrible idea and I am quite sure you'll regret pursuing it if you do.
You'd be working nights (think like 4pm-Midnight or later) for not much money in pretty crappy conditions. You may want to read up more on what a chef's life is like before making this decision.
Being a cook, especially a "Head Chef" is a labor of love that you will have to suffer and sweat to achieve.
To answer some of your questions, you will most likely be working afternoons to nights, 10 hour days are typical with prep and break down. Also, you will be on your feet all day in a slippery environment surrounded by both hot and sharp objects. Pay will be fair, depending on where you work.
Also, you will most likely have limited creative freedom. Especially in any kind of chain restaurant. Constancy is the name of the game.
Well, my sister is a Sous Chef and my brother-in-law is an Executive.
She went to school through the Cordon Bleu and graduated about 5 years ago. She's working her way up to Executive Chef, which is what I assume you're talking about, since they are the ones who create the new meals and the like.
He went to school for a couple of years before that, and is now an Executive. I don't remember what his education is or exactly how long he's been cooking professionally, but I know it's been longer, as at one time he was my sister's supervisor.
Though I don't know the exact terminology, start out by digging the ingredients out of the pantry and/or making the dishes look pretty, and then go on to preparing them by being a Line Cook, to being to being a shift leader or Sous Chef, to being an executive. I think I've missed one or two phases there. Like with most other jobs, until you become the shift lead, you will work your ass off and be paid shit. After you become the lead, you'll get paid slightly more, but work more hours. Once you become an executive, you're running the entire kitchen, and are working 12+ hours every day, and you'll get even more money, but it won't be very glamorous. Unless you somehow end up with your own TV show, of course.
As with most things, when they get home they don't want to do any more of the things they've done all day - so they don't cook and pretty much eat out or things like TV dinners, because they're sick of cooking. It's a pain to get them to help cook out when they come over for company (not that we expect them to, mind you, but because we would appreciate their help making things better). Because of this and the stress, my bro-in-law has already had a heart attack at 32 or so. That's another thing to watch out for. Unless your wife is going to cook, you could easily be headed down that path.
If you're looking for something to pay well, there are better jobs. I think I make more now, right out of college, than my sister does after five years' of experience. I think my bro-in-law makes just slightly more than I do, but I will probably surpass him in a couple of years.
I hope this helps.
The average starting salary for a graduate is in the $25-30k a year range, a degree does not guarantee a job at all, and you've graduated with around $120k in debt.
Culinary degrees are massively overrated. They're the new liberal arts degree. Especially in this economy, restaurants are downsizing and closing at an alarming rate. I work for a bakery that does a heavy wholesale business, in the past year we've had a dozen wholesale customers (restaurants and markets) go out of business due to bankruptcy.
If you want to be a chef, I mean really want to be a chef, you work your way up. You start as a line cook, or even the guy who tends the salad bar. There is no fast road to being a head chef aside from being independently wealthy or having very wealthy backers who trust in your ability.
And in an absolutely non-condesending way, "I've always loved food and cooking" gets you nowhere. Watching Food Network is a detriment honestly, because it has no basis in reality for the real food service industry. Food Network chefs are personalities and not much else.
Xbox Gamertag: GAMB1NO325Xi
The hours are brutal, and the shifts are looooong. Stimulant type drug use (cocaine, meth) isn't uncommon. If you want an easy job, or more time with your family, you're barking up the wrong tree. You have to be passionate about it.
My experience is from 15 years ago (shit I'm old), in a resort community. With the popularity of cooking shows and cooking in general, coupled with the job market, jobs like I had might be much harder to get now.
This right here. It's a job someone does because they love doing it for various reasons. If this type of thing isn't a passion for you, it probably isn't a good career choice.
Don't focus on chain restaurants though, for one. You're not cooking there, you're re-heating and assembling. You're better off working at a banquet hall or something. You'll be doing the same right before dinner time, but you'll at least be cooking some food beforehand.
Friend 1 graduated culinary school early this year. His program lasted a year and a half I believe, but the length can vary depending on the type of program you go into. By all accounts he was one of the top people in his class.
After graduation he started working for a hot restaurant in NYC. He was doing grunt work for long hours in a stressful work environment and paid nothing for it (not figuratively nothing, literally nothing). Apparently it's pretty common to work several months for free after graduating culinary school. After a month or so the head chef said he wanted to start putting money in his pocket. So then he found himself working long hours in a stressful work environment and getting paid a barely livable wage. He quit and is trying to get into food media type work.
Friend 2 did not go to culinary school. He worked in more chain type restaurants for 3-4 years before getting a job as sous chef for a bowling alley kitchen. Around this time he found a mentor in another chef here in the city. from 2005 to 2009 he's gone from line cook job to line cook job at several places of varying prestige trying to get into a position that could lead to a sous chef position. He's spent months at a time unemployed, catering parties and the like to try to get by (this only works if you know the type of people who hold catered parties). He's been passed over many times in favor of other sous chefs the head chefs bring in from former restaurants.
In 2009 he got a job as a sous chef with a new hotel and is still there. He works about 60+ hours a week and has a salary of just over 50k a year I believe. He actually made more as a line cook because he was eligible for overtime and he's really good so he was always getting asked to do overtime. His plan right now is to stick around there for 3-4 years and them move somewhere else (out of NYC) to try to get a head chef position.
Basically, unless you're going to open your own restaurant, you have to spend years of doing hard work for long hours and little pay while climing up the culinary ladder. If you were single with no expenses, I would say go for it. It will be very hard to support a family on the type of pay you'll be making and you'll never get to see your family with the hours you'll be working (starting in the early afternoon and working til midnight, with a day or two off during the work week).
You're about to have a kid. You're going to be giving up your current job to go into debt and make almost no money when you finish. You're going to strain your relationship with your wife because you'll never be around and when you are you'll be so tired and exhausted that you wont be much help. I can give you a ton of information about culinary school and career advice if you are really insistent on following through with this bad idea, so please ask so I can at least help you not completely fuck your life up.
Find something to love about your current career. Be good at it, do your best, take pride in it. Switch positions if you have to, but don't jumpship to career change. Let cooking be a hobby.
99% of your advice/experience sounded exactly accurate, except I fixed one thing for you.
Most new restaurants fail. Restaurants as a business have one of the highest failure rates out of all the possible businesses you can start. So, even if you get out of the 60+ hour crushing labor, expect to be doing 90+ hours, where 60 of it is kitchen work and 30 hours is administrative things. (Aka signing pay cheques, wondering why you are so broke, calling investors and begging for cash, and trying to find coverage for the server who didn't show up for the 2nd day in a row and is going to waltz in tomorrow for their shift beaming and saying "How are you?")
I have had several friends in the restaurant business. They did well by working insane hours, not having children to worry about when they opened, and/or having serious financial backing behind them. It is not an easy job, even if you own the restaurant!
I have a couple friends who just started a restaurant. They basically don't exist anymore.
An old work colleague of mine who's started a couple profitable restaurants and a bed and breakfast told me that there is a danger zone, usually a couple years in. Basically things look good, good turnover, clearing a lot of money, but a lot of it's in cash. So it's easy to sneak a hand into the till and spend that money on poorly thought out ideas or non business-related expenses, when that money should be banked to provide a cushion for payroll when times are leaner or for unforeseen expenses.
Other considerations are if you're an anchoring person in the restaurant (head chef, floor manager, etc.) expect to be working pretty much every evening, definitely every weekend evening (or whenever happens to be the rush for your type of restaurant), and all holidays. And you'll probably be opening and closing every night, at least initially.
If you start at this now, you might very rarely see your kid. It's a horrible job that does horrible things to the body. The 32 year old brother in law that had a heart attack, doesn't surprise me. I love cooking but I hate cooking in a professional kitchen. High pressure, high demand, low pay, low satisfaction. As previously said, the degrees are pointless. What the hell would you need to learn in four years that you wont learn in a year or two working in a kitchen with a great mentor.
There are some romanticized jobs out there but, from the way you describe it, you'd rather be a culinary critic; which as I understand it, you have to have experience in the industry to be taken seriously.
The idea that you have to be passionate about what you do for a living is pretty ridiculous; what you do for a living is what you do to make money, and (hopefully) produce something useful for society (even if that "something" is a service). If you don't wake up every morning hating life and hating the fact that you have to go to work, that's really good enough (assuming you're working a 40-hour-week-type job). Do your job from 9-5, and be passionate about what you do with the rest of your time.
As for hours, it's been already mentioned but yes, say goodbye to your nights and weekends. As for schooling... I haven't done any. The experience I have cooking and everything I've learned has been developed entirely from moving from place to place and acquiring skills along the way. So I can't comment on the education side of things. I ran a kitchen for a few weeks after the head chef quit and I managed fine. Barely.
Don't jump into this without more thought. I make it sound a little scary but some of the best people I have ever met were from kitchen jobs. But it isn't something to jump into without serious thought.
http://ruhlman.com/2010/09/so-you-wanna-be-a-chef%E2%80%94-by-bourdain-2.html
I've only got a tiny amount of experience in a kitchen, mostly baking, but cooking cooking sounds like a really tough gig.
DON'T DO IT!
I cooked for ~10 years. From small cafe, sous chef at an upscale place, to a banquet chef at a large hotel. Its a great gig for bachelors, young folks, ex-cons, addicts, illegals, etc.
I loved it, but it wasn't the sort of thing I could do and have a family. You will work evenings, you will work holidays, you will work weekends; in short it when other people are out having fun, you will be working. The money isn't great, benefits are very hard to come by. You will meet lots of interesting people... that you will never want to introduce to your wife. Most chefs I know/knew were alcoholics, addicts, divorced or some combination of those.
Agree that Kitchen Confidential is an accurate read, most everything that he saw I saw (outside of anything mob related).
Also, Culinary is a waste, nobody I worked with who came out of culinary had a clue, and these were people from reputable schools. Theory and practice are just too far removed from each other. Experience is the way to go, start in the dish pits and work you way up.... yet another reason that cooking isn't a good way to go if you alraedy have a career.
Can't speak to cooking shows as I don't really watch TV, but they are nice for getting ideas or seeing new interesting techniques, but I've never seen anything that simulated what life was like 'in the field'.
Don't mean to seem down on it as a profession, but it really is a strange world that you just kind of fall into. If you like cooking, cook for friends and family, cook for church groups/ soup kitchens etc, it will be a lot more rewarding. :-)
It is a shitty industry, plain and simple. As an executive chef in your average place of employment, you can expect to make around $50-75k/year before taxes. You will be working AT LEAST 10 hours/day, but more than likely in the 12-16 hour range, anywhere between 5-7 days a week.
I quit because of that, it is not worth it, the people you will work with will be really great or completely fucking insane and try to stab you (any Chef with experience will have a story or two about people trying to cut them). On top of this, your day is basically just dealing with constant high stress and other's melodrama. I can not think of a week that went by without something stupid happening or people pulling some sort of dramatic crap to just cause trouble.
Oh, and school. Yeah, in Alberta it is a red seal trade, which means a two year diploma course and a year or two of apprenticeship or 3 years of apprenticeship. I'm not sure about elsewhere. But my general experience in school was a little aggravating, how I explain it today is that it was $8000 I'm never going to get back.
Also, cooking shows are bullshit. Don't watch them and think that is what working in the industry is actually like. Ramsey's shows are better than others, but they are not 100% accurate. If you want a realistic look into the industry, Waiter Rant is pretty good (but from the front of house perspective)... I can't think of too many cook related things, mainly because I didn't want to read about what I did for work already.
But yeah, main point: It's not worth it. Do something else, look into other avenues of work, you will be making a big mistake.