One of the first moves you will have to make in the running of a restaurant, cafe or eatery is to hire some people to work in the kitchen. Everyone will need to be vetted and chosen carefully if the kitchen is to operate as successfully as possible and turn out great food every day. From the head chef, to the sous chefs and kitchen assistants, right down to the kitchen porters, you need to look for the highest possible quality every time. But the issue of hiring staff for your kitchen does have its complexities, and in this post we will take a look at some of the most pressing. Master these, and you will have a much more successful kitchen on your hands in no time.
Figure Out The Numbers
First of all, you need to make sure that you know exactly how many people you need to actually have in your kitchen. As is the case with hiring people in any business, this is not necessarily an easy or straightforward task, partially because you don’t yet know how busy you are going to be. But you can probably make a decent guess, and that is the best thing that you can do at this stage. This is one of those times when it helps to have an advisor on board, someone who has gone through this all themselves before and can advise you as to what your likely figures are. As long as you know how many chefs and other staff you need, you can then start filling those spaces.
Use Targeted Job Advertising
One of the most effective means of finding specific kinds of staff is to use targeted job advertising, and that is certainly true when you are trying to fill your kitchen with amazing cooks and assistants. By targeting your job adverts towards the right kind of people, those who are likely to be the ones you are searching for, you can ensure that you end up with the best possible people for the job, which is all that you are going for. When you write the job description, make sure that you use the kinds of keywords that really strongly indicate who you are looking for. The clearer you are on this, the more likely it is that you are going to end up with the right people.
Check Their Background
Again, a basic thing that anyone hiring staff needs to concern themselves with is checking the background of anyone that you are going to be taking on board. Once you have decided that someone seems appropriate for your kitchen, you need to then carry out a number of checks, including most importantly a detailed criminal records check. That is the only way to be sure that you are not hiring someone who is going to cause any harm to anyone, which is a hugely important concern in any workplace, let alone a kitchen.
Employee Training
Remember that, in most cases, you will probably need to train the people that you hire. That actually influences the way in which you seek out people, as it means you are not solely looking for those with exactly the experience that you might think is necessary. In fact, although you want experienced staff most of the time if possible, you will find that keeping your net wide and considering those who have little or none too, but are extremely passionate, might actually mean that you end up with some much better staff. You will train them on the job anyway, so it is not really all that important that they have great levels of experience – as long as you trust them to bring their all to the job from day one.
Finding The Best Chefs
When it comes to your chefs, especially your head chef, you do of course need to make sure that you find the absolute best. This is somewhere where you might be suspending the idea posited above, and actually you will probably just try and get hold of the most experienced chef you can to lead your kitchen. There is no more important role in the restaurant, so you will need to make sure that you are going to really spend time finding the best chef for this position. They will likely have their own vision and so on too, so they need to be someone that you feel you can work with, otherwise you might struggle to keep things together.
