Restaurant offers £91,000 for head chef as kitchen crisis bites

Salaries for chef have jumped by as much as 30pc as employers struggle to fill vacancies

Bob Bob Ricard's Soho restaurant
Bob Bob Ricard's Soho restaurant

Good chefs have always been in high demand but Covid means they are now scarcer than ever, scattered across the world rather than in Britain.

Neil Harris, at recruiter Hashtag Chefs, says: “A lot of Europeans went home and never came back. A lot of people like the Aussies, New Zealanders and South Africans are not coming over at the moment because of the pandemic.”

Salaries are up by as much as 30pc, says Harris. On Wednesday Bob Bob Ricard, a French and Russian-themed restaurant in London's Soho district, advertised a salary of £91,000 for a head chef - plus on-site dining of up to £6,000 per year - as restaurants and hotels compete for talent.

Housekeeping salaries are also rising sharply, says Stuart Proctor, chief operating officer of hotel group The Stafford Collection.

Still, the real pay growth comes lower down the ladder. Those who earned £10 or £11 per hour pre-Covid have found employment with the likes of Amazon, argues Harris. “They are earning £14 per hour, not working evenings, not working weekends.”

chef
The pandemic has made it even harder for restaurants to recruit chefs

The shift into logistics highlights the intense demand for workers in that sector, too.

Lorry drivers are at the front of the pay rise queue as haulage firms compete for staff. While Luton Airport offered front of house staff a 4.3pc pay rise this week, it gave drivers with an HGV licence a 20pc bump.

Unite the Union argues this was the result of four days of strike action after workers were told pay would be frozen. Bus drivers in South Yorkshire and bin men in Coventry are also pushing for similar hikes. Factory workers are also benefiting, says Unite, citing a 27pc hike over two years for Imperial Logistics drivers on a Mini contract.

“Areas where the staffing shortages are most pronounced have bigger moves - hospitality, logistics, IT are leading sectors on that,” says Neil Carberry, boss of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation.

But at the other end of the spectrum, the ONS found that pay for workers in caring, leisure and other services rose just 2.4pc in the year to September, according to the ONS. This was well below inflation which then stood at 3.1pc and has since accelerated to 5.4pc.

Their best hope may lie in the national minimum wage which is rising by 6.6pc in April, from £8.91 per hour to £9.50.

Moving jobs is another favoured way to secure a pay rise or better conditions. The ONS found almost 1m people moved jobs in the three months to September.

As the cost of living rises, almost one-third of workers, or 9m, are planning to look for new employment in the first six months of 2022, found recruiter Robert Half.

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