A kitchen needs more than ingredients, equipment and a menu. It needs people with the skills to organise preparation, manage service and deliver food consistently.
When those people are difficult to find, the pressure reaches everyone: owners trying to recruit, chefs covering empty positions and junior staff still learning their craft.
The shortage of chefs involves several connected challenges: recruiting suitable people, developing their skills and creating working conditions that encourage them to stay.
However, the situation is not identical everywhere. Evidence shows widespread shortages in several markets, rather than a single global shortage growing at the same rate in every country.
What Does the Evidence Show?
The European Labour Authority’s report on labour shortages and surpluses in 2024 identified increasingly widespread shortages in hospitality occupations, including chefs, cooks and waiters. It described how demand for workers recovered faster than supply after pandemic restrictions ended.
Its separate 2024 analysis of accommodation and food services reported that 13 EU Member States identified chefs as a shortage occupation in the underlying 2023 data. Cooks were reported as a shortage occupation by 16 Member States. These are separate occupational categories, so the figures should not be combined.
In the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects approximately 25,200 openings for chefs and head cooks each year, on average, between 2025 and 2035. Many are expected to arise from workers changing occupations or leaving the workforce, including through retirement.
These are projected job openings, not a count of unfilled positions. They nevertheless illustrate the continuing need to recruit and replace experienced people.
1. Recruiting Chefs Does Not Solve the Problem If They Keep Leaving
Recruitment and retention are closely connected.
A restaurant might successfully hire a chef, only to advertise the same position again months later. Repeated recruitment can keep a kitchen functioning temporarily without resolving the reasons people leave.
A report based on a 2025 survey of 460 chefs, conducted with The Burnt Chef Project, found that 69% of respondents often or always considered leaving their current job. Participants primarily worked in the UK and other English-speaking markets.
This measures intentions within the survey sample, rather than the percentage of all chefs who actually resign. However, it highlights the importance of understanding dissatisfaction before it becomes another vacancy.
For employers, the question extends beyond “Where can we find another chef?” It also includes “What would make the chefs already here want to stay?”
2. Working Conditions Influence Who Applies and Who Stays
A vacancy offers a whole working arrangement: pay, hours, responsibilities, management and opportunities to progress.
The 2025 chef survey included accounts of unpaid overtime, understaffing and abusive management. Almost 70% of respondents reported moderate or strong interference between work and home or family life. These findings describe the surveyed chefs’ experiences and should not be assumed to represent every kitchen.
For someone comparing jobs, practical details can determine whether an offer is workable:
- Is the advertised salary clear?
- Do the stated hours match the actual workload?
- How far in advance is the rota available?
- Is there enough support during busy services?
- How are mistakes and concerns handled?
- Is progression explained?
A position can be difficult to fill because of the conditions attached to it, even when qualified chefs exist.
That possibility deserves attention alongside the number of people entering the profession.
3. Experienced Chefs Cannot Be Replaced Immediately
Interest in cooking and readiness to lead a professional kitchen are different stages of development.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics explains that chefs and head cooks typically need related work experience. Many develop their skills over years in kitchens, while others combine experience with culinary education or apprenticeships. Their responsibilities can include supervising staff, planning menus, ordering supplies and maintaining food quality.
This helps explain why hiring an enthusiastic beginner cannot immediately resolve a vacancy requiring experienced leadership.
A new recruit may need guidance on timing, organisation, consistency and the demands of a particular kitchen. Employers therefore need to consider both immediate staffing needs and how less experienced team members will develop.
Training requires time from people who may already be managing a demanding workload. Protecting that time is part of building the future team.
4. The Pandemic Disrupted the Hospitality Workforce
The pandemic helps explain how some staffing gaps developed.
The European Labour Authority’s 2024 hospitality analysis describes workers moving into other sectors during closures and reduced tourism activity. Many did not return when hospitality reopened. The report also notes that skills shortages existed before the pandemic.
Reopening a business does not automatically restore its former workforce. People may have established themselves in new roles, changed location or reorganised their lives.
This history matters, but it does not explain every difficult vacancy today. Employers still need to examine the current reasons applicants decline offers and existing employees leave.
5. Available Chefs and Available Jobs Do Not Always Match
A shortage is partly a question of location and suitability.
An employer may need a particular specialism, level of responsibility or working pattern. A chef seeking work may have different experience or be unable to relocate.
The European Labour Authority’s 2024 shortage report illustrates this wider mismatch: 98% of occupations reported as being in shortage in at least one country were also reported as being in surplus in another. This figure covers occupations generally, rather than chefs alone.
The implication is that a shortage in one market does not mean suitable workers are absent everywhere.
For a chef, accepting a role elsewhere can depend on housing costs, transport, language, family commitments and whether the position offers enough stability to justify moving.
Recruitment needs to account for those practical decisions.
6. Understaffing Can Make the Next Vacancy More Likely
One possible consequence of an unfilled role is a repeating cycle: existing employees absorb more work, pressure increases and another person starts considering leaving.
This is a practical interpretation of how understaffing and retention concerns can interact, rather than a measured outcome in every kitchen.
It also explains why repeatedly asking the same team to cover gaps may become difficult to sustain.
A staffing plan should consider what the available team can reasonably deliver. That could mean reviewing preparation requirements, menu complexity, service capacity or opening patterns while recruitment continues.
The workload needs to reflect the people available to carry it out.
What Could Help Reduce the Shortage of Chefs?
Different causes require different responses. An employer struggling to attract applicants faces a different problem from one that recruits successfully but loses staff quickly.
Useful starting points include:
- Clear job adverts: Explain pay, expected hours, responsibilities and working patterns.
- Structured training: Give new recruits a realistic learning plan and an identified mentor.
- Retention conversations: Ask existing chefs what helps them stay and what makes their work difficult.
- Respectful management: Maintain standards through clear expectations and constructive feedback.
- Visible progression: Explain how skills, responsibilities and earnings can develop.
- Realistic workload planning: Review what the team can deliver safely and consistently.
These are practical areas to assess, rather than guaranteed solutions. Their value depends on the specific reasons a kitchen struggles to recruit or retain people.
Building a Career That People Can Stay In
Addressing the shortage of chefs requires attention to the full career journey: entering the profession, gaining experience, finding suitable work and continuing to develop.
For Magical Chefs, that means recognising the people behind the vacancies. A job advert represents work that needs doing, but the person considering it also has ambitions, responsibilities and a life outside the kitchen.
A stronger culinary workforce depends on making those two sides fit together.
Help Shape the Future of the Culinary Industry
Research can identify staffing gaps, but it cannot explain every individual experience behind them.
That is why Magical Chefs is asking chefs and culinary professionals about the pressures, opportunities and challenges they face.
Have you struggled to recruit chefs, worked in an understaffed kitchen or reconsidered your future in the profession? Share your experience through our anonymous chef survey.
The goal is to better understand what is happening and what could realistically improve for the people working in the industry.
Your experience matters. Help shape the conversation.
