What Are The Day to Day Job Challenges Of A Chef?

Becoming a Chef is not easy let alone working as a Chef. As we have discussed in a couple of different articles, a Chef needs to do so many things ranging from all the duties in the kitchen all the way to the upper management. A Chef work is not only physically straining but also mentally challenging. It’s not just your food preparation and cooking skills that count, your creativity, people skill as well as leadership skill is equally important in chef career. If you want to be a successful Chef, you need to equip yourself with these skills and knowledge.

A Chef work is a challenging lot. Being a Chef, you are responsible for preparing many dishes which have to be up to a certain level of quality. You need to be doing this day after day and night after night, and keep your work within budget. Your duties as a Chef are to plan the menu, determine the price and how much it costs to make the dishes. Moreover, a Chef is responsible for ordering supplies, hire cooks and other kitchen workers and supervise the preparation of food.

You need to be creative as well to create new recipes to keep your customers coming back. I am sure you don’t want your clients eating the same things over and over again and every time they come to your restaurant, they are seeing the same dishes in the menu. You need to use your skills to create new dishes to attract more customers. Simply put, keeping your outlets or facilities profitable is your number one priority.

Besides, being a chef not only means you have to be able to cook good dishes, it also means you have to be creative in serving those dishes. Preparing the dishes is not only labor of love but also the work of art. Upscale restaurants specifically are particular concerned about how dishes are to be presented to diners.

Other than using your culinary skills in the kitchen, a Chef especially the one in the higher rank is required to coordinates planning, budgeting and the purchases for all the food operations. Large hotels, clubs and restaurant chains hire Executive Chefs to do all these planning and operations.

Physically, Chefs and Cooks are on their feet throughout their work day, and during meal times, whether it’s lunch or dinner, they must be prepared to work under pressure. They face hazards such as cuts and burns, and may be exposed to oily mists, dusts, fumes, and smoke. Moreover, sometimes carrying and handling large cooking ware as well as loads are part of the duties of chefs. All in all, you have to be physically fit in order to carry out your duties.

Let’s recap of the challenges of a chef. Working as a Chef is intellectually challenging. Your grey matter has to be fully operational to do the day to day duties, to lead people, to take order as well as giving orders. Not only that, physically you might get hurt or burn. And getting a cut in the fingers as well as a blister by hot oil is a norm in the kitchen. Are you ready to take on the challenges?

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Become a Chef. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.