By Myffy Rigby
There's a massive shortage of trained chefs and cooks in Sydney and no quick fix in sight, according to leading Sydney chefs Dan Hong (Ms. G's, Mr Wong), Neil Perry (Rockpool Group, Burger Project) and Martin Benn (Sepia). Surely, though, television shows such as Masterchef, Iron Chef and Top Chef have done a great PR job for the industry. The answer here is yes. A little too good. Those fresh young chefs straight out of TAFE have no interest in working their way up. They're going straight for chef de partie, ready or not.
"They want to jump straight into that rock-star role but the reality is they don't want to do the hours, they just want to put it on their resume and move on," says Benn, who has been dealing with this issue ever since he opened Sepia. "My question is, 'you want to be a chef de partie? Can you actually cook?' You can work your way around all these restaurants but actually, all you've been doing for the past two years is picking salad leaves."
Chef Martin Benn in his kitchen at Sepia restaurant, which struggles to secure skilled staff.Credit: Dallas Kilponen
Hong says some of the blame should be shouldered by the apprenticeship program, which has been shortened from four years to three. "[They] don't have enough experience and training after they finish," says the chef, who works for one of the largest hospitality groups in the city. "It's a bit of a lose-lose situation. They shortened the completion time because apprentices kept on dropping out."
The shallow talent pool can force businesses to hire and promote chefs beyond their abilities, which creates expectation. And the cycle of near-enough-is-good-enough continues. "If I were to ring all my guys across Rockpool Group, it's likely the kitchen won't have a full roster because we can't find people of quality to fill the roles," Perry says. "But occasionally if you have two arms and two legs, you're good enough to fill the role."
It certainly worries Benn, who is always on the look out for local talent but very often ends up sponsoring visiting workers. "The truth of it is we just don't get the Australian applicants. We constantly advertise for chefs. We're currently SMH Restaurant of the Year. We should be attracting lots of chefs all the time."
All three chefs cite the restrictive 417 working-holiday visa, which only allows an employee to work for one business for six months, as another major reason they have trouble getting talent through the doors. "The reality is we need some type of skilled labour coming into the country and we need a visa to do that," says Perry, who currently employs almost 700 staff across his business. "The cost of training for a business is extraordinary. You know, they finally come up to standard, you've only got them for another three months max and they've got to walk across the road and get a job with someone else because they can't continue to work for you. If they took it out to two years a lot of pain the industry's suffering would be relieved."