Ignoring Chefs Based On Age Is Not Just Wrong It's Stupid.

OK, well it’s time for a bit of a rant.

I had meant this just to be a post but it seems that my letter of annoyance below is considered too long for that. I will also say sorry in advance if my words are not as articulate as they could be in the post below but I am feeling rather annoyed at the moment and have to get this off my chest as they say.

So, I was recently asked if I was interested in a chef position in a restaurant in Asia working in the area of high quality French cuisine. Yes of course I said, especially given that my first love and most of my experience and background over the last 30 years as a chef has been in both modern and classical French fine dining. To be honest I wasn’t expecting too much as in my experience over the last five years almost every job I have ever been approached about through LinkedIn has been vague in description with little hard facts or often any real proper dialogue. It also usually takes weeks if not months of waiting with lots of umming and aahing before the other party eventually responds with ‘we’ve chosen someone local’ or we’re not sure what we’re doing’ we’ll get back to you. Often they don’t. . Various other logic ensues but regardless either way nothing worthwhile has ever come of a LinkedIn job offer. Sorry to say but in my case it’s a fact. It’s often somewhat amusing and surprising given that these people are usually in a position which requires them to be organised and decisive. Anyway I just received an email today saying I am not being considered for the position on review. Hmm.

Was it because my 30 plus years of experience in a variety of restaurants and hotels, mostly high end fine dining and well regarded restaurants was considered not good enough? Was it because the dozen or so excellent written references accumulated over my work history did not impress? Could the fact the last restaurant I worked in despite limited resources amazingly won best new city restaurant within its first 6 months but sadly less than two years later has since closed had an effect?. Or maybe the number of personal and extensive list of restaurant awards I have been a part of during my years in cooking along with multiple guest chef events during that time most notably in Sydney, Melbourne and abroad both the UK and Canada all deemed simply irrelevant. Apparently it was none of these things.

It was because the client is only looking for ‘applicants in their 40’s. I just turned 51 last month. This is also not the first time I have been told this in the last few months whilst job searching either. One local hotel told me i was also too experienced. To be honest though given my experience in fine dining and skills and the fact that most of the local jobs around me looking for staff in Adelaide are in aged care, cafes or pubs the lack of response is not surprising. But too old? Seriously is this where as an industry we are ? .. In this instance it had nothing to do with the recruiter or their screening process involved as it is one who I have a lot of respect for. He is in fact a chef who has experienced the same sort of dumb thinking from employers, perhaps why he has chosen to move into recruiting himself. He is also unlike many on LinkedIn in his role I have come across responsive and very clear and prompt in his emails. Back to the age thing though. I have had to listen for as many years as I have worked from the industry about the lack of experienced, dedicated, skilled and ‘passionate’ chefs and I have in fact lamented the same thing myself many times. Because it is in many instances quite accurate. And I imagine it’s the same in other parts of the world. Which is why it is completely baffling the number of experienced chefs with good skills like myself I have come across lately who struggle to find work. Has the industry really become so full of dumb narrow minded thinking and superficiality? I wait with interest to see how these geniuses fare with this sort of business acumen.

Ignoring older chefs with relevant skills and experience for someone merely younger (and it seems we’re talking about chefs mostly in their 40’s and 50’s) is a stupid idea and is akin to shooting yourself in the foot. The catering industry has ( as many articles recently have discussed over the last few years) by and large survived as it is to this day with a history of chefs working much longer hours than they should have to, for a lot less money than they deserved and often in average work conditions. (There are other groups like front of house, business owners etc who are in the same boat but for the subject matter here I am referring to chefs).

To marginalise those individuals with a long experience of dealing with these things, those that have shown many personal sacrifices to often keep someone else’s business (and usually their vision) running is at best from an industry that asks so much from its staff unappreciative and downright disrespectful. A chef at my age with my experience, history of achievement and reliability, and a reputation for having high standards should be in high demand. Given the number of young, inexperienced, and low skilled people entering the industry and the steady loss of basic skills learnt from previous generations my age and before and with many of those now entering demanding more money, less hours, more respect and higher working conditions (nothing wrong with asking those things either in the right way of course) and the fact that some many in the hospitality industry are bemoaning the lack of good chefs it is truly baffling why older chefs are treated as yesterday’s jam. The industry worldwide talks about doing the hard yards, etc., the problem is for quite a few of us those hard yards don’t lead to where they should when we get older. If the job opportunities for younger chefs are going to dry up when they get older like many of us now it will just be another reason for young people to avoid this profession.

I often laugh when i get told that older chefs also are too expensive. Firstly almost every young chef I have interviewed over the last few years have asked for more money than I was earning myself as the Chef interviewing them.. Secondly, if you look at the award rates in Australia in restaurants the difference between a 24 year old chef say level 2-3 and a senior chef like myself around 45-50 at say level 5-6 is less than $10 an hour. Given that I consider myself twice as productive, twice as skilled, twice as organised and twice as reliable as most of the chefs I have come across in the last few years I would say I am well worth any extra money. Besides anyone who knows me or has worked with me knows that the quality of food i get to serve is usually my first consideration before wages, something I am well aware though that some employers have taken advantage of over the years. However I tend to be much more content to be left in a kitchen to produce high quality food earning a little less than taking a role where the money is higher but the work less fulfilling. However at this stage of my career particularly given the fact we all need to live it seems my choices are becoming limited through a lack of opportunities. My choices it seems are sadly to lower my standards or in that case leave the industry and do something else.

So the young chefs have not enough skills or experience and the experienced chefs are too experienced or too old... If the industry continues this way of thinking it will very soon find a new catastrophe upon itself that wage increases and four day working weeks will not be able to fix.