Recruiting chefs has been a growing challenge across the UK hospitality sector for years. That challenge is only amplified airside, where the talent pool narrows even further due to a variety of unique factors.
Workforce decline
The industry is still feeling the long-term effects of workforce decline. It’s estimated that 120,000 EU workers left the UK hospitality sector, and the domestic pipeline isn’t yet strong enough to replace them. This is a particular issue for airport vacancies, where employers cannot easily offer visa sponsorship opportunities or recruit overseas.
Perhaps indicative of this workforce decline, traditional job boards do not yield high volumes of suitable or experienced chef, chef de partie or commis chef applications - leading to a high cost per application. Specialist job boards are often more expensive still - and costs go up each year. This means that teams who rely on traditional advertising can easily become trapped into a cycle of cost increases year on year, to get the same results.
When coupled with the reactive hiring practices often demanded by an airport environment, it can feel like an uphill battle for internal teams to continually attract the experienced chef talent they need.
The reality of airside chef roles
The reality of airside chef and kitchen roles can also fuel this problem. Candidates are weighing up a range of factors when it comes to airside chef and kitchen roles:
- Pay and salary - airport employers cannot always match the face value city-centre pay rates, so there is a reliance on having conversations with candidates to promote the other benefits first.
- Kitchen environments – smaller spaces, smaller teams and limited progression options can easily deter ambitious and experienced chefs.
- Cooking and skill limitations – induction over gas, and in many cases, working with pre-prepared or assembly-style food that values volume and speed can deter individuals. For chefs who value creativity and craft, this can feel like a step away from why they entered the industry in the first place.
- Commute and accessibility – often longer, more complicated journeys depending on the airport location - particularly if working unsociable hours.
As well as candidate attraction, these factors also contribute to a retention problem. This includes a high number of drop-outs during the vetting process as well as post-hire, all of which increases an employer's costs and demands more resource of already stretched internal teams.
One potential solution is to attract entry-level hospitality talent and invest in training and development, but this usually cost prohibitive. Another model could involve a team of cooks sitting under a chef de partie, but this is not a universal solution (particularly for VIP lounges with an open kitchen).
Most employment businesses instead turn to an aviation recruitment specialist, such as Aviation Recruitment Network, to understand how a specialist agency might offer the solution to their hospitality staffing requirements.
How recruitment agencies make the difference
This is where specialist recruitment partnerships becomes critical.
Agencies with strong hospitality networks are constantly engaged with active and passive candidates, giving them a real-time understanding of market conditions and candidate expectations. We can:
- Draw from pre-qualified talent pools, reducing time-to-hire.
- Provide faster turnaround, helping secure candidates before competitors do.
- Mitigate risk with replacement guarantees, protecting against inevitable drop-outs.
- Absorb the cost of attrition during vetting, saving internal resource and budget.
- Leverage partnerships with academic institutions to support candidates into work.
The reality is that operators aren’t just competing in a tight labour market or against competitive salary and benefits packages off-airport, but they’re asking candidates to take on roles that come with additional constraints, delays, and compromises when compared to off-airport opportunities.
In a market defined by scarcity and competition, success comes down to speed, insight, and access to talent.
Contact us today for a no-obligation conversation about your recruitment needs, and how we can support your operational goals.
Sources: OnlyChef