Why Most Culinary Students will not Become a Chef?

Perhaps this is one of the key questions that being practical and irony at the same time. Often we heard stories about how your career relating (or otherwise) with education. Marching into 6 years after graduation, I'm sharing how my classmates are doing now.

2009 vs 2019
Class of B.Sc. Int'l Culinary Arts Program (2014)

First things first, only 20% of the class remains in Food & Beverage related. Examining closer, only 3 (including myself) are still working full time in a kitchen, the rest are either on the restaurant floor or owning a food-production business.

When you put 'culinary art' on your CV, people expect you will be in the industry or at least related to. So what happened to the other 80%? I would say the first year after graduation, it was almost 50:50 which half of the class landed their first full-time job in a restaurant. Soon people starting to look for changes for various reasons.

Desk job

Many are working as administrator (a.k.a. secretary) to a company with or without business affiliation in food & beverage. There is one with HR for a hotel-based company, admin for a construction company, an executive for a restaurant consultant company, a phone operator for a tour agency. The main reason for this is wished for a weekend off and regular working hours (9-5).

Wedding Coordinator

One of my good friends was with the wedding coordinator company for a couple years before she ended up in the furniture business. Wedding organizer is a huge industry, wedding banquets are having the highest profit-margin for hotel food operations. The reason for the change is because they are simply too demanding. As a coordinator, she has to follow the client throughout days of the event which include food tasting, series of meetings, rehearsals, tea ceremony, dinner (or lunch) ceremony, and the aftermath. When she coordinating 2 cases in a week, she barely sleeps more than 4 hours a day.

Dive instructor

A male classmate of mine was in West Australia for a year before devoting himself as a dive instructor. He and I share the same enthusiasm in ocean activities such as fishing, diving, and grilling our fish over beer. I failed to notice that he is that IN to commit as a full-time dive instructor rather than a chef (his culinary skills was considerably good). However, at least this is still a service-related industry, and occasionally he's able to use his culinary skills grilling seafood for his clients. 

Fitness instructor

Another good buddy of mine where we spent much of our university life together over assignments, coursework, and some culinary competitions. I often looked upon her as a role model, a star in the culinary industry. She spent a couple years in the kitchen in the busiest hub of the world, the Taipei Central Station. Being a committed young female, there was just overwhelming pressure for her even she was highly recognized by the owner of the company and offered her the position of sous chef.

With the pandemic causing a halt for this industry, allowing me time to refresh and rethink my long term plan. So with this post, I wish to inspire for those who are new in the industry or planning to become a chef. Reconsider. You are welcome to reach me out at my Instagram @chefzf.

ZF

#culinarystudent #cheftobe #career