Building The Ultimate Kitchen Team For Your Business

4th April 2019

Does your restaurant or central kitchen have the ultimate kitchen team? If so, your business should be thriving. If not, have you considered how getting the right team in place could enhance your business and ultimately your profits and customer experience? The team dynamics in your kitchen determines its success. You may have the greatest individual chefs in the world, but if they don’t gel together, you don't have the ultimate kitchen team.

Building your kitchen team for better business

Building the right kitchen team solely relies on the individuals themselves and their ability to work together. When interviewing for available positions within your team you will need to think of many points, including the following:

TRUST – Without trust, your group of chefs will never become a team. Trust that your team have each others’ backs. Trust that everyone will pull his or her weight. Trust that the Executive Chef or Head Chef will support the decisions and actions of the team.

EXCELLENT COMMUNICATION – Complete, consistent, timely and honest communication from the top down and the bottom up is the number one rule for successful teams. Keep the information flowing and rumours at bay by being open and honest. Its imperative that each person in the kitchen team knows what orders are coming in and how each impacts their particular duties. Communicating with each other avoids unnecessary delays and food wastage.

SHARE – Successful teams share victories, happiness and opportunities ahead. They also share the pain and the blame when necessary. Ultimately they share knowledge to encourage and develop each other.

RESPECT – Chefs who are prepared to jump in and help when needed are essential for the ultimate kitchen team, even higher grade chefs, such as sous chefs, head chefs and executive chefs should be prepared to pitch in when needed. This is leading by example, supporting the team and earns respect. Even the lower grade chefs such as chef de partie and the kitchen helper are key elements in the team and their participation and actions contribute to the overall success. Their stepping up and going above and beyond, when necessary, will earn the respect of the rest of the team, as well as help them to develop their skills and experience on the job.

ENCOURAGE – Kitchen leaders need to encourage junior team members and support them to reach for the top. Constant encouragement of “be better, I know you can be” is essential. Give them a pat on the back and then raise the bar once again.

The challenge for a restaurant or commercial kitchen owner is not only to attract young, energetic, talented and focused kitchen staff but also to identify those who want to work as a cohesive unit and are aligned with the business’ core values and philosophy. There are no tasks more important than identifying, selecting, training and building a team ready to win as a collective unit.

Need help building your ultimate kitchen team? Gateway can help!

Gateway Group has a specialist Food & Beverage division which can help you profile and shortlist potential candidates for your kitchen team. Our experts will ensure that they have the relevant skills and experience for the role. For more senior positions, we can also conduct a sophisticated psychometric profiling of the candidates' reward/culture attitudes, behavioural traits, motivators and job match comparison - its quick and extremely accurate. When investing in your senior team ensure you get it right first time and avoid wasting time and money with bad hires. Gateway can help you to develop your ultimate kitchen team, email us: info@GatewayToUAE.com

Written by Nathan Hunt, Senior Managing Partner

Gateway Group of Companies, Abu Dhabi & Dubai UAE