Heading towards Christmas 2023, the Gourmet Recruitment team are finding the current hospitality jobs market still to be challenging and in drastically short supply of skilled staff.
Many michelin restaurants and 5* hotels we work with have successfully brought in hospitality workers from the EU and beyond using skilled worker visas but still have roles to fill. There just don’t seem to be enough chefs and F&B staff in the UK to fill all the available roles. Established hotels and restaurants are putting extra resources in training entry level staff from the base up to grow their teams, but they’re experiencing high churn rates. When staff are fully trained after 6 months they move on to a higher position at a rival for increased pay.
Highly skilled roles such as trained WSET Sommeliers, Pastry Chefs, Chocolatiers and Bakers are in even shorter supply. Nearly every Michelin restaurant we work with in England, Scotland and Ireland is searching for Sommeliers and pastry chefs. These are our most commonly placed positions at the moment. There are still driven hospitality workers looking to work with chefs and F&B professionals with similar mindsets on ambitious projects, whether it be to turn a one michelin star restaurant into a two or opening further outlets following a formula. Various ways to attract and retain good staff still exist.
A new avenue has opened up as well as Michelin awards restaurants in Dubai and the Middle East, a steady stream of hospitality workers from London and Paris have moved to the tax-haven in the sand. Previously, the career driven Michelin devotees would not entertain the thought of moving to Dubai. But as Yannick Alleno has shown, a two michelin star restaurant in Dubai is possible. STAY by Yannick Alleno was award two michelin stars in December 2022 and retained them in the June 2023 michelin announcement. Fine-dining restaurants in Dubai now jostle to become the first Three michelin star post in the Middle East, a lucrative fight. Clients in Dubai also asking us to help find European restaurant managers and pastry chefs with stable CVs and a hospitality degree. Being able to speak English and understanding the predominantly European clientele is advantageous. An attractive new enclave for hospitality workers is also forming in Saudi Arabia, something we’ll explore in our next article.
But for hospitality workers as a whole, times have never been better. Wages have risen by twenty five percent since Covid in the UK. There’s more protection for the distribution of tips in the form of new legislation to be introduced in 2024 throughout the UK. European staff are also in high demand from the Middle East and Asia.
Most fine dining / Michelin restaurants we work with report high footfall and are fully booked almost every night. Inflation in the UK has forced most to put their prices up but consumers are still happy to pay for the best.
At Gourmet Recruitment we’re looking forward to approaching November and helping restaurants and hotels finalise their teams for the Christmas period. As the shopping tourists visit from China, India and the Middle East, hotels in London and tourist cities of the UK reach peak occupancy. This is probably our busiest period of the year. We’re fortunate to have an extensive database of staff and receive many recommendations from luxury hotels and michelin restaurants as the people to go to for finding the best workers.