Restaurant staff shortages? Blame it on Master Chef
Good Food Guide editor Myffy Rigby blames Master Chef for the staff shortages in restaurants around the country.
As she puts it, the show’s depiction of “rock star” chef lifestyles attracts lots of young Australians.
Trouble is that it’s not all glamour and they don’t want to put in the hard yards to make it.
Releasing the latest annual Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide, Rigby said the food industry was going strong.
At the same time, however, restaurants were struggling to find staff.
And the jobs are there. The accommodation and food services sector employs the greatest proportion of young workers of any industry. It is estimated that 44 per cent of staff in restaurants and food places are aged 15 to 24 years. According to the latest forecasts, there are 37,000 new jobs for hospitality workers ready for the taking in the five years to November, 2020.
And there’s a big shortage of good staff.
A Deloitte Access Economics report last year revealed a gap of 38,000 staff across the tourism and hospitality sector. And it forecasts that shortage will increase to 123,000 by 2020.
Deloitte forecasts demand will be particularly high for chefs and restaurant managers.
The bottom line, as Rigby says, is that restaurants are finding it hard to recruit quality staff.
"They constantly struggle," Rigby told ABC News Breakfast.
"You've got to think, if you were looking for work, start in a kitchen as a kitchen hand and work your way up.
"You are guaranteed to actually make a career out of that.
"People are seeing it as this real rock star career, but what it takes to be that rock star is going through every single stage to get there.
"It's really actually driving and picking away and a lot of people don't want to do that hard work. It is heavy labour. It's manual labour."
by Leon Gettler, September 14th 2016
