Pub asks front of house staff to prepare meals due to chef shortage

A publican had to temporarily simplify his menu so that front of house staff could prepare dishes for guests amid ongoing chef shortages.

Leigh White, director of barbecue brand Smok’d, who operates the Grey Horse in Kingston-upon-Thames and the Britannia pub in London Bridge, trained up three members of his front of house team to cook meals when he was short-staffed in the kitchen earlier this year.

This saw him reduce his barbecue menu to offering dishes such as Scotch eggs and nachos which managers could cook to order.

But after two months, White realised that this had to stop. He said: “I could see where the business was going. I ended up paying a much higher rate just to get [a chef] in. I would have bankrupted [the pub] if I had continued trying to [teach front of house staff]. People would just stop coming.”

He currently has one head chef in the London Bridge kitchen, who is supported by chefs from his Kingston pub on rotation.

White said the shortage of chefs had been aggravated by the growing dependence on temporary staffing agencies, who are able to offer higher rates of pay of around “£25 an hour”.

He said: “I think as operators we’re causing our own problem by continuing to feed into these temp agencies which has led to the demand and chefs being able to pick and choose when to work.

“It’s not to say that [the chefs] don’t deserve [higher pay], but the public aren’t going to start paying twice as much for their burgers. The margin isn’t there; it’s not sustainable.”

As staff shortages worsened this year, White noticed that the standard rate of pay for a head chef had increased from between £30,000 - £35,000 to £50,000 a year. He even had a chef de partie asking to be paid £50,000.

He added: “It creates an imbalance because the money [some chefs are] asking for is more than what a manager will be paid for running the entire business, and to try and tell the manager that the chefs are going to be paid more [is] just out of sync. Do you pay them more as well?”

Despite being in the industry for 21 years, White said he had “never seen anything like this before”.

It comes after a joint survey from several hospitality trade bodies revealed that over a quarter (28%) of their members will be running sites with fewer back of house staff around Christmas, while a third expect to reduce opening hours.

UKHospitality, the British Beer and Pub Association, the British Institute of Innkeeping, the Institute of Hospitality and charity Springboard have urged the government to support the industry-wide recruitment campaign, Hospitality Rising, which launched earlier this month.

In a group letter to Mel Stride MP, the secretary of state for work and pensions, they said hospitality was being "held back" and ministers needed to help ensure there was a "sustainable talent pool" to support businesses.