Hopefully losing members of your kitchen staff is a nightmare! At the end of the day everyone is replaceable, but replacing staff cost you time, money and effort. There is no fool proof way to keep everyone in your kitchen, but there are steps you can take to reduce the high turnover rate that happens in our industry.

Pay your hourly kitchen staff above average:

Quality kitchen help is getting harder and harder to find these days, no matter where you are in Canada. Don’t wait for the restaurant across the street to offer your valued grill chef $2 dollars more an hour. Be proactive, recognize your talent and pay them well.

Health Benefits:

This is a huge perk that will help draw and retain full time culinary talent.

Kitchen Culture : Keep your culinary team engaged. Host internal cooking competitions, which will challenge the creativity of your culinary team. Winning dishes could be used for LTO’s, daily specials or make its way to your menu.   Street Style Fish Tacos – Inspired by our Grill Chef Andrew Walker.

Learning Curve:

Your kitchen environment should allow your culinary team to constantly learn new skills. From time to time the cold station chef should be learning how to run the grill station and vice versa. Try switching roles on slower nights where there is wiggle room to deal with mistakes. When your culinary team is learning new skills they will be more likely to stick around.

Closely monitor your salaried employees hours :

 12hr day, followed by a 15 hour day, followed by a 10 hour day… This is a recipe for burn out!   Sometimes these are unavoidable, but they need to be monitored so that they do not become standard. Don’t think for a second that your Sous Chef doesn’t keep track of his/her hours and divide them by the salaried payout to see just how much they really make an hour.

Rewards:

When someone on your culinary team goes the extra mile, make sure they are rewarded. Make a big deal out of it! The reward could be as simple as giving that person a free pass to come in for dinner with a guest.

Help me add to this list.  Share some of your thoughts in the comment section below and lets continue the conversation.