As of recent years, more and more chefs are turning their career towards working as an agency chef using a recruitment agency like us here at Chefs for Chefs. In this piece, you will find everything you need to know about being an agency chef, what to expect and importantly, how to get started.
What is an agency chef?
An agency chef is a person that works on temporary contracts on behalf of a hospitality agency like Chefs for Chefs. Agency Chef jobs are managed fully by the agency, then sub contracted to the agency chef. As a candidate, this means that you have very little admin and that we put in that work to find clients for you, then you simply complete the actual work part. Its a great alternative to going self employed, you are in control of what you do, where you work and days etc..., but without the risk of building a client base, advertising costs and so on.
Agency chef work typically varies week to week. Most clients book chefs on an ongoing basis (Read more below)
What are the types of agency chef assignments?
This is such a varied answer, we have had agency chef jobs that have just been for a 6 hour shift, to some assignments that have lasted months on end. Here are a few terms that we use to describe our assignments.
Short term agency chef jobs- These jobs are typically a from one day up to a weeks worth of work. They can then become medium to long term roles, depending on the client requirements.
Medium term- These jobs are on a semi ongoing basis and suit most agency chefs. it means they are at the same place of work for a couple of weeks up to a month, to maybe help out with sickness cover or holiday cover
Ongoing job- These roles are exactly what they say on the tin, ongoing. These jobs can be for months on end, you see, some of our clients prefer to just have an agency chef for April to November if they have a seasonal business like events catering or a hotel that depends on leisure and tourism geographically. They can offer you more stability and can limit the periods throughout the year that you are out of work.
What roles can you cover taking on an agency chef job?
We cover all sorts of roles for our clients, typically as an agency chef you will work in the below positions;
Chef de partie
Sous Chef
Head Chef
How much do agency chefs get paid?
Agency chef salary can vary from role to role and your location. For instance, agency chefs in London do have an uplifted rate to those based outside of London do compensate for cost of living expenses.
Agency Chefs can typically earn the following minimum rates of pay.
Agency Chef De Parties
As an agency chef de partie, you can earn a rate of pay of around £13.50 ph. This is depending on how the hospitality agency engages you and runs their contracts. As a rule of thumb as and agency chef de partie, you could earn around £33,696 based on a 48 hour working week.
Agency Sous Chefs
For agency Sous Chefs, the rate of pay would be around £15.75ph, this will be dependent agency to agency. With Chefs for Chefs, Agency sous chef jobs could earn you around £39,312 per year, based on a 48 hour working week.
Agency Head Chefs
For Agency Head Chefs, the pay rate would be £17ph, again this would be different depending on the agency and their contracts with you. With Chefs for Chefs, you could earn around £42,432 per year, based on a 48 hour working week.
Do agency chef jobs have peak trading seasons throughout the year?
The short answer is yes, with every industry you will always have a peak trading period and times of the year that are slower. naturally with hospitality the peak season is usually April to December and the low season is January to March.
However, here at Chefs for Chefs we also provide relief chefs to the care & education sectors, so if you do have an enhanced DBS (We can do it for you too) you open up a world of opportunity, learn more here.
How do you get started?
Its simple, we can register chefs in the same day for working with us here at Chefs for Chefs. There are a few documents that wee need to complete and a couple of checks, but otherwise the process is very straight forward.
If you want to apply to join our relief chef team, just click here
