Image source @ Visual China
Text | Red Meal Net
Recently, the topic of chefs disappearing and chefs losing their jobs has been flooding the entire chef circle, and many people believe that the advancement of science and technology will make the profession of chef face a major crisis. Is this really the case?
In the just-concluded Winter Olympic Games and the ongoing Paralympic Games, robot ordering, robot delivery, robot stir-frying, robot coffee... Repeatedly on the hot search. These robot-cooked dishes have amazed the athletes who have come to Beijing from all over the world, and many netizens have also been fascinated.
I have to say that the progress of science and technology is really amazing, and back in the chef's world, the progress of science and technology has also triggered a lot of discussion. Some people think that in the near future, the work of chefs will be increasingly replaced by robots, and chefs may disappear into the back kitchen.
Perhaps, in a way, this is not alarmist.
The chef slowly "disappears" in the back kitchen
In the past, when it came to the meal, diners might see a hot and busy kitchen. Now, many diners are seeing a simpler and cleaner back kitchen, and the chef you think is busy, may be elegantly and methodically taking out a bag of cooking for you to heat the plate.
This is not an exaggeration, and in many chain restaurants and fast food restaurants, this has become an open "secret". In these types of restaurants, the importance of the chef is slowly being weakened.
In fact, long before the prevalence of food bags in the catering industry, many companies in the industry were exploring the possibility of "de-chef". Once upon a time, the chef's craftsmanship determined the fate of a restaurant. If the chef's cooking skills are good, the restaurant business is hot; if the chef's skills are not good, the courtyard is snubbed.
Therefore, the chefs at that time were very respected and valuable, and many restaurant owners were willing to spend money in order to retain the chefs, and some even dug people all over the country.
However, this is not good for the development of the restaurant, in case one day the chef does not dry, the taste of the dish changes, the business will be yellow. This makes restaurant owners very passive, so some restaurant owners began to think about new development paths, they hope to no longer rely too much on chefs, reduce business risks.
△Image source: Red Kitchen Network photo
In the process of this exploration, the entry of international brands such as McCann has inspired many Chinese restaurant owners, and a number of "de-chef" restaurants have been born in China.
For example, the early Brands of True Kung Fu, Huang Jihuang and so on, they will standardize most of the products, process through the central factory and then distribute to the store, every day the store staff only need to process the processed semi-finished products simply to eat, the store no longer needs a professional chef to sit, replaced by "bag cutter" and "operator".
Subsequently, with the further improvement of the standardization and chaining of Chinese catering, the phenomenon of de-chef has intensified, and a number of large-scale chain catering brands based on single products have been born, such as Haidilao, Sipping And Feeding, Exploring Fish, Frog Laida, Taier Sauerkraut Fish, etc.
The dishes of these restaurants all have a common feature: the dishes are simple and simple, and the taste is uniform and stable. In the back kitchen of these large chain brands, it is no longer the chef in the traditional sense, but the young employees who can operate after simple training.
After the outbreak of the epidemic, there was a wave of small climaxes.
Under the epidemic, high rental costs and labor costs have forced many restaurants to embrace standardization. In this case, an upgraded version of the cooking bag, the prepared dish, quickly became popular.
Some restaurants based on pre-made dishes have also begun to appear, these restaurants do not need a large kitchen, nor do they need professional chefs, the cost of opening a store is extremely low, but the efficiency of meals is very high.
At the same time, the technology of intelligent robots is more mature, and cooking robots have become more popular, such as the robot chef of the Winter Olympics.
All kinds of signs have made people inside and outside the industry worry: in the future, the job of chef may be eliminated, and chefs will disappear.
Some data also show that the demand for chefs in the catering industry has indeed decreased over the years. According to the statistics of the Restaurant Association, the demand for chefs in 2020 was 11,223 million people, a decrease of 25% compared with 2019 and 28% less than in 2018.
It can be seen that the progress of science and technology has really affected the chef industry, and some basic positions will really be replaced. But is the biggest crisis in the chef industry really coming from technology? Perhaps, the problem of "people" is the "culprit".
Who is to blame for the "disappearance" of the chef
Why? We may wish to start with the recruitment needs of restaurant companies.
At the end of 2021, among the 100 occupations released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, "Chinese cooks" have been on the list for the third time after 2019 and 2020, and the ranking has risen from 35 in the third quarter of 2019 to 29, which shows that the shortage of chefs in the catering industry is still very large.
Recently, data from CCTV financial reports show that in the month after the Spring Festival in 2022, the number of published positions for chefs increased by more than 60% year-on-year. Students at a cooking school in Beijing have already been recruited before they can graduate.
The red kitchen network found in some chef exchange groups that the information on the high-priced recruitment of chefs with a monthly salary of 7,000-8,000 yuan or even 95,000 yuan abounds. An unnamed industry insider revealed to The Red Kitchen Network that there is a general shortage of chefs in the market now, which is a matter of salary.
"As long as the chef wants to do it, there is basically no problem of not getting a job. The technical level of this industry is uneven, as long as the technology is excellent, the work is picked at will," the peer said.
Obviously, the gap in the demand for chefs in the catering industry is still very large, and the employment prospects of chefs are still very broad. But why is there still a voice in the industry that "the chefs of the future will disappear"?
Perhaps the biggest reason behind it lies in the loss of talent and the fault line of talent training.
A teacher who has been working in the chef industry for many years told Red Kitchen Network: "Now there are fewer and fewer people engaged in the profession of chef, young people are unwilling to learn, and those who are working as chefs do not want to do it for various reasons, and the older generation of chefs have gradually retired." Many traditional crafts have not been passed down. ”
A former chef who left the culinary world also revealed to Red Kitchen that although he had earned 200,000 yuan a year many years ago, he chose to change careers in the first two years. "The reasons inside are very complicated, anyway, I know the taste of it", he said that many of his chef friends have left, and those who are still insisting on complaining every day that they can't recruit people and can't keep people.
Indeed, with the development of society, the number of jobs is increasing, and the choices of young people are also increasing. Compared with the professions of express delivery, takeaway, Didi, and live broadcasting, the career of chef has a long growth cycle, boring and single work content, low degree of freedom, and slow money, which is difficult to attract young people to some extent.
"Chefs, starting with low wages, slow rise, if you can't meet a good master, it is difficult to get ahead." Coupled with long working hours in the kitchen, high work intensity, low wages, poor working environment, and fewer people in contact, who does who knows. I just wanted to get a job that made more money, salesmanship or rider. This kind of work comes quickly, tired is tired, but it makes more money", a young man who has been in the chef industry for a few years, his words represent the mentality of many job seekers today.
"Most importantly, the future of the chef industry is not guaranteed, and now a large number of chefs do not have basic protection such as five insurances and one gold, even if they are unemployed, they will not get unemployment benefits, and if they are sick, they will not get the medical protection they deserve," a reader of the Red Kitchen Network said the voice of many chefs.
"And the chef has no status, which is the most humiliating."
The chef said that the former chef was very respectable, and even the owner of the restaurant had to give three points. Nowadays, the chef has become a dispensable role, sometimes complained by guests, the boss will not help, but according to the words of the guests to spit on the chef, it feels very unappreciated. Especially on holidays, watching others enjoy themselves and work is very sad.
"In the chef industry, there is no real criterion for judging culinary skills, and the development of the whole industry is very chaotic."
Under the influence of these factors, young people are reluctant to enter the back kitchen, and many chefs have begun to change careers, and the talent in the chef industry has not been picked up, and even there has been a fault in the inheritance of cooking skills.
Of course, at present, there are still nearly ten million practitioners in the chef industry, which is indeed invisible in the short term, but what about in the long run? When no one wants to be a chef, many of the cooking skills and knife skills that have been passed down for many years will be lost, and then our descendants may really be able to eat standardized finished dishes, which will be a huge loss for the entire chef industry and even the catering industry.
Rather than worrying about being replaced, it is more urgent to change the status quo of chefs
In the face of such a huge crisis, how to attract talents, retain talents, let the skills be passed on, and let the industry prosper has become the top priority of the entire industry. In contrast, the possible fear of unemployment brought about by scientific and technological progress is insignificant.
However, to break the existing talent dilemma, it is not just a matter of mouth movement, which requires the joint efforts of the entire industry and even the entire society.
Red Kitchen Believes that to change the current lack of talent in the chef industry, top-down changes are needed.
First of all, it is necessary to improve the threshold and quality of practitioners in the chef industry, so that the chef industry can develop in a standardized manner. For example, practitioners need to obtain relevant documents, and the government gives certification subsidies.
Colleges and universities everywhere should include culinary majors and improve the level of practitioners in the entire industry from the education system. Although some universities have carried out some chef-related majors, they are far from enough.
At the same time, in some places with a strong chef culture atmosphere, we will build chef training bases, or introduce relevant incentive policies to promote the development of the local chef industry.
Previously, the Guangdong Provincial Department of Human Resources and Social Security issued the "Guangdong Province "Cantonese Cuisine Master" Project Implementation Plan" to encourage local colleges and universities to open Cantonese cuisine courses, and build a number of Cantonese cuisine training bases to train Cantonese chefs. And those outstanding chefs who have made outstanding contributions to the inheritance of Cantonese cuisine are also given government subsidies.
In addition to the government and colleges, restaurant companies should also make some examples. For example, improve the salary and welfare system of chefs, and give chefs corresponding respect and protection.
As a chef, you should keep an open mind, actively embrace new things, improve yourself in many ways, constantly optimize your skills, enrich yourself, and become a chef who cannot be replaced.
As Molecular Cuisine Chef He Haihui said, chefs can not always stay in the work of stir-frying, to turn themselves into a generalist, that is, to be able to fry, steam, can bake, but also to learn to do Chinese food, Western food, fusion dishes, etc., only when their cooking skills are solid enough, can they develop in a better direction.
epilogue
Chefs are the inheritors of food culture, but also the creators of gastronomic memories, chefs should not be looked down upon, let alone enjoy unfair treatment.
Chefs need to be recognized, more need to be respected, only by changing the prejudice against chefs, in order to avoid chefs "disappear", in order to let our gastronomic country food culture pass on.