Many people like to eat out, not only to invite guests to eat, but sometimes the whole family goes to the restaurant together and uses the restaurant to treat themselves and their families. Whether it is to invite guests to eat or go to the restaurant, people are particularly concerned about how the food in the restaurant is, whether it is delicious enough, if it is not delicious, it will not only snub the guests, but even the family will eat unhappy, and then will not come again next time.
Therefore, for thousands of years, restaurants are particularly concerned about whether the dishes are delicious, and this mainly relies on the chef's cooking skills, in the restaurant, the status of the chef is very high, the salary is also very high, because the chef can affect whether the meal is delicious, and then affect whether the restaurant can survive, so the people who open the restaurant, will try their best to hire better cooks, the social status of the chef is also rising.
But now the situation has changed, more and more restaurants, no longer need chefs, they are making a very new dish - pre-made dishes.
Is the era of prepared dishes coming?
What is a prepared dish? Simply put, it is a pre-made dish, just like instant noodles, the dish is done in advance, the seasoning is put away, and then compressed and packaged, when you need to eat, just take it out and heat it, these pre-made dishes are produced by special enterprises, restaurants only need to purchase according to the needs of dishes, even the chef is saved.
In fact, the industry that first used pre-made dishes on a large scale was the takeaway industry, many takeaway stores did not have stores, they bought a large number of pre-made dishes, and then heated them and then sold them to people who ordered takeaways, so that they did not have to rent a façade, did not need to recruit chefs, and even saved a serious kitchen.
Later, many restaurants felt that this was very trouble-free, and gradually replaced the stir-fried dishes with pre-made dishes, the advantage of pre-made dishes is that it saves the high salary of the chef, and the speed of serving is still very fast, no need to wash and choose dishes, saving a lot of labor costs. However, the disadvantage is that pre-made dishes do not have the taste of freshly stir-fried dishes, experienced people can eat the difference between pre-made dishes and freshly stir-fried dishes at once, and they are very disgusted with pre-made dishes, but there is no way, more and more restaurants have begun to use pre-made dishes, after all, more people can't eat the difference, and they are not so resistant to pre-made dishes.
Will the chef of the future lose his job?
Nowadays, the prefabricated vegetable industry has a solid foundation, the scale of the industry is getting bigger and bigger, there are data, the market size of the mainland prefabricated vegetables in 2021 has reached 345.9 billion yuan, and it is expected to reach 522.5 billion yuan in 2023, and the industry also predicts that in the next 6 to 7 years, the prefabricated vegetable industry is expected to become the "next trillion catering market".
The market is huge, and this year's No. 1 document also wrote prefabricated vegetables into it for the first time, proposing to "cultivate and develop the prefabricated vegetable industry", so many places decided to enter the prefabricated vegetable industry in a big way, in March 2022, Guangdong Province issued the "Ten Measures to Accelerate the High-quality Development of Guangdong's Prepared Vegetable Industry", which is the country's first provincial prepared vegetable industry policy; In April 2022, Weifang, Shandong Province issued the "Three-Year Action Plan for the High-quality Development of Weifang Prefabricated Vegetable Industry (2022-2024)"; In October 2022, Henan Province formulated the Action Plan for Accelerating the Development of Prepared Vegetable Industry in Henan Province (2022-2025)...
Today, there are more than 70,000 prepared dish manufacturers in the country, and the entire industry is booming, which is not a good thing for chefs.
How many chefs are there in the mainland at present? The "2022 Chef Survival Status Survey Report" shows that the total number of chefs in the country has reached 20 million, so many chefs, the chef industry itself is fiercely competitive, and now with the addition of pre-made dishes, the competition will be even more intense.
It is foreseeable that there will be many chefs unemployed in the future, especially those non-star hotels of small and medium-sized restaurants, with pre-made dishes, the requirements for chefs are not so high, and most chefs in the mainland are concentrated in small and medium-sized restaurants, because the number of star hotels is not enough after all, so many chefs will be eliminated by pre-made dishes in the future, perhaps after 10 years, tens of millions of chefs will be forced to lose their jobs.
Eliminate the chef and start with the hot pot.
In fact, the status of the chef was initially threatened by the hot pot. Hotpot diet, earlier only existed in a few provinces, such as Sichuan-Chongqing area, later hot pot opened all over the country, more and more people also choose to eat hot pot instead of eating freshly stir-fried dishes.
There are many similarities between hot pot and pre-made dishes, such as fast serving, no need for a chef, the taste of the dish will not be constrained by the chef, can take care of the taste of more people, etc., so now many restaurants, do not do stir-fry type of shops, but directly open hot pot restaurants, which has led to the status of the chef is shaken, now pre-made dishes are also menacing, the future of the chef industry, is really full of fog.
But the chef industry is impossible to disappear, because pre-made dishes are relatively not as delicious as freshly fried dishes, especially those dishes made by famous chefs, not pre-made dishes This assembly line can be imitated, Chinese food often depends on the chef's feeling and experience, is not quantified in each step, so there will definitely be many people who have high pursuit of food, still choose freshly stir-fried. However, after all, these are a minority, and it is impossible for more chefs to have employment, so under the double blow of pre-made dishes and hot pot, the future employment of chefs who are not celebrity chefs will really be affected.