It’s no secret that there’s currently a skilled labor shortage in American restaurants. The trend began over the past decade, and it’s only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly half of all restaurant operators expected recruitment and retention to be the biggest challenge of 2022, according to the National Restaurant Association. And the shortage may grow, since the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics anticipates 15% job growth for chefs and head cooks from 2021 to 2031.
To help fill the gap, employers and educators can team up to give restaurant staff the hands-on training they need to succeed!
A Creative Solution to an Industry-Wide Problem
Why is it harder these days to find skilled restaurant employees? Part of the trouble may be the traditional school-to-job pipeline. Many people want to get a skills-based education, but they don’t have the option of quitting their jobs to focus full-time on school.
A possible solution? Schools and employers can work together to provide valuable education and work experience all at once. According to Annelise Goger with Brookings, “Earn-and-learn strategies combine work experience and education while simultaneously providing income. They offer a promising solution to overcome the historical segregation of work and learning, but our current earn-and-learn options are outdated and small in scale.”
Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts is partnering with Auguste Escoffier Global Solutions to solve the problem of how to train employees. By partnering with Escoffier Global, forward-thinking employers may be able to fill their open positions with high-quality, trained employees. Or they can train their own in-house employees who are already brimming with company loyalty and enthusiasm for the culinary arts.
Shortcomings of In-House Restaurant Employee Training
Traditionally, aspiring chefs would enroll in culinary school full-time. They may not begin their career in the kitchen until after they graduated. Then, they would continue to learn from their supervisors and more experienced colleagues. This method still works for some.
But the current skilled labor shortage seems to indicate that this approach leaves many behind. Fewer and fewer aspiring cooks and chefs have the luxury of focusing full-time on a culinary arts program prior to employment. And this is making it harder than ever to find skilled employees.
Plus, while there are many wonderful cooks and chefs out there who are willing to train their staff, that doesn’t mean they are necessarily adept educators. Teaching is its own unique skill. And an apprentice can only become great if they’re getting training and instruction.
There are, of course, some things that employees must learn on the job, like recipes, standard operating procedures, and specialty techniques. But it can be much easier for an employee to absorb and retain these lessons if they’ve also established a strong foundation of culinary technique and fundamentals. Plus, learning while concurrently working in a kitchen is a unique situation that can allow for putting concepts into practice immediately!
Hire and Train Skilled, Passionate Employees With the Work & Learn Program
Escoffier has long been making culinary school more accessible through online degree and diploma programs. Now, the Work & Learn program from Auguste Escoffier Global Solutions is going a step further to bring passionate cooks together with pioneering employers to everyone’s benefit.
What Is Work & Learn?
For those who don’t have the option to press pause on life to become full-time students, Escoffier’s online culinary education bridges the gap. The online programs offer the flexibility necessary for working students to do both concurrently. To complement this, we partnered with Auguste Escoffier Global Solutions, which is actively working with employers to help their employees get their culinary training.
When a food service operation teams up with Auguste Escoffier Global Solutions’ for a Work & Learn program, they can secure a team of business, culinary, and education professionals for each employee who enrolls at Escoffier’s online program. The online school teaches employees the skills needed in a commercial kitchen. The employer applies the skills as the employee learns them, in the standard operating procedure for each unique operation.
Chef Tim Condon shares how Escoffier’s Work & Learn program helps employers get trained staff.*
By partnering with Auguste Escoffier Global Solutions for a Work & Learn program, employer’s employees can have access to special scholarships at the school. If employers are interested in offering up to 100% tuition free education, Escoffier Global is prepared to support those efforts.
With this online education, the employer can then get a skilled employee who is ready to grow with the company. And since Escoffier is a state licensed and nationally accredited institution, students receive a reputable, reliable degree or diploma without quitting their job or taking a leave of absence.
This program also establishes a culture of learning at the restaurant, and proves that an employer is willing to invest in their team. This kind of giving can earn employee loyalty and spread positive word-of-mouth about company values. It’s a win for everyone.
“We call it an apprenticeship reimagined, because in so many ways, that’s what it is. The students are picking up skills and bringing those skills right back into their workplace the next day. These newly acquired skills are coming into the kitchen where the employee is needed immediately, rather than waiting 15 months or 21 months until they’ve graduated. There’s no reason for that.”*
Tracy Teichman, Escoffier Corporate Partnerships Director
“We call it an apprenticeship reimagined, because in so many ways, that’s what it is. The students are picking up skills and bringing those skills right back into their workplace the next day. These newly acquired skills are coming into the kitchen where the employee is needed immediately, rather than waiting 15 months or 21 months until they’ve graduated. There’s no reason for that.”*What Programs Are Available for Work & Learn?
The Work & Learn program from Auguste Escoffier Global Solutions works closely with employers to help their enrolled employees get the most applicable training. The employer may offer tuition assistance in any of Escoffier’s online programs, whether that’s culinary arts, baking and pastry arts, plant-based culinary arts, or hospitality and restaurant management. And they may let the student choose to work towards either a diploma or an associate degree.
Or, the employer may choose to limit tuition assistance to one specific discipline and only offer reimbursement for one type of credential. A vegan restaurant owner, for example, may only reimbursement for plant-based culinary arts diploma students. It’s entirely up the employer!
Take a peak into how online culinary school works.*
Access Specialized Skills-Based Education With Customized Training Plans
What if there’s a specific skill that employers want a team or department to learn? Custom training from Auguste Escoffier Global Solutions can provide up-skilling opportunities that make employees better equipped to meet the challenges of the kitchen.
Custom training can encourage increased employee engagement and growth, helping the team to feel excited and enthusiastic about their work and the company. Taught by professional Chef Instructors using proven education methods, this type of training can lead to better employee retention and higher-quality performance.
Understanding Custom Training Plans
There are three basic tiers of training plans from Auguste Escoffier Global Solutions. But since these are customized for each employer, there’s a great deal of flexibility in designing each program.
Basic Competencies
Training in the basic competencies can help entry-level employees to work at a higher standard. For example, a restaurant that wishes to expand into offsite catering may want to provide training in sanitation, food safety, food storage, and setting up a catering station.
This kind of cross-training can also create the option for station rotation flexibility. A garde manger who is also trained in pastry and the fry station will be of immense value—especially when the fry cook calls in sick or the pastry cook is running behind!
Frank Vollkommer, Certified Master Pastry Chef®, Culinary Olympics Gold Medalist & Escoffier Director Of Culinary Industry Development
“We launched a pasta and pasta sauce self-guided workshop to thousands of schools across the continental United States. There are several videos in there of us making handmade pasta, handling the doughs, cutting noodles, making sauce, plating techniques, and so on. Upon satisfactory completion, the student will get a digital badge and a printable certificate of completion.”*
Escoffier’s pasta workshop has shared the secrets of fresh pasta with students across the United States.
Advanced Curriculums
For employees who have already progressed beyond entry level, advanced curriculums can take their skills to new heights. Perhaps a hotel employer partner wishes to improve their overall pastry offerings. Auguste Escoffier Global Solutions can create an advanced program to elevate their plated desserts or provide chocolatier training.
White Label and Proprietary Education
The final category of custom training is white label and proprietary education.
What is “white labeling”?
“White label” refers to the process by which one company creates a product or service on behalf of another. The recipient company will then rebrand the product or service with their company name and imagery to make it an internal offering.
Store brand products are often white labeled, created by one company and then sold under the name and brand of the retailer.
Some employer partners have their own unique processes and methods. Chain restaurants, for example, have their own standard operating procedures and their own proprietary techniques.
Auguste Escoffier Global Solutions can bring the employer’s existing methods together with tried-and-true educational expertise for a training program unique to the company. As Frank Vollkommer, Escoffier’s Director of Culinary Industry Development, explains, “If one of our partners has a very specific process that they would like to train their employees in, we would work with that company to actually involve their talent and our production capacity to build custom content for them. The end result could be a short course or a bundle of short courses with their executive chef in the videos representing the techniques that they want to share.”*
White label training programs can educate restaurant employees on the company’s proprietary methods and techniques.
Why Outsource Training?
Employers know what their teams need to learn. But unless they’re trained educators, they may not know the best way to teach the information for clarity and retention.
As an accredited educational institution, Escoffier is adept at building stackable, competency-based courses, and Auguste Escoffier Global Solutions leverages that expertise to your advantage. Instead of teaching individual recipes or single processes, this type of training is organized with clear objectives and learning outcomes to work towards. Learning how to do something is helpful in the near term. But learning why it works will create stronger, empowered employees in the long run.
For example, a restaurant could teach its employees how to make a single salad dressing. Or it could provide a custom training program that teaches the science behind emulsification, offers techniques based on batch sizes, explains troubleshooting options, and more—all supported by its own internal dressing recipes.
If oil and water don’t mix…how do we account for salad dressing?
Custom training plans from Auguste Escoffier Global Solutions can also provide mixed multimedia training that aids in knowledge retention. Additional resources like a written narrative, video and audio narratives, photos, diagrams, and slide presentations create a stronger educational experience than a one-dimensional video or written course.
The program is already set up with the capabilities, including a professional production crew and studio, to make high-quality demonstration videos. The crew can travel to the partner facility, or the content can be created in the Auguste Escoffier Global Solutions studio. The resulting courses are sleek and polished.
Finally, these custom training programs are taught by skilled Chef Instructors who know how to train employees. With a large roster of specialized instructors to choose from, finding the right person to teach each course is simple.
Frank Vollkommer, Certified Master Pastry Chef®, Culinary Olympics Gold Medalist & Escoffier Director Of Culinary Industry Development
The Future of Restaurant Employee Training
The old method of employee training works for some. But it leaves others behind. Forward-thinking restaurants and food service establishments will have to look to new ways of filling their kitchens with trained employees if they want to stay competitive.
Instead of fighting with other kitchens for talent, Escoffier’s custom training programs can help food businesses to nurture the talent they already have and attract career-oriented cooks. It benefits the employee, the employer, and the industry as a whole.
Questions? Contact the Auguste Escoffier Global Solutions team to learn more about Work & Learn and customized training programs for your employees.
To learn more about restaurant employers and the hospitality industry, try these articles next:
- The Future of the Restaurant Industry in a Post-COVID World
- Is the Long-Term Chef Shortage Over… Or Just Paused?
- How to Hire Restaurant Employees Who Want a Career (Not Just a Job)
This article was originally published on November 12, 2021, and has since been updated.
*Information may not reflect every student’s experience. Results and outcomes may be based on several factors, such as geographical region or previous experience.
