Hiring and Training Kitchen Staff Who Stay
Every restaurant owner I meet asks the same question: how do I keep good kitchen staff? After building teams in Dubai, Doha and Ontario, I have learned that people rarely leave for money alone. They leave because the kitchen is chaotic, the training is unclear, or nobody notices good work.
1. Hire attitude, train skill
You can teach a willing cook your recipes. You cannot teach punctuality, cleanliness or calm under pressure. In interviews I watch how a candidate talks about their last kitchen — respect for the team matters more than a long CV.
2. Give the first two weeks a real plan
New cooks should know exactly what they will learn each day: stations, recipes, plating, cleaning. A written two-week plan makes a new hire feel welcome instead of lost, and it tells you quickly whether the fit is right.
3. Write the recipes down
If only one person knows how the butter chicken is made, you do not have a recipe — you have a risk. Standard recipe cards protect quality when someone is sick, on holiday, or leaves. They also make training twice as fast.
4. Train on the station, not in a meeting room
People learn cooking by cooking. Pair a new hire with your best cook for the first week, side by side, on a real service. Short demonstrations beat long explanations every time.
5. Notice good work out loud
A clean station, a perfect service, a new cook who handled the rush — say it in front of the team. Recognition costs nothing and is the cheapest retention tool a kitchen has.
6. Build a path, not just a shift
Show your cooks where they can go: commis to line cook to sous chef. Even a small restaurant can offer a next step — a new station, a new skill, a small raise tied to it. People stay where they can grow.
A kitchen runs on people, not just recipes. If your team needs structure, training or SOPs, I can help build it with you.
