If you’ve always dreamed of becoming a chef and running your own restaurant, you’ve come to the right place!
Becoming a successful chef is a long journey but it’s one worth taking so that you can live out your dreams. Taking the right steps from the very start of your journey will accelerate your success and make it much easier to reach your end goal.
Top Tips for Aspiring Chefs
As exciting as running a restaurant sounds, it’s a tough job that takes a lot of hard work to do well. It’s not just about creating great food. It’s also about providing top-quality customer service and knowing how to lead a strong team of supporting chefs in the kitchen.
Below, we’ve listed some top tips to help you live out your dreams of becoming a successful chef.
Find Your Specialty Dishes
Every chef has a selection of specialty dishes that they are well-known for creating. Find two or three dishes that you enjoy cooking and make tweaks to each of them.
You might want to specialize in creating a spice-crusted wagyu platter or learn how to produce the perfect plate of sushi. Maybe you follow a meat-free diet and want to share your best vegetarian and vegan dishes with others.
You can include your specialty dishes on your restaurant menu alongside a range of other options. You may also want to provide seasonal dishes based on the time of year, such as healthy options for Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Practice, Practice, Practice
Practice really does make perfect in the kitchen. As an aspiring chef, you’ll need to spend your spare time cooking a variety of dishes to expand and perfect your skills.
Being a chef means no two days are the same. You’re constantly on a personal development journey and every day presents the opportunity to learn a new skill or enhance your understanding in one way or another.
Learn How to Be a Great Listener
You’ll rarely be working in a kitchen by yourself. Instead, you’ll be surrounded by a team of other chefs and you’ll be interacting with restaurant staff and even customers at times. This is why effective kitchen communication is so important.
Being a strong listener will set you up for success both inside and outside the kitchen. When you’re able to listen to what’s going on around you, your leadership skills will improve and your kitchen will be more organized.
As the leading chef in a restaurant, listening to staff and customers is vital to the success of your business. Listen to your restaurant staff when they raise concerns about something and take action to resolve any issues. Take customer feedback on board and use it to improve your dishes and customer service.
You should also listen to your competitors. By this, we mean you need to pay attention to what other restaurants are doing and emulate what’s working well for them. Of course, don’t copy what other companies are doing down to every last detail but you can take inspiration and add your own unique spin.
