The Chef Shortage Isn’t a Hiring Problem: Designing a Kitchen That Runs on the Team You Have

Hospitality vacancies are falling and Chef is no longer rated in national shortage, yet many kitchens still cannot fill skilled roles. The durable answer is a menu, prep system and station layout that depend less on scarce skills.

Ask most operators about staffing and the conversation turns quickly to the kitchen. Front-of-house roles can usually be filled and trained; a capable chef who can run a section, hold a standard and train others is harder to find and harder to keep. The national data now paints a more mixed picture of the chef shortage than it did two years ago, and that is a reason to stop treating it purely as a recruitment problem. The kitchens that cope best are designed so that the team they can hire is the team they need.

What the labour data says now

The broad labour market has cooled. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that job vacancies fell 2.1 per cent in the three months to May 2026, the first drop since August 2025, and that vacancies in accommodation and food services were down 16.1 per cent, according to the ABS release published on 25 June 2026.

The official shortage rating has moved too. Jobs and Skills Australia’s 2025 Skills in Demand report notes that Chef “moved from national shortage in 2023 and 2024, to only in regional shortage for 2025” on the Occupation Shortage List, according to the 2025 Skills in Demand report. The same report records that primary temporary skill visa grants for Chef increased by almost 180 per cent between 2023-24 and 2024-25. Jobs and Skills Australia says it will continue to monitor the relationship between visa use and Chef’s shortage status, so part of the easing may reflect migration rather than a larger local workforce.

Why kitchens still feel short

The headline numbers hide the difficulty of filling specific skilled roles. Jobs and Skills Australia’s 2025 Occupation Shortage List stakeholder survey found that among the 10 occupations respondents reported on most, Chef had the largest employment size, at 90,458 people in the 2021 Census, according to the 2025 Occupation Shortage List Stakeholder Survey. Across all occupations in the survey, almost 40 per cent of the 1,874 responses on vacancies filled reported that “a very low proportion of their vacancies were filled”. That figure covers every occupation surveyed, not chefs alone, but it describes the experience many kitchens recognise.

For regional venues, the formal rating confirms what operators already know. For metropolitan venues, a cooler market may make the next hire easier, but it does not change how much the kitchen depends on the one or two people who hold its skills.

If service collapses when one senior chef calls in sick, the kitchen has a design problem, not a recruitment problem.

Design the menu around repeatable skill

The menu is the first piece of kitchen design. Every dish that needs a specialist technique at the moment of service is a dish that depends on a specialist being on shift. Moving complexity into prep, where it can be done once, checked and held, lets a less experienced cook finish the plate to standard during service. We set out the commercial case for a tighter menu in Cut Twenty Per Cent of Your Menu and Watch Your Kitchen Get Better, and the same logic applies to skill: fewer dishes, built on shared components, reduce both the training load and the number of techniques each station must hold.

Build prep systems that teach

Standardised recipes, portion specifications and photographed plate builds are often described as consistency tools, but they are also training tools. A new cook who can follow a clear prep sheet and a plating card becomes productive in days rather than weeks. Batch cooking and controlled holding, which we covered in Batch It, Chill It, Portion It, shift work from the pressure of service to the calmer hours of the day, when senior staff have time to supervise.

Lay out stations for the team you can hire

Station design determines how many skilled people a kitchen needs at once. A layout where each station holds its own equipment, ingredients and finishing tools lets one experienced chef supervise several less experienced cooks without crossing the kitchen. Equipment that holds temperature and timing precisely, such as combi ovens and programmable fryers, reduces reliance on judgement at the busiest moments. Good design also shortens walking distances and reduces the number of hand-offs, which matters more when the team is newer.

Six design moves for a thinner team

1. Map every dish to the skill it needs during service. Identify the dishes that only one or two people can execute, and redesign or retire them.
2. Move technique into prep. Prepare sauces, cooked components and garnishes ahead, so service becomes assembly, finishing and quality control.
3. Write it down and photograph it. Create recipe cards, portion specifications and plate photographs for every dish and keep them at the station.
4. Cross-train on purpose. Schedule time each week for cooks to learn a second station, so absences do not shut a section.
5. Specify equipment that holds standards. Prioritise programmable cooking and holding equipment where it removes judgement from peak service.
6. Design stations for supervision. Lay out the line so a senior chef can see and reach every section from the pass.

The chef shortage will ease and tighten again with the economy and migration settings, but a kitchen designed around repeatable skill stays resilient either way. At Alto Cibum, menu development, workflow and commercial kitchen and bar design are planned together, so the layout, the equipment and the menu all fit the team a venue can realistically hire and keep.

Robert Clifford, Managing Director, Alto Cibum