A qualitative study on training, progression and development amongst chefs working in Irish restaurants

Background: Very limited research has been conducted on career progression and development of Chefs working at different levels within restaurants of Ireland. Objective: This research intends to explore the perceptions of training, development and motivation in Chefs’ career progression. It also tries to explore the organisational support on continuous professional development they encounter during their career. Design: Applying the Interpretivism paradigm, this research reports the findings from eight unstructured interviews. Settings: Small casual dining, café and fine dining restaurants of Cork, Limerick and Dublin city of Ireland. Participants: Five Chefs from casual dining restaurants including one retired Chef, one Chef from the Café, one Chef from the fine dining restaurant and one General Manager of the casual dining restaurants. Participants were recruited from the authors’ professional link and prior work relations. Methods: The raw data collected from eight interviews was analysed generating the themes and sub-themes. Results: The findings of this research suggest that the communication plays a vital part in order to gain organisational support to upgrade the talent pool through the process of training and development. Conclusion: The findings of this study concluded that the small restaurants are not providing enough opportunities on training for the Chefs to develop professionally. They are bound to work anti-social and long working hours with enormous work load and disappointing communication gap. Majority of the interviewees pinpointed these factors in leading to the high staff turnover rate of the restaurant sector