The future of chefs depends more on the future of catering, so I will talk about the current status of chefs, catering trends, and the new profession of chefs in this order

1. Current status of chefs:

Catering people know very well that chefs stay in stores for more than ten hours a day and can never accompany their families for meals. Although you are obviously good at cooking, your family members rarely get to eat your food.

There used to be a joke: a person with a big head and a thick neck is either the boss or the cook. This is a joking name for people who work in the chef industry, and it also reflects the general social perception of status. Therefore, for many years now, lovers are unwilling to work in the chef industry. The main reasons for the chef profession are as follows

1. Working environment: Moreover, chefs sweat profusely and are smoky every day. The temperature of the working environment is more than 40 degrees, the floor is usually slippery, there is high humidity, and there is a lot of oil smoke. , the noise is loud, and even those who can do it become irritable, and coupled with the intensity of work and the young age, many occupational diseases will occur in the body

2. The job is unstable; the business is good and I am rushed every day. However, the demands of diners are getting higher and higher, and the chef is entirely to blame for the poor business. At the same time, people will go wherever the store is open;

3. There are no holidays; the more holidays there are, the busier they are, and there is no time to spend with family and social friends. A lot of lost contact;

4. Room for promotion and growth: I deal with ingredients and seasonings every day, as well as the front office and back kitchen, so my social circle is very narrow;

2. Future catering development Trends

When it comes to future catering, it involves many aspects, including customer acquisition, customer operations, ordering, meal sharing, payment, settlement, ingredients, seasonings, supply chain, people and goods yards, etc. What I mainly want to say here is: dish making, or dish production. Regardless of high-end or low-end, the core problem of group meal fast food is: you have to make the dishes to meet the needs of diners more or less, faster or slower.

The trend is more and more three highs and one low!

Labor costs are getting higher and higher, rents are high, and profits are low

In fact, the traditional model seems feasible for 90% of catering people, but in fact it is impossible. What to do?

The method is very simple, troika. Which three drivers?

1 Pre-made dishes + reheating:

2 Semi-finished products + on-site steaming and roasting:

3 Clean vegetable bags + cooking machine:

Three , New positions, new opportunities

1. New opportunities come from three major changes in the market:

a. The production time is required to be shorter and shorter. When customers come to the store, Basically, you need to be able to eat immediately, and many stores even offer no charge if the delivery time exceeds 30 minutes.

b. The preparation of ingredients is changing. In the past, the boss would get up in the morning to buy vegetables, and then the restaurant would pick, wash, and cut them. Remember? In the past, when I went to a restaurant, if it was not yet time for dinner, I would often see waiters and chefs chatting and picking vegetables at the table. Can you still see this kind of scene now? No more. Even if there is, there are far fewer of them. Why? This is because many vegetable cleaning companies have emerged. They wash and cut vegetables according to the needs of restaurants and deliver them to you. This change started five years ago, and now there are several companies with annual sales of over 10 billion.

c. The cooking methods are changing. People often look at the Internet and ask, “Ingredient bag, ingredient bag, what the hell is an ingredient bag?” In fact, the ingredient package materializes and standardizes the craftsmanship and taste that chefs relied on before. In the past, taste was the chef's special skill. One moment he put some of this ingredient, another moment he put some of that juice, and now he put some of that sauce. Shaking up and down, flames entered the pot for a while, it was amazing, what now? Carefully develop the ingredient package, you don’t even need to research it yourself, just buy it ready-made. When the time comes, put the ingredient package into the pot, the dish is ready, and the taste comes out. Think about it, isn’t this what the hot pot base is? Of course, the ingredients for many dishes are more complicated than hot pot base ingredients, but you can’t stand it. There are so many companies that are researching hard and they are all smart people. Their money will not be wasted.

2 New career directions for chefs

a. Top chefs:

The most powerful chefs don’t worry about ingredients, pre-made dishes, etc. You can't replace cooking machines. What's great about them is: they know how to select ingredients and seasonings. They are most familiar with controlling the heat and adding ingredients at the most appropriate time. They use the most complex techniques to bring out the taste. To achieve the ultimate, in addition to the color and flavor, they can also put the dishes into a shape like works of art. They are veritable celebrity chefs and masters. They serve high-end private chefs and top brand restaurants.

b. Smart dish developer:

Have you been to McDonald’s or KFC? There are machines, frying machines, steam ovens, etc. everywhere. Have you ever seen a chef inside? I haven’t seen it before. Most Chinese food will be like this in the future, but it’s just that Chinese food has an extra cooking machine.

Let’s talk about McDonald’s French fries, shall we? It tastes okay, right? Of course, there are many other places that have French fries, including Burger King. There are many of them, and the French fries taste different in each store.

Where does the taste of French fries come from? This involves: ingredient selection, ingredient cutting and matching specifications, temperature control, duration control, and how long it takes to pack?

Of course, these are not done by the store operator, but are set on the machine, and the operator just presses the buttons.

Who set it? Let’s get to the point, we are a smart dish developer.

Of course, compared to Chinese food, French fries are much simpler, but the principle is the same. Chinese food also requires intelligent dish developers, and the developed electronic recipes need to be set in the machine's program.

Intelligent dish developers. In the future, all catering brands will need dish developers. Why?

Don’t think that those who make cooking machines, steamers and ovens all claim: there are so many recipes, 200, 500, 1000,

In fact, these recipes are useless to those brand merchants ! Can branded catering businesses copy the recipes from manufacturers? If you just use those recipes and the taste is the same all over the world, what advantage does the brand have? Isn’t taste the core advantage of catering? Your taste is not distinctive, what advantage do you have?

Each merchant has its own food channels, food requirements, and food preferences. They may have different origins and different attributes, so they require different processes, so the taste will be different; as a user, your food materials are different. The same, but the specifications are different, and all require dedicated personnel. Based on local taste preferences, for example: the same ingredients, people in different regions have different tastes. People in Shandong like to eat salty, people in Shanxi like to eat sour, and people in Shanghai like to eat sweet. You are the only one. Can the recipe be conquered all over the world? No, so you also need to be a flavor localization developer to develop the flavor of your own store;

How many chefs are there in China currently? It seems that no one knows accurately. If you go to the Internet to read various information, you can probably come up with the figure of 10 million.

We are not professors, so don’t be so strict, just consider it 10 million.

How many food developers will China need in the future? After 10 years, it will be about 1 million. In the next three years, 100,000 will be needed.

These 100,000 should be regarded as pioneers and leaders in the industry. They will definitely have their own place in the future of the industry. Moreover, in the future, there will be a group of people who will become the brand's smart dish R&D directors. , their status is like the chief engineer in a factory, which is not only indispensable, but also determines the fate of the enterprise and holds a high position of power. ?

Total, 100,000 people, not much, only one percent of the existing chef team. I hope you are here.