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Difficulties of being a relief chef in rural Scotland

With the season drawing shortly to an end in the next few weeks the availability of relief chefs who are known to us is becoming much better. We have had relief chefs out working all over Scotland and the North of England this year. We have had some excellent guys and girls join us this year as well as chefs who have been working with us for a considerable amount of time.

Although as recruiters we wish it was as simple as finding a chef and finding a job there is so much more to it than that.

Most of our relief chefs who have been on our books more than a few years will know that the positions we have can be extremely rural including Shetland, Orkney, Skye, Islay, Mull and Bute, to name a few. It can be hard to leave to go and work away from home and friends and family but to compensate this we try and make sure our chefs get a good rate, decent accommodation and travel expenses as well as paid for every hour that they work. Unfortunately, we are not always given the correct information which can sometimes lead to a lack of communication.

We stipulate that the accommodation must be clean and single, and we are under no illusions that after a long day travelling to a job, to find this is not the case and no one was expecting you can be a very hard to bare especially when we’ve shut our doors at 5pm.

Another difficulty can be the kitchen that you go in to. Invariably the reason for a relief chef being required is that either there is a holiday that needs to be covered, but most of the time it is due to a lack of staff in the kitchen. This can cause resentment among current staff who are usually on a lesser wage.

Payments and travel expenses can also cause friction as it is agreed with us that the chef should receive a payment either in the form of an advance or wage each week.

We would love to hear of any other difficulties that face relief chefs in the comments below.

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