The apprenticeship levy: good news for top chefs

Chef apprenticeships are a great way for culinary connoisseurs to work their way up the career ladder – and they're a great option for businesses too.

Whether you run a local bistro or a national restaurant chain, chef apprenticeships are good for business. They attract the best young cooks, bring fresh thinking into the kitchen and make the next generation of exceptional chefs. And if you pay the apprenticeship levy, their training is already paid for. It's a no-brainer – you'll train the best talent in your house style without paying another penny. What's not to love?

Even if you're a smaller establishment, you'll only have to pay 10% of the cost of training, so apprenticeships are still an effective way to recruit and train your staff.

So how do chef apprenticeships work?

There are 3 main levels of chef apprenticeships: commis chef, chef de partie, and senior production chef. Each one is designed to give young chefs the skills they need in a professional kitchen – from food preparation to brand awareness.

You can employ a lower-level apprentice and use their training to nurture, inspire and shape them into the perfect employee. Or you can use apprenticeships to upskill your existing staff or attract high-level trainees to your business.

You can work with training providers to deliver existing apprenticeship standards – or you can make your own! If you're a large employer with significant impact in the industry, you can build your own training course to suit your business.

'A collaboration like this which allows employer engagement at its centre is critical. It also ensures that our curriculum meets the needs of the industry and gives the next generation of employees the real-job skills to succeed in the workplace.'

Training apprentices is good for business, good for your budget and good for morale – and it's easy too! There's loads of support available to help you manage your new apprentices.

At OneFile, our apprenticeship software is ideal for young chefs training in the kitchen. They can use any smartphone to collect evidence on the job and you can see how they're progressing at any time – making the whole process simple to manage.

In fact, it's so good, people say this kind of thing about us:

'The results are clear. Organisations who use OneFile consistently outperform those who don't. FACT.'

To find out exactly how OneFile supports chef apprenticeships, download our free guide.

You can take a tour of the software, sample our favourite features and read reviews from some of our critics.