Professional Kitchens Research Articles

“He just didn’t seem to understand the banter”: Bullying or simply establishing social cohesion?

Within the professional kitchen bullying is reported as widespread, aggressive and related to a significant retention problem. This research explores negative behaviour in professional kitchens and its impact on organisational commitment. A mixed methods approach is used employing a survey among chefs followed by semi-structured interviews. An exploratory factor analysis examines the underlying constructs of bullying and job satisfaction and data are analysed through Partial Least Squares. Our research highlights that bullying behaviour is experienced most by younger, more junior chefs. However verbal bullying, the form most strongly reported, has no effect on either satisfaction or commitment. Emergent themes of communication and inclusion illustrate bullying behaviour to be a cohesive aspect of kitchen culture. Our findings suggest behavioural impacts, rather than bullying characteristics, must be considered within their context in order to establish whether or not they are actually damaging to an industry.

To What Extent Does Studying to Become an Australian Trade-Qualified Cook Prepare Culinary Students for Further Education?

Many cooks have poor experiences of formal education. Most cooks tend to change careers with less than 10 years of professional kitchen experience. Changing careers increasingly requires pretraining from a formal education provider; however, previous poor experiences of formal education inhibits this reengagement for many cooks. The research explored the perceptions of 24 Australian Commercial Cookery students in their final trade-qualifying year and their four chef-trainers questioning how experiences of culinary school and professional kitchens impacted later reengagement with further education. The findings of this article indicate a need to review, anticipate, promote, and prepare for the nexus between professional cooking and career change.

Evaluating the nutritional quality of menus by using software in professional kitchens

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore evaluating the nutritional quality of menus by using software in professional kitchens.Design/methodology/approachNutritional quality and the core factors used when evaluating the nutritional quality of menus are discussed. The empirical data were collected in 2008 by theme interviewing nine municipal food service employees. The data were analysed by a thematic analysis.FindingsThe results indicated that both positive and contributing factors emerged as follows: productisation of menu; using a plate model; length of a control period concerning the nutritional quality of the menu; checking the nutrition content when making changes in menus, dishes and food items; dealing with the results of the evaluation in the meetings; including the results in the service agreements; employers' positive attitude displayed towards software suppliers' training; including nutritional quality as a part of service quality; and implementing nutritional quality according to the job descriptions.Practical implicationsA variety of courses should be offered for the students concerning the guidance of food production by using software in professional kitchens; integrating working life into the curriculum; continuous training of the food service personnel; and cooperation with the professional kitchen's software suppliers. Moreover, further implications could involve, for example, developing and diffusing the national model for the nutritional quality follow‐up; and taking the Sinfos‐product information data bank into use.Originality/valueActive updating of the software and training of the employees are needed in order to ensure the nutritional quality of menus.

Evaluating the nutritional quality of menus by using software in professional kitchens

Evaluating the nutritional quality of menus by using software in professional kitchens