Should young chefs go solo, or take the corporate path?
A reasonable case for both, and a less-comfortable observation about which path the Indian industry actually rewards.
I get this question every week. A chef in their late twenties, four to seven years of brigade experience, a competent CV, asks me: do I open my own thing now or take the executive-track corporate role I’ve been offered?
The honest answer is that both can work. They reward different things and they break in different ways.
The corporate path
You learn how a 250-cover operation actually runs. You learn P&L literacy that no standalone teaches you in the first three years. You learn HR — the unglamorous 60% of running a kitchen. The salary plateau is real (most chefs hit a ceiling around the eight-year mark unless they make it into ExCo) but the operational chops you build are durable.
The solo path
You build something that has your name on it. You also discover, usually in year two, that being a great cook is roughly 30% of the job and the other 70% is leases, vendors, payroll, GST, food-safety inspections and the slow corrosion of having every problem land on your desk. Many chefs who go solo come back to the corporate world by year five — not because they failed but because the trade-off wasn’t what they expected.
The uncomfortable observation
The Indian industry rewards solo chefs disproportionately in recognition — press, awards, social media — but rewards corporate chefs disproportionately in economics. If you read trade press, you’d think the solo path is winning. If you read salary surveys, the picture is murkier.
If you’re reading this and stuck on the question: pick the path whose worst day you can live with. Not the path whose best day you fantasise about.
This column reflects the views of the author, not TCA editorial.