Chefs salaries revealed

There is a saying in the restaurant industry: You can’t make a living but you can make a killing. That pretty much sums up the boom-or-bust attitude. Even so, for most restaurant workers things can be a little bit more even. The industry magazine Star Chefs has released its 2008 report on how much one can expect to make working in a kitchen.

“Chefs might be the new pop culture superstars, but this doesn’t exactly translate to more money for the average culinary professional,” the article notes. “Executive chef salaries headed south … and pastry chef salaries took a veritable nosedive.”

The national average for executive chefs is just under $75,000. For a pastry chef it’s $46,228; for a sous chef it’s slightly less at $44,205. Line cooks earned just under $13 per hour. And remember that the average executive chef has been working nearly 20 years and it takes the average line cook six years to earn that hourly wage.

But the numbers can be broken down even further. For instance, executive chefs at hotels can expect to make almost $10,000 more than the average, but the executive chef at a casual dining restaurant only makes $64,000 per year. In New York City, the average was in the $80,000 range. Not much considering the price of living there, but still more than Anthony Bourdain made after 20 years of working in the city. He claims never to have brought home more than $52,000 per year.

Where the numbers get really interesting is in education levels and salary. Culinary degrees are outrageously priced for the return students get (state-run programs like Johnson County’s not included) and it turns out those years training and not working may even hurt. People with non-culinary degrees earn more than those with culinary degrees.

Also, don’t expect to work 9 to 5. More than 80 percent of people in the kitchen reported working nine-plus hours a day. Chefs work on average more than 50 hours a week and 30 percent work more than 60 hours per week. What the article doesn’t say is that’s at least 51 weeks of the year, including all holidays and weekends.

So yes, chef may be a glamor job now but it still comes down to extremely hard, long work.

(Image via Flickr: Dune Chaser)