What Can I Expect as a Salary as a Chef?

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The Best Salaries

The best chefs’ salary goes to the so-called Executive Chef, the chef who has all the power in the kitchen and who needs to make sure that every issue is being handled. He or she usually earns more than $60,000, which means more than five grand a month for a job that is mostly giving orders. To get there however, you need to travel a long way in your career. Brief statistics of U.S. chef salaries reveal a complex market in this career field.

If you happen to reach the level of an executive chef and if you want a bigger salary than the normal minimum for executive chefs, you need to aim carefully for the region you plan to work in. The more expensive and exclusive the restaurant is, the higher the chances for you to get a fair salary. Executive chefs can get between fifty to a hundred thousand dollars over time.

The Average Salaries

Before you can become an executive chef or a lead chef, you will have to start off as a chef assistant or other sub-types of chefs. There are pastry chefs and sous chefs, as well as line cooks. A sous chef’s salary range is much lower than that of executive chefs, but those are positions that you will have to take, if you want to reach the top.

You always start off in the range of about $20,000 per year as a kitchen assistant/chef assistant, then you move up to become a chef type of some sort and you get to the $35,000 to $50,000 range. This is the longest stage throughout which you need to get enough experience in order to become a lead chef and enter the $50,000 to $100,000 dollars range.

Improving Your Salary

Increasing your chefs’ salary is always a long, difficult and ponderous journey, but there are many ways to complete it. The more requirements you fulfill before you start to work in a kitchen, the easier it will be for you. This means education, but it also means career planning.

You need to choose your location wisely; think big cities, populated places, where business is always booming. Choose an independent, lavish and expensive place because these sort of individual private locations pay the most. Make sure that you have good experience before applying for a highly ranked job. Education is vital for you to get an advantage in comparison to other applicants for a lead chef position. Make sure you can handle all your responsibilities because consistency is a must in this profession.

The highest paid work place for chefs are found at resorts, many-stars hotels, famous and luxurious restaurants, expensive nursing homes and high-ranking hospitals, the Food Network, and other venues. Town restaurants or chain restaurants might not pay you what you’re worth, so focus early on and figure out where you’re needed the most.

Why not contact your school of choice today and learn more about culinary careers and opportunities? You’ve already taken the first step towards a better life…now follow through with it!