Salary Expectation for Those Pursuing a Career in Culinary Arts

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From Degree to Job Placement

If you earn a culinary arts degree, finding a job in this particular industry will be much easier, although in all honesty, there are no easy paths when it comes down to culinary arts. Getting a good education and a respectable degree will increase your culinary degree salary, but you will still have to garner years of experience in order to rise up through the ranks. A usual graduate with culinary arts who have completed a 4-year program can start as an employee with an annual salary of $35,000.

Salary Basics

Essentially, there are three stages in the culinary profession. The first has a culinary salary range from $20,000 to $25,000 maximum and it is usually for kitchen assistants, cleaners, etc.; the type of jobs available for first-timers with no previous experience or education. The second type is becoming an actual sous chef, chef de cuisine, or sushi chef. The salary ranges from $35,000 to $50,000 dollars. You can get into these types of positions after having several years of culinary education or after showing several years of relevant and reliant previous experience. The last and most accomplished type requires you to have spent at least a decade in the kitchen, with all the necessary educational and working background – that is the executive chef, whose salary can be anything between $50,000 or $100,000 or even more annually.

Salaries per Job

Different chefs will earn different salaries. At the top of the food chain is the executive chef who receives a tremendous salary annually and that is often around $80,000 dollars—even though the culinary degree salary at this position is actually declining in comparison to previous years. The chef-de-cuisine, who acts like the executive chef’s right hand is getting a much lower salary, even though becoming a chef-de-cuisine is the shortest way towards getting a shot at a position of an executive chef. The chef-de-cuisine receives $55,000 annually on an average basis for his or her culinary degree. The pastry chef, who is responsible for all the pastries, gets $47,000, whereas the sous chef, who is supporting the chef-de-cuisine, gets $41,000 annually.

Location Choice

While looking for a job in the culinary industry, you’ll need to remember that the location is of pivotal importance and can greatly affect your yearly salary. Try to work at high-class restaurants, five-star hotels, places that are independent, but at the same time are very lavish and exclusive. In a way, the fewer bosses you have, the more individualized your salary will be. True, the most important lines of venues in which chefs serve are restaurants, but in fact, some statistics suggest that chefs who work in hotels and clubs earn much more than the chefs who practice in restaurants, regardless of the type of restaurant or hotel. While this is not always the case, the increasing trend is something to consider when planning for your future.

Now is the time to go back to school and earn your culinary degree for a better paying career.