Corus chef school to find new talent

Corus Hotels plans to tackle the perennial shortage of skilled chefs by unearthing some home-grown talent with its new vocational training programme, Chef School.

The group, which has 73 midmarket hotels employing more than 1,000 catering staff, has teamed up with the Hotel and Catering Training Company to launch the nationwide programme across its hotels this September.

This year it will recruit 25 youngsters aged 16-24 as trainee apprentice chefs under the wing of a mentor head chef at a Corus hotel.

The course will enable them to reach NVQ level 2 within 12 months while offering a much broader, hands-on training than college courses, including regular visits to markets, suppliers and restaurants around the country.

In the past 18 months, Corus has been forced to recruit 47 experienced chefs from Bulgaria and 26 from elsewhere, including South Africa, because so few British youngsters are willing to undergo full chef training.

"Chef School is essentially an old-fashioned apprenticeship," said Mark Staples, Corus's food and beverage director. "We have been forced to recruit chefs from abroad, but it is not ideal - the process is expensive and requires much paperwork."

He added: "We want to take 25 youngsters who are 100% committed to being chefs and develop that raw enthusiasm in a structured way. Ideally, we would like to see the first intake of students as head chefs at our hotels in 10 years' time."