The Toughest People in the Room Can’t Have the Simplest Conversations: Why the Culinary Industry Still Fails Its Own
By Jory Blackstone
#CulinaryIndustry #ChefLife #Leadership #SalaryTransparency #HospitalityCulture #LinkedInVoices #KitchenTruths #ChefsOfLinkedIn #BreakTheSilence #RespectTheCraft
We’re chefs. We’re grinders. We’re warriors in white coats, pirates with knives, adrenaline junkies who thrive in 110-degree heat with printer tickets raining down like confetti at a Greek wedding. We get through dinner rushes that would mentally break most people. We take verbal abuse, work with injuries, go months without a real day off, and somehow still find joy in a perfectly balanced Beurre Blanc. And yet… bring up money, boundaries, or expectations during the hiring process and watch how the energy shifts. Suddenly, the “toughest people in the room” can’t handle a simple conversation.
I’ve been in this industry for over 20 years, and I’ve seen it again and again. You can have two chefs bonding over the mutual trauma of 300-covers on Valentine’s Day but ask one of them what the job actually pays, and it’s like you’ve just asked for their banking PIN and a kidney. Why? Why is it that in an industry that prides itself on honesty, grit, and bluntness, we still can’t have real conversations when it matters most? Let me break it down.
The Hiring Hustle: Where Transparency Goes to Die
A few months ago, I was deep into the hiring process for a senior chef role at a major resort. Multiple interviews. Cooking trials. Long drives. Weeks of vague communication, self-funded travel, and schedule juggling. I played the game because we all know the game. You’re told not to ask about money too soon, not to seem “too focused” on salary, not to push back when things feel off. You’re supposed to grin and bear it, show your commitment, and hope they “see your value.” Finally, near the end of the process, I asked what should have been a basic question: “Can we talk about salary?” What happened next? Silence. Discomfort. And within 24 hours… the offer vanished. No conversation. No explanation. Just a cold, corporate brush-off. And I’m not alone. Since sharing parts of this story, other chefs have quietly reached out with similar tales, offers rescinded, ghosted after negotiations, punished for asking perfectly reasonable questions. Let’s be clear: asking about compensation is not a betrayal of the craft. It’s not being greedy. It’s being a grown-ass adult with bills, kids, goals, and self-respect.
“We’re a Family”, Until You Ask for a Raise
You’ll hear it all the time in kitchens: “We’re a family here.” And sure, we do build something close to family in the trenches of a Saturday night dinner rush. But no real family threatens to disown you the minute you ask for your worth. No real family avoids hard conversations by hiding behind vague HR scripts or passive-aggressive non-replies.
I once worked under a chef who told me, “You can’t be a leader and ask what the others are making. It undermines the team.” No, Chef. You know what undermines the team? The quiet resentment that builds when people find out the new hire is making $3 more an hour for the same work. The unspoken bitterness when one sous chef gets a bonus and the others don’t know why. The burnout that festers when someone’s been loyal for five years and still must beg for a $0.50 raise. Silence doesn’t protect culture, it poisons it.
The Illusion of Passion as Payment
One of the most insidious myths in our world is that “if you’re truly passionate, you won’t care about the money.”
Bullshit.
You can be deeply passionate about the craft and want to be paid fairly for your time, skill, and sacrifice. Passion doesn’t pay for rent. Passion doesn’t send your kids to school or put gas in your car when you’re covering for the fifth line cook who quit in two months. Passion is the reason we deserve better, not the excuse to give us less. And yet, so many chefs have been conditioned to see asking for money as a sign of weakness or disloyalty. We’ve all known line cooks too afraid to even ask how much the position pays before accepting the job. Executive chefs who haven’t gotten a raise in three years but won’t bring it up because “it’s not the right time.” Sous chefs working 70 hours on a 44-hour contract because they were told it’s “Just part of the grind.” It’s not passion. It’s exploitation.
The Culture of Silence Starts at the Top
Let’s talk about leadership. If you’re a chef in a leadership position and you avoid salary talks, shame people for negotiating, or let HR handle all the uncomfortable parts, you are part of the problem. Real leadership means modeling professionalism. It means empowering your team to advocate for themselves. It means normalizing money conversations, so they stop feeling like career suicide.
I’ve had chefs who were generous mentors, incredible teachers, and inspiring artists but who would straight-up vanish if the talk turned to raises or contracts. I’ve had execs and owners who expected loyalty without offering clarity. I’ve been told “we’ll revisit that later” more times than I’ve heard “behind.” Guess what? Later rarely comes. You don’t retain talent by avoiding tough conversations. You retain talent by having them with honesty, respect, and a plan.
Real Talk: We’re Losing Good People
This industry is bleeding talent. Chefs are leaving. Servers are switching careers. Young cooks aren’t sticking around long enough to even become chefs. Why? Because they don’t feel seen, valued, or heard. Because they’ve watched their mentors burn out and their heroes break down. Because they’ve been told to “pay their dues” in an industry that too often refuses to pay them. And maybe most of all because they’re tired of pretending that asking for fairness is the same as asking for a favor.
I’ve trained with many incredible cooks who could’ve gone on to run Michelin-starred kitchens. But they left to become electricians, plumbers, entrepreneurs because in those industries, when you ask what the job pays, someone actually tells you. Because if you negotiate, they don’t take it personally. Because advocating for yourself isn’t seen as a betrayal, it’s expected. Imagine that.
The Way Forward: Normalize the Conversation
So what do we do? We normalize money talks. We make it part of the process, not a secret negotiation behind closed doors. We mentor our teams not just in technique but in self-worth. We coach young chefs to know their value and communicate it professionally. We call out systems that rely on silence to maintain control. We rewrite the unspoken rules. Let’s stop pretending this industry is too fragile for honesty. We’ve survived COVID, inflation, staffing crises, and food costs that look like luxury car payments. We can handle transparency. And to those in leadership, owners, and executives: if you can’t have an honest conversation about pay and expectations without ghosting or getting defensive, you shouldn’t be in charge of people. Full stop.
Final Thoughts
We are some of the toughest people on earth. We can endure the heat, the pressure, the chaos. We can transform ingredients into magic, build communities from scratch, and carry entire teams on our backs. But toughness isn’t silence. It’s not stoicism. And it sure as hell isn’t sacrificing your voice to protect someone else’s comfort.
The new generation of chefs doesn’t want to play pretend. They want to lead, grow, and thrive and that starts with the simplest thing in the world:
A conversation.
