The Growth of a Food Conscious Public Means More Catering Jobs
Andrew W John
Catering is a business going through a growth spurt. Programs such as Iron Chef and the multitude of cooking programs on TV in recent years have contributed to the growth of this industry. A public increasingly well aware of health benefits from unprocessed foods and interested in well prepared meals has also been a factor. As it stands now, catering is a six billion a year industry.
With so much money to be made, it is no surprise that catering companies are hiring like never before. This is in addition to the high hiring rate the field has always had due to high turnover in catering. Especially now though, there are always openings for catering jobs like cooks, dishwashers, bartenders and wait staff at these companies.
Unlike at a restaurant where a dishwashers job is merely to wash dishes, a dishwasher in catering also performs the duty of busing tables, cleaning bus stations and keeping an eye on the levels of food wasted. Of course, the dishwasher must do the actual dishwashing as well.
Food preparation is probably one of the most daunting of positions. It means a lot of chopping, cutting, slicing and packaging. It is your job to make sure the cooks have the ingredients they need when they need them. If they need ten onions chopped then it is your duty to make sure they are chopped and ready for when he needs them. You may have to handle meats as well as vegetables and pastas. Food preparation workers make salads and soups a lot of times as well as the chef is busy preparing the entre.
Chefs have the starring role on the catering line. They are responsible for ensuring that all food is prepared and sent out on time. This included cooking and presentation. A chef will usually have assistants to whom he or she can delegate tasks. The chef handles menu planning and ingredient purchasing, along with staffing decisions regarding his assistants. The chef will tend to be the owner's right hand man (or woman); sometimes the chef and owner are one and the same.
In the catering industry, wait staff have one and only one function. This is of course making sure that the food gets out to the tables. Each wait staff person will have one to four tables to handle, their job being to get each course out to all of their diners in at the same time. Being quick is essential, as is having some class and courtesy; a catering job is not quite the same thing as working at your corner greasy spoon.
Interested in working within the culinary world? Thera re are a variety of available positions, including http://www.chefsworld.net/ jobs in catering which may be suitable for you. Check out our website for the latest listings: chefsworld.net
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