A recipe for disaster: Employment conditions for chefs in the New Zealand hospitality sector

Abstract

Considerable research has discussed the working conditions of chefs, covering topics such as including wage theft (Robinson & Brenner, 2021), bullying and harassment (Dagsland et al., 2024; Lin et al., 2023; Taheri et al., 2024), occupational commitment (Robinson, 2014), gender and chef identity: (Albors-Garrigos et al., 2020) and mental health and wellbeing (Robinson et al., 2022, 2023). However, contemporary data that clearly shows the working conditions of chefs in the New Zealand hospitality sector is rare. This paper presents recent data from two surveys that clearly highlight the problematic working conditions of chefs in a sector that is of significant economic importance to New Zealand.