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The Hospitality Industry’s pipeline problem isn’t what you think
The hospitality industry doesn’t have a skills crisis. It has an imagination crisis.
A young chef from Latvia, is 18 years old. He has come to the Bill Gallagher Young Chefs Forum at the Worldchefs Congress 2026 and is trying to explain why so many of his peers never make it this far.
“Maybe they don’t see the opportunities,” he says. “They think that chefs only belong in the cafeteria.”
Young people are not just choosing between jobs. They are choosing whether they can picture a version of themselves in the industry at all.
The hospitality industry has spent years talking about recruitment, retention and the shortage of young people coming through. All of that matters, but it is not the whole story.
The pipeline is already narrowing. The number of 16–19-year-olds starting hospitality and catering-related further education courses in England fell by 36% between 2016 and 2023.1 And a 2025 survey from global hotel group IHG found that only 22% of 16–21-year-olds in the UK would consider a career in hospitality.2 The data points to something deeper than recruitment. It points to imagination.
Why the talent crisis is really an imagination crisis
The usual conversation about the talent pipeline tends to follow a familiar script. Not enough young people are choosing hospitality. And even when they do, retention is another battle. The industry needs to do more to recruit, to retain, and to make itself more attractive to the next generation. All of that is true.
But the deeper issue is not hours, pay or conditions, though those things of course matter. It is about imagination. Young people cannot picture a culinary career because they are often only shown one version of it: the kitchen, the heat, the long shifts, the pressure.
A young chef from New Zealand, puts it simply: “Events like this really open our eyes up to the whole world and what this industry could be. International opportunities like this would definitely keep me in the industry.”
That is what changes people. Not a slogan or a recruitment campaign, but a bigger picture.
Another youth participant from Australia, says it another way: “This opens up opportunities to get in the door. We get to meet people, socialise with chefs we’ve looked up to forever. Getting to show them who we are, that’s probably the biggest thing.”
It is also why Nestlé Professional has been a partner of the Bill Gallagher Young Chefs Forum since 2016. Not to put our name on a room, but to put more young chefs in one.
The culinary careers most young people never get to see
Once you look beyond the kitchen, the picture changes fast.
Poul Gorell, Global Executive Chef at Nestlé Professional, was 26 when he saw a newspaper advert for a more strategic role at Nestlé Professional. "I saw it on a Sunday morning and thought, hopefully I don't get it, so I can stay in the kitchen. As it turns out, I got it. And here I am, 20 years later, still in the food industry." Still in food, just not where he expected to be.
“Being a chef doesn't stop in the kitchen," he says. "It can be anything they want within the food industry and beyond.”
These culinary careers exist, even if the industry is not always good at showing them.
Food tech, product development, sustainability, airline catering, consultancy, commercial leadership, training, operations. The foundation can be the same, but the outcomes don’t have to be. The skills built in a kitchen - precision, pressure, creativity, the ability to adapt fast - transfer further than most young chefs realize. And when someone helps them see that, the pivot from kitchen to a broader culinary career stops feeling like a departure. It feels like a natural next step.
Kate Alexander, Head of Food and Commercial Channels at Nestlé Professional, sees the same thing from another angle. She recently spent time in Toronto with 35 development chefs. Every one of them started in a kitchen. Every one of them moved into a very different role.
“Young people get this perception that they’re going to have to work 17 hours a day, seven days a week,” she says. “But there’s a whole career outside of that.”
That matters because perception often hardens into choice long before anyone gets close to a job application.
What a long career can look like when the system works
The imagination gap is not just about career paths. It is also about whether young people can picture themselves belonging in the industry at all.
An Australian culinary trainer and mentor with 30 years’ experience, who sits on the committee for the Worldchefs Young Chefs Club, remembers that when she started her career, the message was clear: as a woman, she was not expected to last. She decided to spend the rest of her career making sure the next generation never heard that message.
“I never got this opportunity as a chef. I just want to give these kids an opportunity that we didn’t get.”
She has spent decades showing young chefs what support actually looks like.
“The challenge is they need to be inspired and supported,” she says. “If they don’t have that, we’re not going to retain them in the industry.”
That is the quieter part of the pipeline problem. Retention does not begin when someone hands in their notice. It begins much earlier, when they decide whether they can see a future for themselves at all.
A recent UK hospitality survey found that 43% of employees expected to stay in the sector for more than five years, while 32% expected to leave within two.3 The picture is no better globally. The travel and tourism sector could still be short more than 43 million workers by 2035, with hospitality facing a gap of 8.6 million.4 That is not purely a workforce issue. It is also a confidence issue.
Why solving the pipeline problem starts long before recruitment
The Bill Gallagher Young Chefs Forum is named after Dr Bill Gallagher, a former Worldchefs president who believed the industry had no future without investing in its next generation.
That belief is still visible in initiatives like this. Not because a room can solve the industry’s problems, but because it can change what people think is possible.
A young chef from Australia, says: “Being able to have that platform to start a conversation and be understood by people in the same industry as you, that’s what keeps people in for sure.”
The pipeline problem is not really about a shortage of ambition. It is about a shortage of imagination, language and reassurance.
If hospitality wants more young people to stay, it has to give them more than a job. It has to give them a future they can imagine themselves in. That means showing them the full picture of what a culinary career can become, and building the structures that help them get there.
Nestlé Professional has spent decades investing in exactly that. From the YOCUTA Young Culinary Talents program in Latin America and Central Eastern Europe to the Worldchefs Academy's free online courses for emerging chefs, the work is built on a simple belief: the skills developed in a kitchen are a foundation, not a ceiling. Culinary training builds people who can lead, innovate, consult and create - across food and far beyond it. The goal is not just to bring young people into the industry. It is to show them how far those skills can take them, and to invest in helping them get there. That is how you close the imagination gap - not in a single event, but over years, and with real commitment behind it.
Sources:
1 Only Chefs article 2025, ‘Why Young Chefs Are Disappearing in the UK’, citing 2023 Education & Training Foundation data
2 IHG Global survey 2025, cited in Virtual College article: ‘Young People in Hospitality: Catering and Hospitality as a Career’
3 New Possible research 2025, ‘Sector Snapshot: UK Hospitality (August 2025)’
4 World Travel & Tourism Council, ‘Future of the Travel & Tourism Workforce’ (2025)