Kitchen Career Progression: Commis to CDP

TL;DR: Kitchen career progression fails when no one explains it. Chefs leave for worse kitchens because someone else offered a clearer path. Build a development plan before the vacancy opens, not after.

Most kitchens lose their best commis chefs for the same reason: nobody ever told them where they were going. Kitchen career progression sounds like an HR concept, and in some operations it is treated as one, which is precisely why it fails.

I have worked with chefs who left a good kitchen for a worse one simply because someone else bothered to draw them a map. That stings. It should. Because retaining kitchen staff is not about ping-pong tables or staff meals, though a decent staff meal helps morale considerably. It is about giving people a reason to stay that has something to do with their future, not just your rota.

Why the Commis-to-Chef-de-Partie Gap Swallows People Whole

The move from commis to chef de partie is where kitchens lose the most talent. It is a gap that nobody talks about honestly. A commis knows how to work hard and follow instructions. A chef de partie needs to think, lead a section, and manage their own mise en place under pressure. That is a significant step, and most kitchens do nothing to bridge it.

What usually happens is this: a chef de partie leaves, the commis who has been there longest gets promoted, and everyone pretends that proximity to competence is the same as development. It is not. The new CDP struggles, loses confidence, and either grinds through it alone or walks out by Christmas.

A culinary career development plan does not need to be complicated. But it does need to exist before the vacancy does.

What Culinary Career Development Actually Looks Like in a Kitchen

Progression in a kitchen is not just a series of job titles. It is a sequence of expanding responsibility, built on demonstrated skills rather than time served. Here is how I would structure it in any kitchen serious about keeping people.

1. Commis Chef: Learning the fundamentals. Knife skills, stocks, basic sauce work, mise en place discipline. This stage is about absorption and repetition. A commis should be given a clear list of skills they need to demonstrate before moving forward, not just a vague sense that they are ‘coming along nicely’.
2. Junior Chef de Partie: A transitional stage that many kitchens skip entirely, and they pay for it. The junior CDP runs a quieter section or assists on a busier one. They are learning how to organise their own station, not just execute tasks handed to them. Responsibility is introduced gradually, with support still in place.
3. Chef de Partie: Full ownership of a section. They plan their own prep lists, manage their own stock, and communicate with the boss without prompting. This is where real culinary identity starts to form.
4. Senior CDP or Sous Chef Understudy: Not every kitchen has the headcount for this, but the principle matters. Give your best CDP visibility on what the next level actually involves. Let them hold the pass on a quieter service. Let them write a dish and put it on a staff menu. Make the aspiration concrete.

Writing it down does something powerful. When a chef can see the path, they start to think of themselves as moving along it rather than standing still.

Retaining Kitchen Staff Starts With Honest Conversation

The single thing I wish I had done earlier in my career as a head chef was have direct conversations about ambition. I assumed people would tell me if they wanted more. They did not. They told a recruitment consultant instead, usually about three weeks before their notice landed on my section board.

Once a quarter, sit down with each member of your brigade and ask two questions. Where do you want to be in twelve months? What is one thing you want to learn that you are not currently getting to do? That is it. No forms, no appraisal jargon. Just two questions and the willingness to actually listen to the answers.

Some chefs will not know what they want yet. That is fine. Your job is not to hand them a five-year plan. Your job is to make it clear that there is space here for them to want something and that you will do something useful when they figure it out.

The Hospitality Progression Path Nobody Writes Down

Beyond the formal structure, there is an informal hospitality progression path that shapes how people feel about where they work. It is made up of small decisions: who gets sent to the market, who gets to taste the new dish first, who the head chef talks to about ideas. These things signal belonging and growth more loudly than any job title does.

If your best commis is always the one washing down the floors while the CDPs taste the new autumn menu, they will notice. They might not say anything. But they will notice.

Building the Plan: Practical Steps for Head Chefs

You do not need a human resources department or a learning management system to do this well. You need thirty minutes and a notebook.

• Write out the roles in your kitchen and the skills genuinely required for each one. Not the job description. The actual skills.
• For each member of your brigade, write down where they currently sit and what the realistic next step is.
• Identify one thing you can offer each person in the next three months: a new skill, a new responsibility, or a conversation about what they want.
• Tell them. Do not wait for them to ask.

This is not a bureaucratic exercise. It takes less time than a poor service debrief and has considerably more long-term impact. Retaining kitchen staff well is almost always cheaper and less disruptive than replacing them, and the cost of a replacement goes well beyond recruitment fees when you factor in the months it takes a new commis to learn how your kitchen actually works.

What Gets in the Way

The honest answer is head chefs who are too busy, too stressed, or too accustomed to people leaving to bother building anything that requires sustained attention. I have been that head chef. Running a pass on four hours of sleep with two chefs absent is not a situation that encourages strategic thinking about culinary career development.

But that is exactly the cycle. Kitchens that do not invest in progression lose people constantly, which keeps everyone too stretched to invest in progression. Breaking it requires someone deciding to do one small thing differently and sticking to it.

Owners and operators have a role here too. If the head chef has forty covers to prep and no sous chef because the position has been ‘temporarily’ unfilled for six months, they cannot also be a mentoring genius. Structure enables culture. You cannot pour from an empty stockpot.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

• Kitchen career progression fails most often because it is treated as something that happens naturally rather than something that needs to be designed.
• The commis to chef de partie move is the highest-risk point for losing good people. Acknowledge it and plan for it.
• Two honest conversations a year about ambition will do more for staff retention in hospitality than most formal programmes.
• Write the skills matrix. Tell people what you see in them. Do not wait for them to ask.
• If the structure of your operation makes progression impossible, that is a business problem, not a people problem. Fix the structure.

The best commis I ever had left because I never once told him I thought he had the makings of a decent head chef. He found out I thought so from a mutual friend, about two years after he had gone. I have not made that particular mistake again.