Hotels in Kenya are facing a pastry chef shortage as workers seek better opportunities in cruise ships and airlines.

In kitchens across high-end hotels and boutique bakeries in Kenya, a dilemma is unfolding as a shortage of pastry chefs leaves a significant void in the culinary landscape.

Hoteliers say they have been left with a small pool of half-baked chefs whose skills are limited to "making velvet cakes", pastries that some Kenyans love but cannot be served daily in high-end restaurants that welcome well-travelled, discerning diners with a refined palate.

The scarcity of skilled pastry professionals is now forcing hoteliers to hire younger graduates and have to spend more time and money retraining them.

Denrick Mwaniki, human resource manager at Park Inn by Radisson Nairobi, while speaking to BDLife said the shortage of pastry chefs also stems from factors such as high pay demands and limited availability, particularly for high-end establishments.

“We don't have enough pastry chefs. It's not like they're not there. It's just that either the pay is high, or what they're asking for, and that comes from the fact that not many of them are available to be selected, especially for high-end establishments,” he says.

"Pastry chefs' pay ranges from Sh150,000 a month and it can go up due to intense competition for talent in this field," he adds.

Just like many hotels, Mr Mwaniki says, that due to the difficulty in finding skilled pastry chefs, they have come up with an in-house training programme, an initiative that aims to cultivate talent from within the organisation. They also import some pastries.

“We've established partnerships with suppliers for high-end pastry items. As a result, we import certain products like croissants and wraps, particularly for breakfast, which often adhere to standardised recipes across our global brand. This strategy allows us to allocate resources towards locally producing staple items such as bread and cakes, empowering our in-house talent to manage these aspects of pastry production. We have someone who trained in-house. He's called Chef Ken,” says Mr Mwaniki.

He reveals a systemic issue within the culinary education system, where there is a deficiency in producing pastry chefs equipped with international-standard skills. Mr Mwaniki says Kenya must seek ways to address this gap to meet the growing demand for high-quality pastries to serve the growing number of international chains opening up in Kenya.

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“What the schools here teach is how to make basic cakes and the basic desserts. However, a proper pastry chef needs other skills, for example, making croissants and other complicated items that most hotels tend to import, especially from international brands. Because if you're working with international standards, then the croissant in Kenya has to taste like the croissant in the UK or Canada or France,” says Mr Mwaniki.

Don Githua, the Executive Chef of Pan-Pacific Hotels in Nairobi said the pastry chefs have to specialise and be creative.

“The scarcity of skilled professionals has led to significant challenges in recruiting suitable candidates, particularly those adept at incorporating the latest trends and ingredients into their creations. It was very hard for me to find a pastry chef, it took a while,” Chef Githua says.

Hoteliers are now looking for more than someone who can make the dough and bake, the emphasis is on the quality, finishing, and presentation of the pastry which distinguishes exceptional pastry chefs from the rest.

“The reason why we have a lot of foreign chefs in Kenya is because they arrive with excellent training from their educational institutions, particularly in the culinary arts. That's the calibre of graduates that hotel schools in Kenya should be interested in churning out; good pastry cooks, passionate about their craft, driven not solely by circumstance but by a genuine love for the art of creation,” says Chef Githua.

Younger generation

According to Sanjit Gupta, the group pastry chef at Sarova Hotels, the shortage of pastry chefs in Kenya, is attributed to a myriad of factors ranging from inadequate training to lack of interest among younger generations.

“The shortage of pastry chefs in Kenya is likely due to a mishmash of factors such as wrong basics, half or empty knowledge, pastry chefs don’t keep updated with trends, international work opportunities, cruise lines' recent mass vacancies, extremely demanding working conditions, and a lack of interest in traditional culinary arts among younger generations, changing job for a small raise,” he says.

“New openings hire pastry associates with a promotion and 30 percent salary hike, which lures the young generation, and they don’t even think twice about it,” says Chef Sanjit.

Chef Sanjit notes a shift in the mindset of the younger generation, observing that they tend to listen with the intent to react rather than to understand. He highlights this change as a worrying trend that may potentially affect the industry's ability to maintain the quality, consistency, and availability of pastries.

“The best way is to create an interest in interns / industrial trainees / vocational trainees and expose them, creating an intense interest in pastry and bakery. So by the time they graduate, they already know what they want and who they want to be,” he says.

Chef Sanjit adds that there is a mushrooming demand for top-tier pastries, driven by the surge in popularity of artisanal baked goods, trendy desserts, and upscale dining experiences. However, there are few adequately trained pastry chefs to satisfy this growing hunger for quality confections.

“There's a growing demand for high-quality pastries due to the popularity of artisanal baked goods, trendy desserts, and fine dining experiences...with pastry, you need to stay trendy and do stuff which gets viral on social media. And by the time others get inspired by us and try those ideas, we jump to a new presentation,” he says.

Chef Sanjit points out a critical issue: the discrepancy in compensation between pastry chefs who continuously update their skills and those who stagnate. Unlike other culinary professions, where ongoing learning and innovation are more explicitly rewarded, pastry chefs risk being undervalued if they fail to keep pace with evolving trends and techniques.”

The long hours and low pay which had been the norm have also forced some to seek greener pastures in hotels abroad, airlines or cruise ships.

“It is a norm for a pastry chef to face long hours, high stress, and physically demanding work environments. This can lead to burnout and high turnover rates within the professionals and when all other kitchens are closed, the pastry kitchen is still at work as desserts are always the last course of the meal," Chef Sanjit says.