February 18, 2006/The Vancouver Sun

What's cooking in tourism?
Industry is expecting to have openings for 11,500 new cooks and chefs by 2015
By Gillian Shaw

Jeff Wright and his girlfriend Sarah Doucette could be the poster couple for British Columbia's new marketing campaign aimed at selling tourism as a desirable career option.

Graduating top in his class in the culinary program at the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts and now enrolled in the pastry and baking program there, Wright hopes to work for a hotel for a few years and eventually start a restaurant with Doucette, who is a baker.

The pair fit squarely into a top need in the tourism industry which expects to have openings for 11,500 new cooks and chefs by 2015 and is also driven a need to attract entrepreneurs who will launch their own tourism-related businesses.

“We want to let people know there are a lot of job opportunities in tourism and it is not just a job that you do while you go through for something else,” said Arlene Keis, chief executive officer at go2, B.C. tourism industry's human resources association, that has launched a $500,000 campaign dubbed Move on Up in an effort to attract people to the sector.

“And we need more entrepreneurs because we need more businesses in tourism.”

The growing demand for skilled workers in the sector couldn't come at a better time for Wright, who at 34 had tried his hand at tile-setting and a warehouse job before concluding that his true calling lay in cooking -- a career path that began when he was a teenager doing night prep for a restaurant.

“It was one step above the dishwasher,” he said of his first kitchen job.

It was always just a way to earn money but somewhere as he moved up in the kitchen, Wright discovered a passion for culinary arts.

“Something clicked, maybe it was the right job, maybe it was the right chef,” he said. “It made me realize this is what I want to do.

“That's why it took me so long to get into it -- I was hemming and hawing.”

Students at the Institute have an average age of 27, with many career changers among them. Sue Singer, president and founder of the Institute said people are driven to enroll by a passion for cooking and not by the promise of jobs.

“It's like any trade, there is a shortage, a worldwide shortage,” she said. “But it is not going to attract people because there are openings.

“It's not like the IT [information technology] business where people will say, 'I'll go into it because there are lots of jobs.' This is driven by the passion and the love for it.”

While the tourism sector is perhaps best known for its not-so-high-paying jobs that are filled by students and part-timers, the Move on Up campaign is trying to convince young people the field has potential for high-paying, rewarding jobs.

“We have a spot for everybody,” said Keis. “For people who get into it and want a career -- even from the entry level -- if you like it and you are good you move up quickly.”

At 22, Anthony Sedlak has already been in the business long enough to have advice for people considering the field as a career choice. The sous-chef in charge of Grouse Mountain's The Observatory restaurant, Sedlak already has a long resume in the kitchen that started with a busing job at Grouse that he got as a 13-year-old for the free mountain pass that came with it. When Sedlak was 14 he was named employee of the month on the mountain, an award that came with a gift certificate for the resort's top fine-dining restaurant.

“I brought one of my good friends up and we were looking at the menu in awe,” said Sedlak. “I became interested in the food.”

Sedlak moved up the kitchen ladder to become a short-order cook and was promoted to the main kitchen to do basic prep work for the bistro. The experienced convinced him of his career choice.

“I fell in love with cooking, I was surrounded by people a lot older than me and I thrived on the responsibility,” he said.

Sedlak spent a year at a top French restaurant in London, an experience that was an invaluable education and one that also taught him about how demanding the work could be.

“We were working 18-hour days, in a service kitchen about seven feet by 12 feet with six or seven guys there at a time. It was unbelievably tight, hot and stressful.

“In London it was like a brotherhood of chefs.”

Sedlak said making the step up from a low hourly wage to a top-earning chef is a difficult one but one he is convinced people with the energy and commitment can make.

“If you want to do it you have to put your head down and give it 110 per cent,” he said. “It is not a nine-to-five job; it is tough on relationships, it is demanding, physically and mentally; it is a high-stress job.

“If you want to do it you have to commit to it or you'll wake up and be 35 or 40 years old and you'll be making $12 or $14 an hour in some hotel cutting lettuce.”

The province-wide campaign is aimed at turning around stereotypes about tourism that have only 16 per cent of teens aged 16 and 17 considering careers in that sector, while only 22 per cent of young adults aged 18 to 24 consider it a career choice. The next decade is expected to bring 84,000 new job openings in tourism with the high-demand areas including the 11,500 jobs for chefs and cooks along with:

• 12,600 more managers and supervisors for the food and beverage sector
• 5,000 more managers for the accommodation sector
• 3,700 more leaders in the outdoor recreation sector.

The campaign includes an interactive website at www.MoveOnUp.ca, that has information on tourism careers, including job descriptions, career profiles, salary levels, and training and education programs, as well as a job-board linking job-seekers with employers.

Jeff Wright is graduating top at the top of his class at the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts. Photograph by: Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun
SALARY RANGES
Executive Chef $38,500 - $56,500 per annum
Sous-chef $25,750 - $41,000 per annum
Food and Beverage Service Supervisor $29,400 - $45,600 per annum
Cook $8.97 - $12.24 per hour
Food and Beverage Server $8.14 - $8.79 per hour Bartender $8.88 - $10.35 per hour Host/Hostess $8.44 - $10.38 per hour Food Service Counter Attendant $8.51 - $10.12 per hour

* Salary ranges, taken from the B.C. portion of the 2005 Western Canada Tourism Industry Compensation Study conducted by the Hay Group, details average annual salaries, released in April 2005.
*Not including bonuses, gratuities or incentives.


TRACKING TOURISM
British Columbia's tourism industry is one of the B.C.'s largest economic sectors in terms of employment and revenue, directly employing 117,900 people and generating a projected $9.8 billion in visitor revenues in 2005.

Based on industry growth patterns, B.C.'s tourism industry will need 84,000 more skilled workers in the next decade, that's an average of one new job every hour for the next 10 years.

Tourism accounts for more than 117,900 direct jobs in B.C., representing one in every 14 jobs in the province. Add indirect tourism employment and this number grows to 266,000, almost one out of every eight jobs in the province. The 2010 Winter Olympics are projected to create 34,000 tourism-related jobs. Four out of every 10 of these jobs will be created outside the mainland/southwest region of the province.

The tourism industry returns approximately $1 billion to the provincial treasury in the form of taxes and fees every year.

Sources: BC Tourism HRD Task Force Research Report Recruit, Retain & Train: Developing a Super, Natural Tourism Workforce in British Columbia; Roslyn Kunin and Associates report titled 2010 Winter Games Labour Supply and Gap Analysis; and Council of Tourism Associations of British Columbia (COTA)