Professional Cooking and Our Personal Relationships

As a cooking professional, you will find that the cooking industry is unforgiving with your personal life. In this business, working weekends and evenings isn’t optional; it’s vital. As a result, you will find that your time for personal relationships will be strained. In many cases, cooking professionals find that they do not have time for a social and romantic life, often forgoing one for the sake of the other.

Cultivate Your Personal Life

As a restaurant professional, you will often find yourself working from dark to dark, and you will frequently miss holidays. You’ll find yourself an unideal candidate for dating, as making time to go on a date around a “regular” work schedule can be daunting. Because you will miss holidays, your friends and family members will begin to write you off; a sad inevitability of not being able to pencil in time. For many cooks, this is just a simple way of life. They would rather spend 10-14 hours a day in their kitchen feeling the pulse of the restaurant and the heat of their work than socialize or hit the bar.

That said, it is vital to your growth as a person and a professional that you grow relationships outside of your work.  Your family may always be there for you, but you cannot take them for granted.  We spend a lot of time with our blogs talking about what you can do for the restaurant industry, what it means to work in it and manage a kitchen or a restaurant, but today we need to focus on you. In order for your business to be the best it can be, for you to be the best you can be, you must invest in yourself.

You absolutely should kill it in the kitchen. Your work, your passion for food and service, those can be central to your life. But, to remain healthy, for your kitchen to continue to thrive and your restaurant to flourish, you must have an avenue of personal comfort and release. Dating, hobbies, interests, a social life; they all make you a more well-rounded person. Having these things in your life, even with the demand of a kitchen work schedule, will only provide you with the inspiration and enthusiasm you need to be wholly present in your work.

Your Kitchen's Well-Being Depends On It

Investing in yourself is investing in your kitchen. Do not let the demands of your kitchen life diminish the demands of your personal life. Sacrificing one for the other only hurts both and we wouldn’t want that, would we?