What chef turnover reveals about culture, support and professionalism in aged care catering
An extremely well-respected chef reached out to me recently.
His experience in aged care catering lasted only one year. That year was enough.
What he described was not a lack of care for residents, professional pride, skill or commitment. Nor was it the story of someone walking into aged care and deciding the work was simply too hard.
He described unrealistic expectations, constant workforce pressure, limited support, poor culture, inconsistent training and a system that did not seem to know how to properly listen to the very people it needed most.
I cannot speak for every provider, every operations team or every hospitality leader in aged care. There are very good people doing very good work in this space. There are kitchens where strong leadership, respect, training and resident-focused practice are firmly in place.
But stories like this are still too common.
In this case, aged care lost an invested professional chef with skill, maturity, understanding and the kind of care and empathy hiring teams say they are desperate to find.
He was not asking for aged care to be easy. He understood kitchens, pressure and professional standards. But he did need to be listened to, and he needed the systems around him to match the expectations being placed on him and his team.
When that did not happen, he left aged care catering.
That should make us stop, particularly because his experience is not the first of its kind that I have heard.
When an experienced chef leaves the sector after only one year, the question is not simply how we fill the vacancy. We should be asking what kind of workplace culture made staying no longer worth it.
Aged care catering is rightly spoken about through the lens of resident dignity. Food is deeply personal, and the meal remains one of the most visible and important parts of daily life.
But there is another dignity conversation that also matters
It is the dignity of the people expected to deliver that experience every day.
When kitchen and hospitality teams are undertrained, unsupported, exhausted, dismissed, bullied or ignored, that does not stay hidden in the staff room. It affects confidence, communication, judgement, teamwork and the quality of the service residents receive.
Culture is not separate from performance.
It is what shapes performance.
A professional culture is not simply a qualification on paper, a certificate in a folder or a training day completed once a year. It is revealed in the way people behave when the pressure is on. It is seen in whether leaders listen or dismiss, whether experienced staff share knowledge or protect it, whether new team members are taught properly or left to work it out alone, and whether people feel safe enough to raise a concern before it becomes a bigger problem. It is also seen in what behaviour an organisation is prepared to tolerate. Some old habits do not belong in aged care. They probably never belonged anywhere. Bullying is not leadership. Favouritism is not culture. Sexism is not banter. Unpaid time is not commitment. Burnout is not evidence that someone cares. And “that’s just how kitchens are” is not good enough anymore. Especially not in aged care.
A stronger professional culture is not a softer culture. It is clearer, more accountable and more capable. It sets expectations, addresses poor behaviour, values experience and develops people properly. It understands that respect and accountability are not opposites. Strong leaders can expect high standards without humiliating people. They can challenge poor performance without creating fear. They can listen to concerns without treating every difficult conversation as negativity. They can also look beyond how a concern is delivered and consider what it may be revealing about the workplace or the service. Aged care needs people who are prepared to speak up, and leaders mature enough to examine what they are being told.
Professional culture does not sit with management alone. Chefs carry responsibility for it too. The strongest chefs are not those who keep knowledge to themselves. They build capability and succession around them. They teach, explain the reason behind the standard and bring people with them. Leadership is not standing over a team and telling them they should already know. It is building a team that does know because someone took the time to show them properly. Most chefs can name someone who invested in them. A mentor who corrected them, taught them the craft, set a higher standard and cared enough to expect more from them. We should be asking whether we are making that same investment in the next generation of aged care chefs, cooks and catering teams.
Catering assistants must be part of that conversation as well
If we treat catering attendants as “just servers” or “just kitchen hands”, we misunderstand their place in the service. They carry responsibility, build knowledge through direct contact with residents, and often notice or communicate concerns before anyone else does. They are frequently the final link between the kitchen and the person receiving the meal. That deserves training, respect and clear professional expectations. They also deserve a workplace where their knowledge and observations carry weight. This is happening at a time when the wider hospitality industry is already competing for trained and capable chefs. Aged care is not recruiting from an endless pool of skilled professionals, which makes preventable losses caused by poor workplace culture even harder to justify. We should not keep pretending this is only a recruitment problem. Recruitment matters, but retention tells us something important about the workplace people are being asked to stay in.
When an invested chef leaves, the sector loses more than a worker. It loses someone who understands the pressure, knows the people, sees the warning signs and carries knowledge that cannot be captured in a position description. That cannot be replaced by a job ad. This is not about blaming every provider, manager or kitchen. There are brilliant people in this sector and many strong teams doing excellent work every day. But when stories like this continue to surface, they should not be dismissed as noise, negativity or another person who “couldn’t handle aged care”. Perhaps they handled it for as long as the culture allowed them to.
If you are a chef, cook, catering assistant, food service worker, hospitality manager or aged care leader and this resonates with you, I would genuinely welcome the conversation. I would like to hear what people are seeing, what is working, what support is missing and what would genuinely help experienced people stay. I am especially interested in hearing from those who want to share their experience respectfully and confidentially, without naming providers, sites or individuals. This conversation needs honesty, maturity and collaboration. It needs leaders who are prepared to listen, chefs who are prepared to mentor and organisations willing to look closely at the culture they are creating. Because when good chefs walk away from aged care, we should not simply replace them and move on. We should understand why they left. And we should make sure the next good chef has a reason to stay.
Lindsey O’Grady
Senior Catering Operations Specialist
RiseUp Group Australia: https://www.riseupgroup.com.au/
Work: lindsey@riseupgroup.com.au
Email: cheflindsey42@gmail.com
Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsey-o-grady-280aa1b1/