Ask most hospitality operators what keeps them awake at night and, sooner or later, the conversation turns to people. Not just finding them — though that remains a persistent challenge — but developing them. Turning enthusiastic but inexperienced individuals into the skilled, committed professionals the industry depends on.
For a sector that has historically trained on the job, in the heat and pressure of commercial kitchens and busy front-of-house, the structural training pipeline has been broken for years. Brexit removed a significant proportion of the experienced European workforce that had propped up British hospitality. The pandemic accelerated the departure of many who remained. The result is an industry that is, in places, trying to build on foundations that no longer exist.
Apprenticeships are not a new idea. But there is growing evidence that, handled well, they represent the most credible long-term answer to a problem that is not going away.
The Numbers
Hospitality and catering apprenticeship starts in England reached 17,400 in the 2023–24 academic year, according to data from the Department for Education — a 22% increase on the previous year and the highest figure since the apprenticeship levy reforms of 2017.
The growth is being driven by a combination of factors: a maturing understanding among employers of how to use the levy effectively, improvements in the quality of the apprenticeship standards themselves, and a generation of school leavers increasingly drawn to vocational routes in the face of rising graduate underemployment.
"The conversation around apprenticeships has genuinely shifted," says Sarah Brennan, head of workforce development at UKHospitality. "Three years ago I was still spending half my time persuading employers that apprenticeships were worth the investment. Now the question is how to do them well, not whether to do them at all."
What Good Looks Like
The most effective apprenticeship programmes share common characteristics. They are structured around genuine skill development rather than administrative compliance with levy requirements. They have the active involvement of senior staff — including head chefs and general managers — rather than being delegated entirely to HR. And they create a visible career pathway that gives apprentices a reason to stay.
At The Anchor Group, a seven-property hotel and restaurant company in the North West, apprenticeships now account for 40% of all new kitchen hires. The group runs a Level 2 Production Chef programme at four sites, with Level 3 Senior Production Chef pathways available for those who complete their first year with distinction.
"We lost a lot of people in 2020 and 2021 and we spent two years chasing experienced hires we couldn't find at a price we could afford," says executive chef Daniel Forsyth. "When we shifted focus to growing our own, everything changed. Our retention is genuinely better among apprentices than among experienced hires. They're invested in us because we're invested in them."
The College Question
The quality of the college delivery that underpins most apprenticeships remains variable. The best providers — City of Glasgow College, Westminster Kingsway, Leeds City College among them — have invested significantly in their kitchens and curriculum. Others have struggled to maintain industry-relevant training with reduced budgets and aging facilities.
"A bad college placement can kill an apprentice's enthusiasm in weeks," says Forsyth. "We interview the colleges as hard as they interview us now. We want to see the kitchen, meet the tutors, understand the off-the-job training schedule. If we're putting our name behind it, it needs to be good."
Ofsted's latest hospitality and catering apprenticeship inspection data shows 71% of providers rated Good or Outstanding — an improvement on the 64% reported in 2022, though operators note that the gap between top and bottom performers remains wide.
The Retention Problem
The deeper challenge is retention. The hospitality industry's historic problem with staff turnover does not automatically correct itself because a worker came through an apprenticeship programme. If the culture, the management and the working conditions are not right, investment in training simply funds the competition.
"We've done all the training work and then watched people leave for a competitor paying 50p an hour more," admits one operator who asked not to be named. "It's demoralising. But the answer isn't to stop training — it's to work harder on the environment that makes people want to stay."
Those doing it well point to a combination of factors: flexible scheduling, genuine progression, management that treats kitchen staff as professionals rather than a variable cost, and cultures that do not normalise the abuse and volatility that still characterises too many British kitchens.
"The best apprenticeship programme in the world doesn't survive a toxic kitchen," says Brennan. "Workforce development and culture change have to happen together."
A Reason for Optimism
Despite the difficulties, the mood among those working in hospitality training is more optimistic than it has been for some time. The combination of increased employer engagement, improving standards quality and a generation of young people open to vocational routes creates a genuine opportunity.
"We have the tools," says Forsyth. "We know what good training looks like. We know what a good kitchen culture looks like. The industry just has to commit to building both — consistently, at scale, over the long term."
For an industry that has spent years firefighting, that kind of long-term thinking represents its own kind of progress.