There is a certain type of career arc that produces the best operators: the ones who started at the absolute bottom and worked their way through every level of the kitchen before they ever had a desk. Tony Lewis, founder of The Chef Hub and Member of the Craft Guild of Chefs, is one of them.
Lewis started as a kitchen porter at fifteen. By thirty he was an executive chef. In the two decades between, he trained at ICIF Costigliole d'Asti in Italy, worked across pub/bistro, French, Spanish, pan-Asian and Italian kitchens, hosted cookery demonstrations alongside the likes of Antonio Carluccio, Jamie Oliver and Gennaro Contaldo, and managed teams of up to thirty in award-winning establishments generating £6 million a year in fresh, scratch-made food. He opened more than twenty branded restaurants. He holds a Highfield Food Safety Level 3 distinction.
The kind of career, in other words, that tends to end in a head office role or a consultancy that works only with people who can afford head office rates. Lewis did something different.
Building The Chef Hub
The pandemic gave Lewis the time and the motivation to ask a question that the industry had largely avoided: why is professional executive chef expertise so difficult for independent operators to access affordably?
The answer is the same as it always is — cost and availability. A freelance executive chef carries a day rate that puts them out of reach for most small and mid-sized hospitality businesses. Permanent appointments at that level are a significant overhead commitment. The result is that many operators either punch above their weight with inexperienced kitchen leadership, or manage without the strategic input they need.
The Chef Hub is Lewis's answer to that gap. Based in Greater Manchester and operating across North West England and the wider UK, it offers three interconnected services. The first is traditional chef recruitment — placing permanent and temporary kitchen staff, with Lewis doing the matchmaking personally. "Recruitment done properly isn't transactional," he has said. "It's transformational." It is a line that reflects the distinction between CV-shuffling and the kind of placement that takes kitchen culture, operational pace and long-term fit seriously.
The second service is what sets The Chef Hub apart: a virtual executive chef offering, accessible on a pay-as-you-go basis. Clients receive recipes complete with costings, allergen information, method breakdowns and photography — the full package that an in-house executive would produce, without the in-house rate. Menu development, kitchen audits, food safety support and supplier recommendations sit alongside the recipe library. For an independent pub or restaurant looking to tighten margins, build allergen compliance or refresh a menu without committing to a costly hire, it offers a practical route in.
The third pillar is kitchen consultancy and training documentation — supporting operators with the operational frameworks that keep kitchens consistent, compliant and commercially sound.
Mental Health in the Kitchen
Lewis's work does not stop at the pass. Since June 2020 he has been a volunteer ambassador for The Burnt Chef Project, the hospitality industry's mental health charity. It is a role that has taken him to podcast appearances and industry events, speaking to what he describes as the psychological toll of professional kitchen life — the hours, the pressure, the culture of masking difficulty.
For Lewis, the ambassador role is a natural extension of the way he runs The Chef Hub: with the understanding that kitchens are environments built by and for people, and that the industry's retention and wellbeing problems are connected. He speaks regularly on LinkedIn to chefs at every level, from commis to executive, in a voice that is direct and without the self-promotion that tends to crowd out substance in trade social media.
What It Looks Like in Practice
The Chef Hub currently lists roles across the North West, covers kitchen consultancy for operators at various stages, and maintains a library of resources through its website. Lewis handles much of the client relationship himself — a deliberate choice that reflects both his belief in the value of genuine industry knowledge and his scepticism about the transactional end of hospitality recruitment.
For operators in the North West looking to place kitchen staff or access executive-level kitchen support without the executive-level day rate, the address is thechefhub.co.uk.