By Chef Adam Mazzocchetti

I’m a culinary-trained chef from Melbourne, Australia. I have worked on yachts for the past two years. Though it may seem like a short time, I have been able to extract and secure the best of what I seek in a tough but enjoyable industry.

The reason for my essay is this: Why is there such a negative connotation associated with freelance chefs in the private yacht industry?

Being fortunate to enjoy success in yachting, I have had my fair share of different employment opportunities across a variety of vessels. I have resigned or departed for my various reasons, but this has not hindered my employment chances in the slightest.

Still, the initial reaction from crew placement agents and senior yacht crew is always the same dull association of “Oh, you have a lot of short jobs listed” or “very patchy CV; this will effect your employment chances.”

These statements always humor me. It riddles me that, in an industry run so tightly by captains eager to meet that budget so they can collect their annual bonuses, there is still such an attitude toward freelance chefs.

Having earned a degree in financial planning and being fortunate to have owned my own practice where I employed 18 staff, I totally understand the benefits of having reliable people to work for you. I also understand that reliable and dependable staff are more expensive.

In my pre-yachting life, I found that the most cost-effective way to maximize my staff recruitment efforts was to hire high-end contract staff with proven track records who weren’t bound to my practice. Then I paid them a high-enough premium to secure them regularly, which increased revenue and more than subsidized the fees I paid to employ them. 

But most beneficial was the reduced amount of cost in taxes and other such expenses associated with paying a full-time staff member. 

My case study is not a new wheel by any measure, and is a well-adopted concept around the world by many large corporations to effectively increase the bottom line. I am merely using my experience as a means to support my argument of the upside benefits of employing freelance contract chefs in the yacht industry.

Some chefs prefer the security of a permanent position. Then there are others who prefer the luxury of being able to move around. Would it be so bad if a network of freelance/contract, high-end private chefs would be available to work regularly with different yachts and service their owners’ needs? 

It makes much more financial sense for a yacht to redirect and use its second or junior stew to assist with crew cooking in down times than to have the owner’s private chef doing this. When the owner is aboard, hire in an experienced chef who comes from a reputable agency background to satisfy the owner.

Paying a good chef $10,000 for a month, three to four times a year -- based on my research and experience, this is an average owner’s use of their yacht -- is far cheaper than hiring the chef full time for $90,000-$100,000 a year plus insurance, benefits, etc. (Obviously, for a live-aboard, charter or high-use vessel, this would not be appropriate.)

Might there be more questions to ask? Should captains learn better business practices? Does the private yacht industry need to be better educated on the benefits freelance chefs can actually deliver?

Arguably, there are many variables to factor into my main question, though, to actually make an effective freelance chef network viable. Still, that should not leave the obvious question unasked: Why is there such a negative connotation associated with freelance chefs in the private yacht industry?

Chef Adam Mazzocchetti has worked three freelance gigs so far this year and turned down four others to spend time with his family this winter in Australia.