Immigrant chefs in the hospitality industry, face increasing stress and mental health challenges that significantly affect overall business operations. Nearly half (48%) chefs report that inadequate workplace support leads to poor mental health, particularly with key factors including staff shortages (58%), lack of time (43%), and limited budgets (42%) (Nestle, 2019).
Despite these challenges, an increasing number of immigrant chefs are transitioning into entrepreneurship for potential career prospects (UKHospitality, 2023). The career transition to food entrepreneurs brings a sense of empowerment, control freedom and autonomy, particularly establishing a sense of belonging and improving self-esteem (Stephan, 2018; Stephan et al., 2023). However, entrepreneurial activities can introduce stressors that impair psychological health (Audretsch & Belitski, 2021; Babina, 2020; Lerman et al., 2020). This raises a critical question: how and why are immigrant chefs willing to take on additional stressors associated with entrepreneurship, given their existing mental health challenges in the kitchen?
This project is funded by Middlesex University’s Higher Education Innovation Fund (2024-25).
This project will focus on chefs who experienced high levels of stress in their workplace and had a career transition into food entrepreneurs. We will involve immigrant Chinese chefs in London as a pilot study. Furthermore, we will use this seed-funding as a means to development application for large scale Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) grant, and this will enable us to engage a larger sample of immigrant chefs.
Participants include:
- continuing as chefs
- aspiring to transition into entrepreneurship but hindered by financial and social barriers
- have successfully established food business
- attempted entrepreneurship but returned to their chef roles