Why your restaurant should invite guest chefs

Inviting guest chefs to your restaurant for a cooking demonstration or a full service is a great way to build community and bring more customers through your door. 

For inspiration, look no further than London’s Carousel, where they offer an open kitchen and an ever-changing line-up of talented chefs from around the world. 

At Aniar Restaurant, chef swapping and guest chefs keep their business and guest experience fresh. Whether it’s a chef in residence for two weeks or one weekend, the experience is completely dynamic and engaging to guests. 

With the restaurant industry growing more and more competitive, there’s more pressure now than ever to provide new and engaging guest experiences. With the day-to-day tasks of running a restaurant, finding the time to craft these experiences can be challenging.

That’s where guest chefs and chef swapping come in. It lets you share culinary and industry secrets and move kitchens forward. And the more the guest sees what you're doing to better their experience, the more they’ll keep coming back. 

Learning and seeing how other chefs approach their guest experience leads to new inspiration and possible future collaborations. Need more reasons to invite guest chefs into your kitchen?

1. Guest chefs connect you with restaurants around the world 

Guest chefs are an excellent way to create awareness around your restaurant, connecting you with audiences around the world. Remember to share information on your social media (in Instagram stories, for example) and even sell tickets before the event to get more attention. 

On their journey to create a diverse and engaging guest experience, Carousel has hosted over 150 guest chefs from more than 30 countries. They’ve collaborated with chefs from Iceland to Venezuela, allowing them to experiment with new ingredients and flavours.

When restaurants invite guest chefs from around the world, they can gain unprecedented coverage. Not only does the guest chef gain publicity and a new network of potential guests, the restaurant does too. 

When the guests are impressed with the chef, they start talking to their friends, and that chef tells his friends about the restaurant, and then the dominos fall. News begins to spread, and the restaurant and the chef gain a new audience they can reach with their passion for food. 

2. Give your guests a reason to return by showcasing guest chefs 

Restaurants are consistently trying to find new ways to separate themselves from the crowd. Whether it’s a seasonal menu, a certain culture within the restaurant, or just the overall quality of the food, maintaining awareness is a difficult task. 

You have to give your guests more reasons to return to your restaurant, besides exceptional food and service. Guest chefs guarantee a new and exclusive experience every time a customer visits your restaurant. Just like pop-up shops, guest chefs are available for only a limited time. 

Inviting guest chefs provides restaurants with a constant change of menu and engaging news to share with existing and potential guests. And due to the different cuisines and tactics that guest chefs bring with them, these restaurants consistently find new audiences who are drawn to certain types of cuisine. 

Guest chefs are a powerful draw for those seeking a one-of-a-kind, one-off dining experience. And when you have access to your guests' data, you’ll know exactly what type of cuisine (and therefore which chef) they’d enjoy. 

Worried that organising an event with a guest chef will result in cancellations and no-shows? See how Europe’s top chefs avoid no-shows in their restaurants here. 

3. Guest chefs help boost your team’s creativity, innovation and desire to learn 

Probably the greatest advantage of working with guest chefs is creativity. Why does the chef combine the ingredients in certain ways? How and why did the chef prepare a certain dish in a new way? 

By inviting another chef into your restaurant, you can inspire yourself and your team, creating a space for experimentation and innovation. 

Featuring guest chefs at your restaurant is not just a great way to generate revenue... it’s a win for everyone involved. From your staff who get to see another way of working to the guests who actually enjoy the meal, sharing your space with a guest chef is a great way to market your restaurant and expand your reach. 

Looking for even more ways to drive traffic to your restaurant? Discover our favourite event ideas here.