Been puzzling me for a while.
In: Other
There’s a tier of restaurant, above casual but below true fine dining that is more likely to wear those chef hats. Kitchen safety requires hair to be contained, usually a hat is the easiest way to accomplish that. However chef hats aren’t something normal people own, so unless the hats are required/supplied by the employer most staff just wear whatever ball cap they have on hand.
There’s no tangible benefit to chef over any other hat, it’s just about optics. People associate them with fine dining, so the more a restaurant is trying to encourage a specific perception (that maybe their food or atmosphere isn’t meeting) the more likely management is to support the usage of those hats. But it is entirely a branding decision.
I worked in a high end restaurant kitchen for a few years and every kitchen staff was provided one of those hats, but we weren’t required to wear them, unless you were in the dining area, either working a station or just speaking to guests or FOH staff, then you were expected to wear the hat as part of your uniform. Almost everyone ended up wearing them as their main hats anyway, because they were freely available and accomplished everything a kitchen hat is supposed to do.
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