"Chefs may only work in the kitchen for 10 years and then shift into other areas, such as into a supervisory role, opening their own restaurants or working with suppliers and manufacturers," says Robertson.
"Chefs are pretty special people with a huge passion for food, so whether they're working in the kitchen or not, they can carve out a career around food."
He says there are two main training pathways in New Zealand. The first is training at a polytechnic and obtaining a national cookery qualification, which takes 2-3 years. The second is becoming an apprentice chef through Service IQ, where training is done on the job.
"Going down the second option will mean you probably won't end up with a student debt at the end," admits Robertson. "There are also hundreds of secondary schools now doing hospitality programmes; that's also a good way in."
Heritage Hotel Auckland's executive chef Jinu Abraham remembers the first time he set foot inside a hotel on the urging of his mother's friend, whose husband was food and beverage manager at Le Meridien in New Delhi.
"The atrium lobby was huge and teeming with people. The staff were meticulously dressed in designer clothing: there was such panache," says Abraham. "Everything ran like clockwork and there was so much to see. Before then, I wanted to become a doctor, but walking into a hospital didn't have the same effect on me as walking into a beautiful hotel. I loved the glamour of it."
He trained in a government-run hotel school for three years in his late teens, but it was during work experience placements that he really managed to narrow down what part of the hotel business he was most suited to. He thought the front office would be the place for him, but soon found the creativity of the kitchen too hard to resist.
"The front office felt a bit bland," says Abraham. "But, in the kitchen everything was different. In the kitchen there was colour; there was drama. I loved creating; the artistic stuff. It was much more hard work, but so rewarding."
His first job was at The Oberoi in New Delhi, an iconic hotel made famous during the days of the British Raj in India. He remembers a very old hotel and olde world hospitality.
"It had its own charm, it was a living, breathing hotel," says Abraham. "There was a baker's oven close to 100 years old. We didn't know what to make of it because none of the chefs knew what temperature it was. We'd put the baking in the top level, the puff pastry in the middle and proof things at the bottom. It was on 24/7 and if you opened the door it was 30kg of iron falling down on you because the hinges were worn down. For decades it had been done like that. Now, I would need a manual and lessons to teach young workers what to do with this oven. Back then health and safety wasn't such an issue."
Abraham says that the hospitality industry is the same as it always has been, except that technology is setting the pace a bit more and there's a much greater emphasis on health and safety, as well on teaching a more dispassionate trainee workforce.
"Our students studying hospitality now, across all cultures, can be a little bit more fragile than my generation was when getting into the industry," says Abraham. "It's a good thing for them, because I remember pots being thrown at us if we did something wrong and working 15-16 hour days. You needed real passion and dedication to get into the industry back then and that's lacking a bit now."
The industry has enabled Abraham to travel to different countries with his work and he remembers one challenging experience working on the launch of a hotel back in India in a remote village where it was difficult to get supplies and equipment transported in. Despite the challenges, he looks back on the time fondly and with pride.
Over his career, Abraham has won many awards and recently designed a raw breakfast bar for Auckland's Heritage Hotel, featuring around 40 items not cooked above 40C.
"People are wanting real food and we're presenting more plant-based cuisine, alongside the traditional foods," says Abraham. "It's the information age and our customers are highly educated about what they want from their dining experience."
His advice for people wanting to get into the tourism hospitality industry is to try out all the departments in a hotel and narrow it down to the area you like the most. It might be a surprise which one comes out on top.
To succeed, he says you need two things: to love the work and to have an attitude to always be learning - the rest can be taught.
