A kitchen pass with tickets and a chef wearing whites

Ditch the dating apps and get a job in a restaurant instead

It’s all in the data: people are shacking up with their colleagues. Lotte Brundle goes back of house to blow the lid on restaurant romance.

Kitchens are steamy places – literally and figuratively. It’s true that many iconic romances happen between those from opposite sides of the tracks: Romeo and Juliet, Helen and Paris, and most scandalously of all, the famous ill-advised liaison between the back of house and front of house staff in a restaurant. Yes, the most forbidden romance of them all seems to be the chef and the waitress trope. And it doesn’t seem like the heat on this trend is going to be turned down anytime soon.

With ‘Hot Chef Summer’ heating up our TV screens last year, chefs in shows like The Bear have been taking centre stage. Since thirst-trap Instagram cooking videos are constantly trending on our ‘for you’ pages, it seems the appetite for a sexy chef is as insatiable as ever. Videos about chefs and waitresses dating are growing ever more popular on TikTok too. But, this trend is just as rampant in real life.

With a YouGov poll showing that, in December of last year, the highest percentage of couples had met through work – significantly outnumbering those who had met their partner through a dating app, in person, not at work, or through mutual friends – it’s no surprise that many couples have met through working in a restaurant together. With high stress levels, close proximity to others in the working environments, and long hours spent getting hot and bothered near a deep fat fryer, intimacy is inevitable.

Will Gillespie calls hospitality jobs a “very flirtatious environment”. And he would know. He is now in his thirties and has worked in hospitality since he was in his twenties. He met his long-term girlfriend Fran Levy when they were both working in a restaurant in Kent together. They have now been together for 10 years. When they met, he was 25 and a chef, she was 19 and a waitress.

“We met at work,” he says. “Actually, I had to leave my job when we started getting together as I had dated too many of the waitresses at the time, and it had created a problem.

“I fancied her straight away. We’d been interviewing for people anyway, and I just saw the back of her and I was immediately very drawn to her,” Gillespie adds. 

“I remember asking my boss: ‘Who was that? I need to know.’ I actually came in on my day off to ‘cover’ my boss, just so that I could meet Fran.”

He recalls how working in hospitality often leads to dating your colleagues due to the abnormal shift patterns. “I’d just split up with someone that we were also working with, at the time. But that’s the thing, once you get into that cycle, they’re all the people that you know – because the hours are so antisocial it’s really difficult to then keep up with your other friends.”

“I don’t know how we would have met otherwise. We were in different years at uni”

The heavy drinking environment that comes with a hospitality job also seems to be a catalyst for many couples: “We started going out for drinks with work and it was really really quick after that – within three weeks [of her starting at the restaurant].”

He jokingly describes his love life as a chef as “dating with hate in your soul”. Now, Levy has an office job, but Gillespie still works in hospitality. 

“It was easier when we were both in hospitality because if someone’s working 9-5 and they have the weekends off and […] you’re always working weekends, the whole thing becomes a burden.” 

“If I bumped into Fran on the street and dated normally would we be together now? I’m not 100% sure. We are two very different people. The only environment we could have ever met in was hospitality work.”

Another couple who found love in the service industry is Jenna Harewell and Miles Laslett. They met while working part-time in The Ballroom together when they were both students at the University of Kent in 2019. They now live together and have been in a relationship for three years.

“I don’t know how we would have met otherwise. We were in different years at uni,” Harewell says.

“We would’ve had to have known each other for a little bit before dating, I think,” agrees Laslett. 

Their shared hobby is going to the gym together, but they doubt that they would’ve become a couple if they had met there and not through their hospitality job.

“We worked together for two years and over that time we grew closer as friends, and got along quite well,” Laslett says. “There were a lot of shifts with only three or four people, so you had to talk to your co-workers. You had to become friends with them. And at that time there was a really good group who would go out after shifts, so we’d go out together a lot.” 

“You had to write yourself a note not to kiss me,” Harewell reminds him when recalling the beginning of her relationship with Laslett, when she was his manager. He has since moved to a new job in marketing.

“I just saw the back of her and I was immediately drawn to her”

Sally Howell*, 21, met the person she is currently dating at work, where they are both waitresses at a restaurant in central London. She doesn’t think she’d be dating her current partner if they hadn’t met through their line of work. In fact, when they first met, she was sleeping with someone else from her job. 

“I met them first outside on a smoke break and we got on really well. When they started working [at my job], we saw each other a lot,” Howell says of her current partner. “We were such great friends, mainly because I was completely oblivious to the fact that they fancied me!” 

On a work night out, Howell’s crush confessed to having a thing for her. She’d stopped sleeping with the other person from work at this point, and Howell and her partner’s relationship progressed from there.

She describes working together in hospitality as “so intimate, because the shifts are so long, and they’re entirely people-based.”

“They see you at your worst – when you’re really tired and don’t want to be there. It is a lot of time to spend with one person.”

Megan Highbury* has been with her boyfriend for two months: “With my partner being a head chef and myself a manager we both have a good understanding of the other’s job role and day-to-day life,” she says. 

Detailing the abnormal shift patterns, Highbury added: “Our ‘evenings off together’ are from between 11pm-3am, and when one of us says we’ve had a bad day we understand that could be as drastic as a pipe having blown in the cellar to one of his chefs having walked out mid-service.”

“I’d definitely say working in the industry affects anyone’s relationship as the hours are long and hard, the job role is stressful and the lifestyle is antisocial. It’s a huge adjustment compared to the ‘norm’ of a working week and relationship. I’d say hospitality staff often suit other hospitality staff as we understand the demand of the job.”

Highbury definitely sees the advantages of dating a chef: “His patience is incredible and working in a busy kitchen with his team definitely contributes to his calm manner.”

“I’d love to say the cliché that no matter what I would find him, however, the reality is… maybe not. With limited free time and energy, the idea of socialising for most hospitality staff is a resounding ‘no, thank you’.” 

*Not their real names.