£45,000
One sous-chef. Fully loaded.
A £35k salary becomes ~£45k once April-2026 employer NI (15%), pension and holiday pay are added.
Source: ChefsBay UK Chef Salary 2026
A full brigade. National Insurance. Pensions. Cover for the chef who just quit. NovaChef serves Michelin-pedigree meals from a countertop smart oven — no kitchen, no brigade, around the clock.
“Exceptional food. Outstanding quality.” — PIERRE KOFFMANN · 3 MICHELIN STARS
A £35k salary becomes ~£45k once April-2026 employer NI (15%), pension and holiday pay are added.
UK hospitality lost 59,000 staff to early 2026. Replacing one chef still costs 50–75% of salary.
London runs ~82% occupancy — yet most kitchens shut at 22:00, leaving late orders unserved.
An illustrative mid-size hotel restaurant. Adjust every figure to your own in the live calculator below.
Illustrative Same volume, ~£110,000/yr lower — and you stop competing for chefs who don't exist.
Enter what you know. Defaults use UK 2026 wage data — change anything.
In-house = brigade labour + ingredients + waste. NovaChef = meals × your price + one operating FTE to heat & serve. Figures are your inputs — indicative, not a quote.
Michelin-pedigree chefs cook every dish with premium European proteins, then flash-freeze at peak — no preservatives, no shortcuts.
Individual portions, multi-portion trays or a 24/7 smart-vending freezer. No prep, no waste, long shelf life, fixed price per meal.
A countertop smart oven any team member can run. Restaurant quality at 3am, on a railway, in a lounge — wherever a kitchen can't go.
174,000 rooms × ~82% occupancy ≈ 142,000 guests a night. If just 1 in 10 ordered one hot £15 meal that only needs reheating, that's ~14,200 meals a day the city could serve around the clock.
Rooms: London Datastore (Q1 2025) · occupancy: PwC 2026 · capture & £15 ticket are planning assumptions.
The same switch that cuts your kitchen bill removes the waste, the cold storage and the energy that drive your carbon footprint. In NHS and public-sector tenders, that's scored — not optional.
UK hospitality bins 920,000 tonnes of food a year — £3.2 billion, around £10,000 per outlet. WRAP's breakdown: 45% from food preparation (peelings, trim, offcuts) + 21% from spoilage (raw stock stored, then binned) = two-thirds wasted in the kitchen. Only the remaining 34% is what diners leave on the plate.
No peelings to bin, no raw ingredients stored and spoiled, no over-production. Chef meals arrive portioned and frozen — the 66% kitchen-side waste simply doesn't exist. (Plate waste stays with the guest — we're honest about that.)
No walk-in cold rooms full of raw stock, no ranges and ovens running all day to prep and cook. Just a freezer and a countertop oven that heats only when an order comes in — a fraction of the energy, and lower Scope 1 & 2 per cover.
The NHS applies a minimum 10% net-zero & social-value weighting to procurements and requires Carbon Reduction Plans. A waste-eliminating, lower-carbon supply turns "we're greener" into a measured number that wins bids.
We'll bring the smart oven, cook the menu in front of your team, and hand you a costed plan against your current kitchen.