A kitchen is staffed as a brigade: the stations, the ratios between them, the pastry and bakery line, the stewards who keep it running. This page covers how complete kitchen crews are recruited from the Philippines — composition, cuisine and volume matching, live testing, deployment — and where cooks are admitted on shortage lists or qualification routes. The cook profile and its certificates are on the cooks-and-chefs guide.
An illustrative brigade for a 300-cover hotel kitchen recruited from overseas: a sous-chef, five chefs de partie across sauce, grill, garde-manger, hot section and pastry, eight line cooks, six commis, two bakers and five stewards. The ratio between stations follows your menu and service style; the share of senior roles follows what your executive chef can integrate — usually the sous-chef and chefs de partie as the supervisory layer, with line cooks and commis in volume. Stewards are recruited with the brigade because a kitchen without them does not run.
Cooks are matched to the cuisine and the production model before they are tested. Mediterranean and continental hotel kitchens, Asian specialty outlets, grill concepts, banqueting and central production kitchens, institutional catering — each has candidates in the Philippine and Gulf labour market who have run that station in that style. Mismatching a buffet cook to an à la carte station is the commonest reason a cook fails in month one, and testing on your actual menu is how it is avoided.
At our Makati kitchen each candidate cooks to your brief — the dishes, the recipe cards, the timing — plates and presents, while your executive chef watches live — tasting by your chef on site in Makati or by a local chef you nominate; hygiene, mise en place, knife work, station discipline and speed are scored on a sheet agreed with you. Pastry and bakery candidates produce to your product list. The test takes a day; the brigade is selected that evening.
Austria lists cooks as a nationwide shortage occupation — Koch/Köchin, Commis de Cuisine, Chef de Partie, Patissier, Souschef, Chef de Cuisine among the titles — and issued 740 Rot-Weiß-Rot cards to cooks and kitchen staff in 2023. Germany admits cooks with a two-year qualification on the experience route or through Ausbildung. Malta requires the Skills Pass of kitchen staff (kitchen porters excluded since January 2026). The Gulf classifies chefs at MoHRE skill levels 3–4. Croatia, Malta and Central Europe admit the whole brigade on their routes. See the country guides for each.
Recruitment runs through our own DMW-licensed agency, Prime Search Manpower Agency Inc. in Makati (licence DMW-027-LB-11182024): your company is accredited at the Migrant Workers Office for the destination, the job order is registered with the DMW, and every worker leaves Manila with a verified contract, medical clearance, pre-departure orientation and an Overseas Employment Certificate. Recruitment follows the employer-pays principle: no cook, waiter or room attendant pays for an interview, a skills test or a place on a shortlist. Your company is the employer from day one; we never employ or lease the workers.
Everything here is subject to the immigration route, labour-market rules and sector requirements of the destination country and Philippine DMW rules.
Yes — a selection day at our Makati kitchen tests and interviews a complete brigade for one property, with your executive chef live; larger groups run consecutive days by outlet.
Yes. Send the dishes, recipe cards and timing; candidates cook to them, and pastry and bakery candidates produce to your product list.
Cooks are a nationwide shortage occupation under Austria's Rot-Weiß-Rot card, with the titles listed on the Austria chefs guide; the Pre-Check register and A2 German on arrival apply.
Germany admits cooks with a recognised two-year qualification on the experience route, or through Ausbildung; unqualified kitchen staff have no route. The Germany hospitality guide gives the detail.
General information for employers, not legal or migration advice. Rules change; we re-verify before each hire.