The short answer
The Caterer is a broad hospitality media brand that also sells job listings. Only Chefs is a dedicated chef job board and nothing else. If you're hiring front-of-house, events, or hotel management, The Caterer makes sense. If you're hiring in the kitchen, Only Chefs puts your listing in front of a more targeted audience at a significantly lower cost.
Side by side
Audience
- Only Chefs: Chefs and kitchen professionals exclusively. Every visitor to this site is in the culinary industry.
- The Caterer: Broad hospitality: chefs, front-of-house, hotel management, events, catering operations. A much wider net, which means more noise in your applications.
Cost
- Only Chefs: Free listings available. Featured listings from £39.
- The Caterer: Job listings typically start from several hundred pounds depending on the package. Costs rise significantly for featured or boosted placements.
Listing duration
- Only Chefs: 45 days standard, with renewal options.
- The Caterer: Varies by package, often 4 weeks at base level.
Application delivery
- Only Chefs: Direct to your inbox or via your own website. No middleman.
- The Caterer: Dependent on package; some tiers route applications through their platform and forcing candidates to create an account, which many don't.
Focus
- Only Chefs: Kitchen hiring only.
- The Caterer: Full hospitality sector including non-kitchen roles.
Brand
- Only Chefs: Independent, built specifically for the culinary industry.
- The Caterer: Established media brand with decades of history in the hospitality trade.
Where The Caterer has the edge
It would be dishonest not to acknowledge this. The Caterer has real strengths.
Brand recognition is the big one. It has been part of the UK hospitality industry for over a century. Senior chefs and established hospitality professionals know the name and trust it. If you're recruiting at executive level — a group executive chef, a food and beverage director — The Caterer's reputation carries weight.
It also has significant organic traffic built up over many years, and its editorial content (industry news, features, salary surveys) brings non-job-seeking readers to the site who may see your listing passively.
If budget is not a constraint and you are hiring for a senior or high-profile role, The Caterer is a legitimate option worth considering alongside Only Chefs.
Where Only Chefs has the edge
Cost is the most obvious difference. A free listing on Only Chefs versus several hundred pounds on The Caterer is a significant gap for independent restaurants, smaller hotel groups, and contract catering businesses that hire regularly. Over the course of a year, the savings compound quickly.
Focus is the second difference. When a chef visits Only Chefs, they are specifically looking for chef roles, not browsing general hospitality news or looking at events management jobs. The intent is sharper, which typically means better quality applications relative to volume.
Speed matters too. Only Chefs listings go live immediately. There is no account management process or campaign setup involved.
And for kitchens that hire frequently — restaurants with high turnover, catering companies that staff up seasonally — the economics of free or low-cost listings versus per-listing media rates make Only Chefs a much more sustainable long-term hiring channel.
What kind of employer should use Only Chefs?
Only Chefs works particularly well for:
- Independent restaurants and groups hiring line cooks, chef de partie, and sous chefs
- Hotels and contract caterers with regular kitchen recruitment needs
- Employers who find agency fees unsustainable but need better targeting than generic boards
- Kitchens that need to fill a role quickly without a lengthy campaign process
- Businesses hiring across multiple locations who need cost-effective volume
What kind of employer might prefer The Caterer?
- Large hotel groups or restaurant chains with significant recruitment budgets
- Employers hiring at executive or group level where brand association matters
- Businesses that want their listing alongside editorial content in a trade publication context
The honest conclusion
These are not really direct competitors in the way the comparison might suggest. The Caterer is a hospitality media business that sells recruitment as one of several revenue streams. Only Chefs is a recruitment tool built specifically for kitchen hiring.
For most kitchens hiring most roles, Only Chefs will deliver more relevant applications at a lower cost. For senior or executive hires where brand prestige matters, using both in parallel is a reasonable approach, and the cost of doing so is low given Only Chefs' free tier.
The best way to find out is to post your role and see. It takes less than five minutes and costs nothing to start.
Post your chef job on Only Chefs today
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