Where Kitchens Meet Global Business

Ask most people to picture a chef and they will picture someone standing at a stove. It is an image that has not caught up with the profession.Today, the person who trained as a chef may be running the food operations of a luxury hotel group. They may be developing products for a food company, opening their own restaurant, managing airline catering or working in a research kitchen creating dishes that do not yet exist. Cooking is where the career begins. It is rarely where it ends. Institutions like Chitkara University in Chandigarh have built their culinary education around that wider reality rather than the older picture.

Every great chef learns two languages, the first language is the one everybody imagines. Knife skills, heat, timing, seasoning, the feel of a dough that is ready. It takes years to master. There are no shortcuts. But it is only the first language.

The second language is business. Food costing. Menu engineering. Supply chains and wastage. Rostering a team and keeping it. Understanding why a dish that everyone loves is quietly losing money, and what to do about it. A cook who speaks only the first language will always work for someone who speaks both. This is the part of the profession that almost nobody outside it sees, and it is the part that decides who eventually runs the kitchen.

It is telling that the degree waiting at the end of the international culinary pathway is not a Bachelor of Arts or Science. It is a Bachelor of Commerce.

The chef is no longer the person at the back of the restaurant

There is a conversation many Indian families have quietly when a child says they want to cook for a living. It is not really a conversation about money. It is about standing. Whether this is a serious profession or a hobby that got out of hand.

That question has been overtaken by events. Chefs today run businesses, build brands, appear on national television, publish, consult, and are courted by hotel groups the way senior executives are. They are creative professionals and commercial ones at the same time. The food industry has become one of the few fields where craft and enterprise sit in the same person, and where a graduate can plausibly aim at either a corporate career or their own company. That is not a compromise. For a certain kind of student, it is the whole appeal.

India's food industry needs more than skilled cooks

Look at what has happened to eating out in India in a decade. Hotel groups expanding into smaller cities. International restaurant brands arriving. Cloud kitchens, food halls, coffee chains, patisseries in places that had none. Airline catering, cruise lines, corporate dining, hospital and campus food services. Every one of these needs people who can cook and also cost, plan and lead.

One of the industry's biggest shortages is not people who can cook, but people prepared to manage modern food businesses. That gap is where a serious culinary education earns its value, and it explains why the better programmes now look far more like management degrees with kitchens attached than like cookery classes with a certificate.

What serious culinary training actually looks like

You cannot learn either language from a book. The first needs a professional kitchen, repetition and correction. The second needs exposure to real operations, where a mistake costs something.

At Chitkara College of Hospitality Management, the culinary programmes are built around that principle. The B.Sc in Culinary Arts trains students across cuisines and techniques in professional teaching kitchens. The B.Sc in Culinary Arts with specialisation in Bakery and Pastry Art Management takes students into a discipline that is closer to chemistry than to cooking, and into an industry, artisanal baking and patisserie, that has grown quickly in Indian cities. For students drawn to the broader business of hospitality rather than the kitchen alone, the B.Sc in Hospitality Administration covers rooms, food and beverage, sales and operations across a full-service hotel.

What gives the training its weight is where students go next. Internships with Indian hotel groups including the Taj, Oberoi and ITC put students inside working kitchens and hotels rather than simulated ones. Bakery and confectionery labs and restaurant simulation spaces on campus let them make their first mistakes somewhere that forgives them. Guest chefs and industry practitioners bring current industry practice into the classroom.

Two years in Chandigarh, two years in Toronto

For students who want the profession to carry them across borders, the structure changes. The B.Sc in Culinary Management with George Brown Polytechnic lets a student spend the first two years at Chitkara University and then transfer, with full credit, into the third year of the Honours Bachelor of Commerce in Culinary Management at George Brown in downtown Toronto.

George Brown's Chef School has long been recognised as one of Canada's leading culinary institutions, known for combining commercial kitchen operations with classroom learning, and its faculty and chefs are involved from early on, so the transition is not a cold start. Then the student moves into one of the most diverse food cities in the world, where the Chef School runs a working restaurant, The Chefs' House, and where alumni include chefs who shaped Canadian dining. Each half teaches something the other cannot.

There is a practical argument too. Completing the first two years in India brings the overall cost of an international culinary degree down substantially, and students receive a conditional offer from George Brown at the outset rather than hoping an application succeeds two years later. For a family weighing an international education against its price, that matters.

Where the career actually goes

Graduates of Chitkara University's culinary and hospitality programmes move into roles as chefs and sous chefs in hotels and restaurants, into food and beverage management, culinary research and development, bakery and patisserie ownership, restaurant consulting, food product development, catering and events, cruise and airline food services, and increasingly into their own businesses. The training holds its value across all of them because the underlying skills, execution under pressure, cost discipline, managing people, understanding a customer, do not change when the setting does.

The old image of the chef was a person alone at a stove, judged only by what came off it. The truth now is larger and more interesting. A kitchen is a business, a brand, a supply chain and a team, and it can be located anywhere in the world. For a student who wants to work in it seriously, whether through the culinary programmes at Chitkara University or the George Brown pathway to Toronto, the point is simple.

The first language gets you hired. The second decides how far you go.

About Chitkara University

Chitkara University is a UGC-recognised and NAAC-accredited private university in North India, with campuses in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, offering career-oriented undergraduate and postgraduate programs in Engineering, Business, Healthcare, Pharmacy, Design, Architecture, Hospitality, and emerging technology fields. For students planning higher education, the University provides industry-aligned programs designed to combine academic excellence with practical exposure.

The curriculum emphasises experiential learning through internships, industry projects, research opportunities, and global collaborations, supported by modern infrastructure, advanced laboratories, industry mentorship, and skill-based training that strengthens student employability. Backed by 2,000+ campus recruiters and 300+ international academic and industry collaborations, students gain strong placement support, international exposure, academic exchange, and collaborative research opportunities.

Consistently ranked among leading institutions by national and global frameworks such as NIRF, QS World University Rankings, and Times Higher Education, the University maintains high academic rigour and industry relevance. With strong corporate partnerships and a focus on innovation, entrepreneurship, and interdisciplinary learning, it prepares students for emerging career opportunities in India and abroad.

The views expressed in this article are of Chitkara University and do not reflect/represent those of Shiksha.