Susan Spicer of Bayona in New Orleans
The number of female executive chefs is growing. At the Culinary Institute of America, the prestigious New York culinary school, the enrollment of women in the last 20 years has doubled, from 21% in 1980 to 41% in 2007. Forty percent of star national TV chefs are women, and are 30% of the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who, which lists the luminaries of the food business.
However, women chefs still have a ways to go to catch up with their male counterparts. In a recent survey, Starchefs.com, which covers the world of chefs and food, found that women represent only 22% of the restaurant business, and only 15% of executive chefs are female. Women fare much better in cakes and tarts, representing 39% of pastry chefs.
A recent Forbes article provides more information and profiles eight female executive chefs.
Posted by Nestlé Library 
Many hospitality investors fear that we have entered into one of the darkest periods in the lodging investment cycle, with many of them believing that the downturn in the lodging sector will be deep and longer than anyone could have imagined. PKF Consulting recently released its 2009 Hospitality Investment Survey and it provides some eye-opening statistics. Revenue per Available Room (RevPAR) is expected to drop 13.7 percent in 2009 and a quarter-over-quarter gains in sales is not anticipated until the first quarter of 2011. The RevPAR forecast is the largest annual decline observed by PKF since 1932.
Deemed “the Oscars of the food world,” by Time magazine, The James Beard Foundation Awards are the country’s most coveted honor for chefs; food and beverage professionals; broadcast media, journalists, and authors working on food; and restaurant architects and designers.
