How Much Does Hiring a Chef Cost in India? Study of 2,035 Restaurants

Most chef salary figures in India come from job-board listings or self-reported surveys.

Both have the same problem: they capture what people say they earn, or what employers advertise, rather than what actually gets paid.

So we skipped both and went to the one place where the number has to be real: payroll.

The figures in this study come from anonymised payroll records in Attendo (formerly Petpooja Payroll), entered by the employers who actually paid them. We analysed 8,915 kitchen employees across 2,035 restaurants, cleaned from 9,046 records, with joining dates between 1 January and 30 June 2026.

A state or city appears only where we have at least 100 records from 30 different employers, which is why 19 states and 12 cities are reported and others are not. No individual or business is identified anywhere in this study.

Chef salary in India averages ₹22,977 a month. That number hides more than it tells:

• A junior cook and an executive chef are ₹40,000 apart. The best- and worst-paying cities, barely ₹6,000.
• The most common kitchen salary in India isn’t ₹20,000.
• In one of India’s biggest markets, the state average points the wrong way.

Key Findings

In this study, “chef” covers every kitchen grade, from commis (junior chef) to executive chef.

• Average chef salary in India: ₹22,977 a month. The typical (median) chef earns ₹20,000, and half of all chefs earn between ₹16,000 and ₹26,000.
• Chef salary by role: a commis III is typically paid ₹15,000 a month, a commis I ₹22,000, a chef de partie ₹30,000 and an executive chef ₹55,000.
• Chef salary by city: Hyderabad pays the most (₹25,813 average) and Kolkata the least (₹19,803). In 11 of 12 cities, typical pay sits between ₹20,000 and ₹22,000.
• Chef salary by state: Kerala leads at ₹26,543 a month and Uttarakhand trails at ₹16,420, a 61.7% gap. Four of the six highest-paying states are in the south.
• Most common chef salary: ₹18,000. 729 chefs, 8.2% of the sample, are paid exactly that.
• Restaurant size: single-outlet restaurants pay chefs slightly more on average than groups of six to twenty outlets.
• Women chefs: at five of the six roles we could compare, men’s and women’s typical pay is within ₹2,000. The gap is in who gets promoted.

Kitchen wages are usually a restaurant’s biggest controllable cost after food. Yet most owners set them from one number: a city average, a job-board figure, or whatever the last hire cost. The sections below show where each of those misleads, and what to use instead.

So we started where most owners start: what does each role actually cost?

Senior Chef Pay Varies 13x More Than Junior Pay

A commis III earns a typical ₹15,000 a month and an executive chef ₹55,000. But the bigger difference is how predictable each one is. Half of all commis III salaries fall within a ₹3,000 band. For executive chefs, the same band is ₹40,000 wide, thirteen times wider.

The chart shows each role’s middle 50% band as a shaded range, with the typical salary as a dot inside it. The table below adds what each role usually means in your kitchen and how many employees sit behind each figure. Commis I is the biggest group, at 1,304 employees.

Put up a commis III vacancy at ₹15,000 and there isn’t much to discuss. Every cook in your area already knows what that job pays, and so do you. An executive chef is a different conversation. Their last kitchen, their cuisine and their reputation decide the number, and the table above can only tell you the range you’ll be negotiating in.

Most of your kitchen sits in the three commis grades, about 63% of the roles we could identify. Each grade pays only ₹3,000 to ₹4,000 more than the one below, which is a 20% jump for a cook who moves up. So when the restaurant down the road offers your best commis II a commis I job, it doesn’t take much to lose them.

One thing surprised us at the top of the kitchen. Sous chefs in this data earn more than head chefs, ₹41,800 against ₹35,000. That’s because the titles mean different things in different places. In a 30-seat café, the “head chef” may be the only cook. In a big banquet kitchen, a sous chef may manage twenty people. It’s why head chef pay alone ranges from ₹25,000 to ₹49,500. When you hire senior, ask about covers per day, team size and who owns the menu before you talk salary.

Once we had pay by role, the next question was obvious. Does the same chef cost more in Mumbai than in Indore? Less than we expected.

Chef Salaries Differ by Only ₹6,000 Across Indian Cities

Hyderabad has the highest average chef salary at ₹25,813 a month and Kolkata the lowest at ₹19,803, a gap of ₹6,010. Look at typical pay instead of the average and the gap nearly disappears: in 11 of the 12 cities, the median sits between ₹20,000 and ₹22,000.

In the chart, the teal dot is each city’s average and the orange dot is its median. The table below puts the two side by side, with the gap between them in the last column.

Look at the last column before you post a vacancy. When the average is much higher than the median, a few well-paid senior chefs are pulling it up. In Hyderabad that gap is ₹4,813. In Jaipur it’s just ₹445. So if you’re hiring a commis in Hyderabad or Mumbai and budget at the city average, you’ll land ₹4,000 or more above what most cooks there earn. For junior roles, go by the median.

We expected Mumbai and Delhi to top this list. They don’t. Hyderabad and Bengaluru both average more than Mumbai (₹24,131) and New Delhi (₹22,437).

NCR surprised us too. Noida and Gurugram average around ₹24,100 to ₹24,500, while New Delhi averages ₹22,437, about ₹2,000 less. Its median is also ₹2,000 below Gurugram’s. If you run outlets across NCR, one salary for all three may get you fewer applicants in Noida and Gurugram.

Kolkata is the only city where typical pay falls below ₹20,000. At ₹18,000, it’s ₹3,000 below Hyderabad and Indore, and ₹4,000 below Bengaluru, Gurugram and Jaipur.

Cities only tell part of the story, though. When we zoomed out to states, the gaps got much wider.

Kerala Pays Chefs 61.7% More Than Uttarakhand

Kerala has the highest average chef salary at ₹26,543 a month and Uttarakhand the lowest at ₹16,420, a gap of ₹10,124. Four of the six highest-paying states are in the south: Kerala, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

Kerala, Telangana and Karnataka sit at the top of the chart, and Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand at the bottom. The table below also shows how many employees each state’s figures rest on, from 117 in Assam to 1,388 in Maharashtra.

We wanted to be sure one big chain wasn’t skewing this, so we recalculated every state with each employer counted once. Telangana then comes out on top at ₹27,258, and Uttarakhand stays at the bottom at ₹18,017. The order shifts a little, but the top state still pays more than 50% above the bottom one.

Here’s what that means in practice. A ₹20,000 offer is above the typical salary in Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand. In Kerala, it’s ₹5,000 below. An owner in Kochi and an owner in Dehradun can’t post the same number and expect the same response.

Still, a state figure is too broad to price a single vacancy. We saw exactly how misleading it can be when we compared India’s two biggest markets in this data.

Maharashtra Pays Junior Chefs More Than Karnataka

Across all chef roles, Karnataka averages 7.1% more than Maharashtra. Compare only commis roles, with the same mix of grades in both states, and the order flips: Maharashtra pays 5.1% more.

In the chart, Karnataka is higher for all roles but lower for commis roles. The table below gives the exact monthly averages behind both comparisons.

These are the two largest samples in the study, 1,285 and 1,388 records. The commis comparison covers 1,064 records, weighted to the same grade mix in both states (35.1% commis I, 32.8% commis II, 32.1% commis III).

Why does this happen? Karnataka’s average is pulled up by its mix of roles. More of its records are senior, better-paid positions, so the state looks expensive even though its junior cooks earn less.

And it costs real money. Price a commis vacancy in Bengaluru using Karnataka’s all-role average and you’d set it about ₹6,000 a month too high. That’s roughly ₹71,500 a year, for one junior hire.

A state average tells you which roles get hired there. It does not tell you what a role costs.

That got us looking at how salaries are actually set. One pattern kept showing up in every state and every role: round numbers.

Chef Salaries Move in ₹1,000 Steps

91.4% of chef salaries in this data are a round ₹1,000 figure, and 95.4% are a round ₹500 figure. Almost nobody earns ₹18,450 or ₹21,300. Just eight numbers account for 47.2% of all chefs in the sample.

The highest point in the chart is ₹18,000, followed by ₹20,000 and ₹15,000. The table below lists the same eight salaries with the number of employees paid each one.

₹18,000 is the most common chef salary in India. One in every twelve chefs in our data earns exactly that.

This changes how you should think about raises. When a cook asks for more, they’re usually asking for the next round number, not a percentage. In this market, ₹1,000 or ₹2,000 is a real raise, and it often costs less than replacing someone who leaves for it.

It also shows how little a rival restaurant needs to offer. With junior grades ₹3,000 to ₹4,000 apart, a counter-offer only has to go one or two steps higher. If you want your junior vacancy to stand out, ₹20,000 is two steps above the most common figure.

We also went in assuming big restaurant groups would pay more than a single restaurant. The data said otherwise.

Restaurant Chains Don’t Pay Chefs More

A single-outlet restaurant pays an average of ₹23,261 a month. A group with six to twenty outlets pays ₹21,717. Scale doesn’t buy a wage premium, and on average it doesn’t cost independents one either.

In the chart, both the average and the median step down a little as the number of outlets grows. The table below gives the exact figures for each size band.

Based on 8,550 records. Groups of 21+ outlets are left out: only six employers fall in that band, below our reporting threshold.

If you run a single outlet, that’s good news. The chains aren’t pricing you out of hiring. The averages are only ₹1,544 apart, far less than the difference role or city makes.

The medians tell a slightly different story: ₹21,000 against ₹18,000. Our data doesn’t break business size down by role, so we can’t say whether groups pay less for the same job or simply hire more junior cooks. If you’re competing with a chain for a commis, compare offers for that grade, not the brand name.

One more split surprised us: what happens when you compare men and women in the same role.

Women Chefs Earn the Same but Get Promoted Less

Chefs in this data are 95.8% men: 8,531 men against 377 women. Overall, men’s average pay (₹23,186) is 26% higher than women’s (₹18,423). Compare the same roles and that gap largely disappears.

In the chart, the lines for men and women sit close together at every junior and mid-level role. Sous chef is the one place they split, at ₹43,000 for men against ₹35,000 for women. The table below gives the exact medians.

*A word of caution on this table. Only 377 of the chefs in our data are women, and just nine are sous chefs. That’s too few to call any of these numbers a standard for women chefs in India, so read them as early signals. Head chef and executive chef had too few women to report at all; every role shown has at least eight. A real benchmark for women chefs needs a much larger sample than this one.

Up to station head, pay is level. Women’s median is higher at three roles, the same at chef de partie and ₹1,000 lower at commis I.

So where does the 26% gap come from? From where women sit in the kitchen. Half of all women in our data are in the two most junior grades, compared with 36% of men. 10.1% of women are chefs de partie, against 19.7% of men. Only 0.6% are executive chefs, against 2.4% of men.

The drop-off starts at the very first supervisory step. If you want more women leading your kitchen, look at who gets handed the first station.

So what do you do with all of this? Here’s how we’d use it if we were hiring for our own kitchen.

How to Use This Data When You Hire

1. Start with the role, then check the city. Role changes pay by up to ₹40,000 a month; city by about ₹6,000. Take the role’s middle-50% band from the first table, then check your city’s median to see whether you’re on the high or low side.
2. Budget for the roles you need, not just the number of people. Two five-person kitchens can cost very different amounts. At the medians in this study:

Same headcount, about ₹55,000 a month apart. These are salaries only. PF, ESI, meals, accommodation and other benefits sit on top.

Salaries only make sense next to what the kitchen sells. If you bill on Petpooja POS, its profit and loss report shows your sales in one place, so you can check what share of them goes on kitchen pay.

1. Hold on to your junior cooks. Commis roles make up nearly two-thirds of a typical kitchen, and each grade is just ₹3,000 to ₹4,000 from the next. A timely ₹1,000 to ₹2,000 raise usually costs less than hiring and training someone new.
2. Don’t price a junior vacancy off a state average. In Karnataka, that would put your commis offer about ₹6,000 a month too high.
3. For senior hires, talk about the job before the salary. Head, sous and executive chef titles mean different things in different kitchens, so agree on covers, team size and menu ownership first.
4. If you have few women in your kitchen, look at promotions. Pay is already level by role; the drop-off starts at the first station.

In the end, what you pay depends on the chef’s skills and how much your type of restaurant needs them. Treat these numbers as a starting point for your budget, not a fixed rule.

And if you’re the one cooking rather than hiring, the same tables work for you too.

If You’re a Chef

Start by being clear about what you’re good at: running a station, a particular cuisine, managing a team. Then look for the kitchens and cities that pay the most for exactly that. The role table shows what your grade usually earns, and the city and state tables show where the same skills are worth more.

If you came here for one number, here are the quick answers.

Quick Answers

What is the average chef salary in India? ₹22,977 a month across all kitchen roles in our 2026 payroll data. The typical (median) salary is ₹20,000.

How much does a commis chef earn in India? A commis III typically earns ₹15,000 a month, a commis II ₹18,000 and a commis I ₹22,000.

What is a head chef’s salary in India? The median is ₹35,000 a month, but it ranges widely, from ₹25,000 to ₹49,500 for the middle half, because the title covers very different jobs.

What does an executive chef earn in India? A median of ₹55,000 a month, with the middle half between ₹35,000 and ₹75,000.

Which state pays chefs the most? Kerala, at an average of ₹26,543 a month. Counting each employer equally, Telangana leads at ₹27,258.

Which city pays chefs the most? Hyderabad, at an average of ₹25,813 a month, just ahead of Bengaluru at ₹25,719.

About the Data

These are employer payroll records, not job-board listings or salary surveys. Every figure is a monthly salary as entered by the employer who paid it.

Limitations

• A sample, not a census. The weighting and grade-matching checks test employer influence and role mix. Neither makes the sample nationally representative.
• Recorded, not verified, pay. The data doesn’t separate gross from take-home pay and has no salary-effective date.
• Titles aren’t standard. The data doesn’t consistently separate head chefs, sous chefs and line cooks. That’s the likely reason sous chefs show a higher median than head chefs.
• A small base for women. 377 women is enough to compare junior and mid grades (30 to 44 women per role) but not senior ones.