The Importance of a High Quality Chef Shoe

It’s clear that the life of a chef is often extremely demanding. The workload involved is commonly draining, the fast-paced environment hardly provides any breaks, and the hours are often very long and tiresome.  Spending hours on your feet for the entire day or night can become quite the burden; this can affect anyone both mentally and physically. With this in mind, it’s vital to take care of your body when spending large amounts of hours focused on your craft.

We spend nearly half our lifetime lying around in bed, whether sleeping or relaxing. As such, it’s vital to invest in a bed that provides the most comfort possible for your body. This frame of mind should carry over into the kitchen when spending hours on your feet. You want to provide your body with the most comfort you can throughout the day; not only when you’re sleeping. Below we’ll look at some of Clement Design’s best footwear options when it comes to comfort and maintaining the professional standards we find in executive kitchens and dive into some of the essentials you should look for when purchasing your next pair of work shoes. 

Slip and fall accidents are rampant in the food industry which could lead to serious injury and days, even weeks without work. We have worked alongside professional chefs to develop footwear with the goal of minimizing workplace accidents while providing comfort and reliability you’d expect from your shoes. “A chef needs talent, taste, endurance, drive, focus, passion, a sharp knife and a really great -- pair of shoes.” Not just good, durable, everyday wears, but elite footwear. Shoes that offer strength and support for the chef wearing them. Shoes that will last that 12 hours in the kitchen on hard and slippery floors.

However, chefs tend to make persistent mistakes when shopping for work shoes. These mistakes are far more likely to occur when you treat shopping for new kitchen shoes like any standard purchase. When it comes to kitchen footwear you want to find the perfect mesh of practicality, functionality, and comfort. If you can find these three things and couple them with aesthetics, you might have just found the perfect match.  Yes, a visually appealing pair of shoes is wonderful, but you should consider the other three qualities to be the prominent factor. 

The results should be about more than just the price of the shoe. High-quality chef shoes are not something that are cheap in a traditional sense. You may have second thoughts about dishing out $100 for a pair of shoes that will get dirty and covered with food almost immediately. However, you need to consider comfort, safety, and security for yourself in the workplace.

Many chef shoe shoppers make the mistake of purchasing inexpensive slip-on shoes from big retail establishments. Consider the slip-resistance of a ten-dollar shoe, this will pale in comparison to a fifty or seventy-five-dollar alternative. You may also find that you need to replace the pair of shoes at a higher rate than a more expensive option that offer more reliability. You have to weigh out buying a new pair of shoes every six months or every three years. You may also find that shoes that cost more do not necessarily correlate with higher functionality and durability. 

To help get you started we’ve put together a list with some of our top rated and reviewed, high-quality chef shoes. We can obviously preach that our shoes are the best in the industry, but we can also dive into some statistics that are involved when marking and rating shoes.

A Selection of Chef’s Highest Rated Clement Design Shoes

We are happy to share some of our most popular shoes rated and reviewed by chefs themselves. All of these shoes offer the ideal blend of functionality, comfort, aesthetics, and price.

CITADIUM

Citadium shoes are a lace-up chef sneaker focused on aesthetic and functionality. Utilizing ADHERA’s slip resistant glued and stitched outsole these shoes provide solidity and water resistance. The Citadium’s were developed to look and feel like your everyday sneakers but provide the extra functionality you’d want from chef shoes. This pair of shoes also offer a comfortable and hydrophilic gel-like insole providing support and solace for your feet. The shoes are also paired with a Coolmax lining and are available in both black and white

BIRDS

Bird shoes are a slip-on sneaker offering a modern style not found in any other brand of chef shoes. The outsole offers ADHERA technology with a glued and stitched outsole that offers longevity and solidity. The water-resistant microfiber upper offers protection from splashes and spills. The Birds also offer the Coolmax lining and hydrophilic insole.

VIPER

Viper work shoes are a laceless shoe utilizing a contemporary design. The water-resistant microfiber upper uses a modern style carbon print. Inside the shoes you’ll find an orthotic foam insole that will offer comfort and support throughout the entire day.

HYPE

Hype feature a glued and stitched upper offering support and mobility. Like our entire line of chef shoes the ADHERA brand outsole provides the highest grip coefficient in the industry. The high-top style offers ankle support and comfort throughout. These shoes are very comfortable and perfect for not only chefs, but for any job where safety and comfort are necessary.

DUCKS

Ducks are an EVA work clog with a slip resistant ADHERA outsole. The shoes are dishwasher safe which means you could just toss them in after a shift for a good scrub. The water and stain resistant shoes pair comfort and reliability with functionality perfect for chefs. 

High-quality chef shoes like the options that are reviewed above allow cooks and chefs to perform their work at their peak performance while also ensuring their safety and comfort. In addition, these shoes offer a form of practicality. They are comfortable, modern, resistant to spills and slips and sturdy enough to protect the feet from heat and falling objects.

All of these aspects are vital to security, safety, and efficiency that a chef would expect to find in a pair of quality chef shoes.  Wearing non-slip shoes is often required in a kitchen, not only for chefs but also for the service staff who is often coming in and out of the kitchen. While comfort and functionality are extremely important, work standards and regulations for safety in the workplace are an equally crucial role. Our ADHERA technology allows chefs to perform their workplace duties at a very high level. It’s about far more than just comfort, shopping for shoes should also be about practicality and functionality. With our patented technology offering the very best slip resistance in the industry at an affordable price, we hope this makes your decision much easier.

 As the chef shoe manufacturing industry evolves you can expect to see us evolve alongside it. We not only provide functional, modern, safe shoes we continue to develop and create better products that are suitable for any kitchen. With specialized footwear gaining traction year after year across all industries and with more competition arising, the supply and demand for functional shoes will begin to separate the elite from bargain brands

Having correct footwear for the kitchen is vital, whether it boils down to regulations or not. Using proper equipment not only prevents accidents in the kitchen but supports whoever is utilizing it. This helps take the fear of accidents away and replaces it with concentration on craft and the quality of work produced. Your next pair of chef shoes should provide durability, water resistance, non-slip soles, technical features and many more attributes described above. Finding a pair of shoes that culminates all of these qualities into a single pair can provide a perfect marriage for the daily challenges of the demanding chef’s life. If you have any questions about materials, process, or styles regarding our shoes please comment below and we will personally answer them or reach out to us at cs@clementdesignusa.com