Hospitality agency
Edinburgh

No. We do not have a physical office in Edinburgh. Edinburgh placements run through our national live-in chef bench plus visiting chefs from our Liverpool and Manchester teams. Booking and compliance paperwork run from Liverpool. We will be straight about this rather than pretend to a local Edinburgh address.

Two routes. Route one is the live-in chef bench: chefs travel to Edinburgh with accommodation arranged, stay on site for placements of four weeks or longer, and are paid travel-inclusive day rates. This is how we cover the Fringe (August), the Christmas market peak (late November to early January), and country house wedding venues outside the city limits. Route two is the visiting model: chefs from our Liverpool and Manchester benches drive up for shorter placements (2-3 weeks) when planned, with travel and accommodation built into the day rate. Both routes preserve full PAYE, vetting, and DBS / PVG compliance.

For planned bookings of two weeks or more, we confirm a named chef inside 48 hours of brief receipt. For emergency or same-day cover in Edinburgh, the realistic window is 24 to 48 hours, because we do not hold a 2-hour central bench in Scotland yet. The 2-hour commitment we hold for central London, Manchester, and Liverpool does not apply in Edinburgh; we will be clear about that on the call.

Yes, but with planning lead time. The Fringe is a four-week catering surge across hundreds of venues. The deepest bench is available for operators who book by mid-April; bookings made in late June or July face a thinner pool because the live-in chefs who would travel for August are already committed. We have placed chefs into Fringe venues in previous years; the August slot is the most over-subscribed window in our Scottish calendar, so the eight-week-out booking rule applies more strictly here than anywhere else.

Edinburgh City Centre, Old Town and the Royal Mile, New Town, Leith, Stockbridge, Bruntsfield and Marchmont, plus Haymarket and the West End. For venues outside the city in East Lothian or the Borders, ring us to confirm whether the bench can reach you on the day you need cover. Some country house hotels in East Lothian fit the live-in model better than the visiting model.

Scotland uses PVG rather than DBS for protected adult and child work. Every chef we send into a Scottish care home, school, or nursery setting holds current PVG before the first shift. Chefs for Edinburgh hotels, restaurants, and event sites hold Right to Work, Level 2 Food Safety, and Allergen Awareness as a baseline, with PVG on request for any setting that involves protected adults or children. All Chefs Bay workers are employed on full PAYE.

Booking volume from Edinburgh is real but not yet large enough to justify the overhead of a permanent local team. The live-in plus visiting model gives operators a working option now, while we build Scottish booking volume to a level that supports a local opening. Glasgow and Edinburgh together are the trigger; we will open a Scottish office once both cities sustain the volume that justifies it. Until then, we would rather be honest about the model than fake a local Edinburgh address.