Hotels on Bulgaria's southern Black Sea coast are hiring more cooks from abroad, because chefs and sous-chefs are the hardest jobs to fill in tourism. Work visas approved this year for seasonal workers from abroad are up 185% on 2025.

Atanaska Yaneva, head of the labour office in Burgas, says the Employment Agency has recorded steady growth in demand for seasonal workers from non-EU countries. She says this makes up for a shortage of workers on the domestic market. Since the start of the year, 761 chefs and sous-chefs have been hired.

Nearly 14,000 seasonal workers from abroad are registered in Bulgaria, and hundreds of them are cooks. Most come from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, followed by Vietnam, Turkey, Moldova, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nepal and India.

Chefs are among the best-paid workers in the tourist trade. Sous-chefs earn €2,000 to €3,000, while head chefs earn up to €5,000.

Employers are looking to Turkey more and more. Hotel owner and tour operator Elena Andonova says a large share of head chefs come from there. Some Bulgarians hold the job too, but the shortage is very big and it is the most sought-after profession, she said.

Plamen Kopchev, who owns a hotel in Sunny Beach, said he once had a cook from Edirne who did very well. The cook could not extend his visa and had problems with the Bulgarian embassy. He left to work in Belgium or elsewhere in the West and never came back.

At one Sunny Beach hotel, the kitchen team has more than 30 people, including foreigners. The season on the southern Black Sea coast is ending, and hotels in the resort are closing one by one.

Some cooks chose Bulgaria this season over other European countries. One is 47-year-old Vikas Shian from India, who works in Sunny Beach and brought four fellow Indians with him: Amit, Anshu, Papu and Ritik. He has worked in California and Amsterdam, and spent 3 months in Moscow.

He likes Bulgaria because the climate is almost like that of his home region in the Himalayas, in northern India. Pay here is a little lower than in the UK, but he feels calmer, the chef explained.

He says Indian food is not well known in Bulgaria because people do not eat spicy food. He and his colleagues try to cook natural Indian dishes to show the true taste of curry.

The chef goes home to the Himalayas at the start of October, but he wants to return to Sunny Beach next season. He is working hard to learn Bulgarian and dreams of opening his own Indian restaurant in Burgas.