Giorgio entered the hospitality industry at nine years old. At 93, he still hasn’t left

At 93-years-old, Giorgio Angele is still hands deep in flour every week in the kitchen at Brunetti Classico in Carlton. The Melbourne pastry chef is part of a national brigade of veteran chefs filling a staff and skills shortage in the hospitality industry and nourishing their own lives by continuing to work.

What makes Angele’s story even more compelling is his career started in Italy aged nine, and has already stretched an incredible 84 years. “It was very hard for a nine-year-old boy to start work at 4am every morning,” he said. Angele can’t imagine his own grandchildren, at a similar age, doing the same. “But it was a necessity, because it was during the war, the opportunity was there so I had to take it.”

Angele made the long journey to Australia for a short-term stint to cook for the Italian team at the 1956 Olympics, then decided to stay and make the country his home. The veteran has interests outside of work – Italian football club Lazio is “like a religion” to him – and he adopted AFL’s Richmond because he opened his first business in Australia and raised his family in Tigers’ heartland. But work, he stresses, puts a spring in his step.

Being around young people and social interaction energises him. And while he’s eased off a little in recent years, Angele still works three long shifts a week, continuing to help shape the family business and pass down his professional knowledge to the next generation of pastry chefs.

Stories like Angele’s are a bright spot in “the great storm of 2026” for the hospitality industry, said Wes Lambert, chief executive at the Australian Restaurant and Cafe Association. The effect of the US-Iran war on everything from tourism to produce prices adds to a raft of new hurdles for operators such as the removal of credit and debit card surcharges.

But attracting hospitality workers remains an underlying crisis for the industry. While a great deal of energy is directed at the hospitality industry recruitment, the brain drain of senior talent is often overlooked. “There’s record low uptake in food trade apprenticeships,” Lambert said. “But we’re struggling at both ends: recruitment and retaining talent.”

“It’s critical the industry keeps its young talent and is open to retaining seasoned professionals at the end of their careers to fill the gaps,” he said.

At 82, Sydney chef Marko Taxidis has no plans to retire in the foreseeable future. “When I die, or when my body tells me,” he answered. “At the moment, I’m cool as a cucumber.”

Taxidis works at Jimmy’s Kitchen in The Rocks, splitting his time between writing menus and working the floor, where he feels he can help tutor the next generation of waitstaff. While Sydney is now blessed with great ingredients and food, he maintains service hit an apex in the 1950s and 1960s Sydney, and he’s keen to pass his knowledge and experience on.

Part of that tutelage might be schooling how to deal with a difficult customer. “I could tell you stories that would make your hair curl,” Taxidis said.

Rosa Mitchell, the 70-year-old chef at Rosa’s Canteen in Melbourne, isn’t just a poster child of the senior variety, her career route to the professional kitchen was less travelled. “I was a late starter, I was 48, I’d been a hairdresser,” she said.

Involved in the Slow Food movement, Mitchell’s career segue followed her interests, although she had initial concerns whether she’d find an employer ready to take on a rookie pushing 50. But the maturity and “level head” she brought to the kitchen proved a blessing.

Mitchell disliked the autocratic nature of restaurant brigades: “There’s no hierarchy in my kitchen, we all help each other. I sweep the floors and mop, like everyone.”

Mitchell, who still works four shifts a week, is similar to Angele and Taxidis in not putting a time frame on retirement. And despite their ages, they are still short of world record pace. Jiro Ono, the sushi master behind Michelin-star Tokyo restaurant Sukiyabashi Jiro, finally handed over day-to-day management to his son in 2023, but at 100-years-old still jumps in the kitchen to cook for special guests.

Mitchell isn’t concerned about breaking records as much as staying engaged and inspiring others. “It’s never too late to do anything in life, whether you’re 20, 40 or 50,” she said.

As for Giorgio Angele, during an eight-decade career, he’s witnessed his generation’s equivalent of the AI revolution affect his own trade as technology replaced tasks previously done by hand. Technology’s ability to increase production gives pastry chefs more time to devote to other tasks, time he said they should spend on creativity and studying their craft. Angele argues the way forward needs to be a careful balancing act. “It is important to honour the old ways while also embracing the new ways,” he said.