The kitchen floor can be a perilous territory if you do not wear the right shoes. More often than not, the floor of the kitchen has smooth tiles where a person is more prone to skids, slips, and falls. Water and oil spills; as well as, food peels can, also, make their way onto the floor, which can further lead to someone losing their balance and falling.

Slips and falls contribute to the maximum number of accidental injuries in restaurants. Falling on the hard and concrete ground can not only lead to obvious injuries but, also, burn injuries, which can take place if the person falling is carrying a pan with hot food or drinks, and etc.

Moreover, a colleague working in the same room may get injured, as well; due to the flying debris caused by a fall. Matters can be even worse if the resulting debris, accidentally, touches customers. Therefore, it is imperative to buy chef shoes that are anti-skid, provide traction, have a good grip, and fit perfectly.

Whether you’re a chef, a waiter, or you assume any role that involves activity inside of the kitchen, features that prevent slippage are paramount. One of the most important aspects of slippage prevention is the resistance that the outsole offers against oily substances and grease, which may affect the stability and smoothness of the surface on which you’re working. This can be prevented in a variety of ways:

A chef’s job includes long hours of standing and, therefore, the shoes they wear have to be extremely comfortable in every possible way.  During busy rush hours, you might need to move quickly and be on your feet for a prolonged duration of time. A comfortable shoe will not only reduce your fatigue but it will, also, impact your job performance significantly.

An apt pair of kitchen shoes should have a great light padding which will prevent the foot from hurting while standing for long hours. You must, also, choose a shoe that has thick platforms, comfort-padded insoles, and a bit of heel to protect the feet from the hard floor of the kitchen and, also, to add spring to your step.

There’s not much to think about here if you’ll be standing all day long; that is, you want to be as comfortable as you possibly can; regardless, of your shift. However, sometimes it can be difficult for users to determine what the features that really make a shoe comfortable are. Before any purchase, it’s important that you analyze and take into consideration the tasks you’ll be performing with the shoes.

In order to ensure your shoe has all the comfort features you require in order to do your job well, there are a few things you might want to search for in your footwear:

In order to determine the amount of support in a shoe, you should first understand support, itself. The support is the ‘strength’ with which the shoe sticks together to your foot. If your shoe is loose and not firmly covering the foot, then it lacks support.

A firm and supportive shoe, on the other hand, is one that follows your foot around and mimics each motion perfectly. This means with each step the shoe must not tilt forward, backward, or to the sides; but rather, remain in a position, as neutral as possible. In simpler words, the shoe should not make any motion that the foot is not doing.

A highly-supportive kitchen shoe will prevent the foot from overpronation or underpronation. By holding feet down on a completely natural position, a shoe can have a huge improvement in the way you walk throughout the day. This is directly related to how quick your muscles fatigue and how much your joints suffer.

Purchasing a neutral pair of shoes is not enough for those suffering from such ailments. The shoe must be able to adequately accept an orthotic. This means you will need a shoe which has ample room within the realm of volume. Shoes which have removable insoles are a good place to start.

Arch support
While you are choosing the right pair of kitchen work shoes for optimal comfort, also, ensure that it provides good arch support. However, not all arch supports are the same and they come in low, medium, and high variations. The right arch support will prevent foot pain, plantar fasciitis, and heel spurs.

You must ensure that the arch in your feet fits comfortably with the arch support provided in the shoe. For example, a person with flat feet should look for shoes for work in kitchen with a minimum height of arch support, as prescribed by a doctor. Typically, if a flat foot person wears a high arch support shoe, they can do damage to the metatarsal bones of their foot. The best chef shoes have a memory foam insole which provides both cushion and arch support, simultaneously.

You should, also, keep in mind that the arch is not the only part of your foot that needs support. While it is true that the arch is one of the most delicate areas of feet, you don’t want to overdo support there and leave out the rest of your foot. As someone who will be standing and walking for a considerable amount of time, you want all-around support.

Heel & Ankle Support
The shoe must support the foot in all directions and areas. However, there are key areas of the foot in which support is needed the most. Back heel and ankle support, for example, are critical features for someone who spends a lot of time in the kitchen.

A supported ankle helps your body rotate in a neutral manner, meaning that there’s no additional stress placed on the joints. A common defect in traditional shoes is that the build, in general, is supported correctly except for the ankle. Having different levels of support in the same shoe will lead to an unnatural stance and walking form, as each part of the foot will react differently to the respective level of support it receives.

You know your shoe counts with enough support when it doesn’t slide forward or backward when walking, and it’s not loose around the ankle, either. Kitchen work shoes should always move in perfect synchronization with your feet. The best kitchen shoes are those that feel as if they were your own feet.

With that being said, too much ankle support can lead to weaker ankles overall. Finding a balance between the two is the best possible solution.

Tongue & Laces
Yet, another highly-underestimated element of the shoe, the tongue and closure are key elements to the support of a shoe. These two elements are meant to work in combination to support the upper foot; the tongue held down against the upper foot to prevent any unnatural motion, and the closure placing additional tension to compress these two together.

Working in the kitchen means a person is more susceptible to spilling hot food or drinks; as well as, dropping cooking knives, heavy pans and other objects on the foot. This can cause physical injury and damage to the skin and bones of the feet. Therefore, it is crucial to choose a shoe that can protect against such accidents and mishaps.

At the same time, a pair of chef shoes should be tightly sealed and should have a water-resistant/waterproof upper. Wearing such type of kitchen shoes will ensure that hot and cold liquid, or even bits of food, do not end up trickling inside your shoe. That can not only be uncomfortable but, also, burn your foot if the food or drink is hot. It will, also, mean the added burden of having to clean or replace your shoe in the middle of work.

For the sake of helping you understand the different elements that contribute to the protection that shoe offers, we’ll divide protection into two parts: physical and indirect. Physical protection will involve every aspect of the shoe that prevents your feet from being directly injured by an external physical object, such as a knife falling on your foot.

Physical protection
Depending on the role you represent in the kitchen, you may want to opt for more physical protection or more indirect one. For chefs who handle sharp knives, tenderizing hammers, and other variety of potentially hazardous kitchen tools, we recommend more physical protection. This is delivered, mostly, by the upper-build materials and their resistance.

A material-like mesh would offer little-to-no physical protection from a falling pan or knife. On the other hand, a shoe like the New Balance MID627 that has a thin, steel plate protector on the toes will be your salvation in this scenario. If you’re a waiter or someone who assumes any other role in the kitchen, we recommend a healthy balance between physical and indirect protection.

The elements of physical protection we recommend to look for would be a resistant upper build; preferably, leather or a strong synthetic material. It’s important that such material is not affected by oil or other contaminants that may harm the surface of the shoe for good. If possible, a thin layer of steel on the toes is an excellent protection method, as well.

Indirect protection
Indirect protection will involve events or scenarios in which the lack of certain protection features can lead to an injury or an accident. For instance, we would refer to a non-slipping outsole as an indirect protection feature. Despite not protecting your feet physically, it plays a huge role in preventing a variety of potential accidents in the kitchen. In fact, some would argue that this kind of protection is much more important than physical one, as the potential damage is, arguably, greater.

Waterproofing kitchen work shoes would, also, fall into this category. Additionally, features like an odor-resistant insole, also, make it as indirect-protection measures. If you have a kitchen shift, you’ll know that it can, easily, become an excessively sweaty environment for your feet.

This sweat contributes to the development of bacteria, fungi, potential infections, and irritation. These conditions are not to be underestimated, as they can easily become an obstacle to both your optimal-work performance and your health in a manner of just days. All it takes is a couple of shifts on the wrong pair of shoes.

A chef can step on all sorts of food and other squishy-squashy objects that somehow make their way down to a busy kitchen floor. And, of course, there is the added peril of water, oil, other liquid, food ingredients, and the food; itself, spilling down on the shoes. Hence, kitchen work shoes should be easy to clean.

For the very reasons mentioned above, a pair of shoes for work in kitchen can get dirtier, far more easily and frequently, compared to daily wear shoes. An important criterion for judging kitchen shoes’ quality is to see how easy they are to clean; particularly, because chef’s shoes have to be cleaned regularly, sometimes every few hours. An important factor here is that whether the shoes can be wiped off easily and hand washed because it can be tedious; not to mention, expensive to get a professional to do the job.

Preventing dirt
Always remember that the easiest way to clean a shoe is preventing it from getting dirty in the first place. This, obviously, is easier said than done, but we’re not referring to the care you give the shoes (although that actually has an impact on how cleanable they are), but rather, the qualities offered by the shoe to prevent getting overly dirty.

The first thing you should be looking for is non-absorbing materials. No matter what it is, you don’t want your shoe absorbing anything that falls on it. Materials like mesh and absorbing foams are, extremely, easy to get dirt on, especially in a kitchen. If some oil or sauce falls on your shoe, you want to be able to clean it smoothly without the shoe materials absorbing any of it.

In order to prevent contaminants from getting into the annoying parts of a shoe, we recommend using footwear that is closed; at least, in the upper build. Alternatively, if the footwear is open or has perforations on the upper build, we only recommend it if the shoe can, easily, be washed as a whole, like in the case of Crocs. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself spending a fair amount of time getting the food out of the impossible spots it gets into.

If possible, opt for a shoe that counts with a non-spaced outsole. This means that the outsole doesn’t feature a design in which there’s too much free space where food could, potentially, get into when stepped on. Sliced outsole designs, for example, easily pick up any food that they step on, and they can create an irregular surface on the outsole that makes walking nearly impossible; not to mention, it will look and feel odd. Depending on what you step on and how long it’s been there, it may be easy or troublesome to get rid of the thing you stepped on.

Cleaning shoes
That being said, if the shoes get dirty for whatever reason, you’ll want to clean it as effortlessly as possible. Generally, you’ll have access to the washing instructions of shoes before you purchase them, whether it’s in retail stores or online platforms. These instructions should give you a complete idea of what you’ll be dealing with once you have to clean them.

Before machine washing and drying ANY shoe, it’s extremely important that you verify such shoes are compatible with the machines. A non-compatible shoe can get easily ruined, both torn or permanently stained by soap, if inserted in the washing machine.

Also, keep in mind that the washing machine will harm any pair of shoes, even those compatible with it. At the end of the day, the banging of the shoes inside the washing machine has a considerable effect on the external materials and, thus, their usable lifetime. The same goes for the dryer.