The 2008 Beijing Olympics will be held 709 days from now. Western food chefs will then become urgently needed personnel in Beijing.

Currently there are only 3,000 Western-style food restaurants in Beijing...in the near future the demand for Western-style food will dramatically increase in Beijing's market.[First.cn]

Xu Bin, secretary general of Beijing Western Food Association (BWFA), told the reporter on Aug. 28 that some 10 thousand Western food chefs would be trained before 2008. Some Chinese chefs would be trained abroad while some foreign chefs would be invited to teach in China.

According to Xu, BWFA will conduct a series of food and drink trainings in the next two years. Senior chefs from the US and France will teach catering, condiments usage and restaurant management in Beijing.

Meanwhile, starting in November, some 20 chefs as one group will be sent abroad for training. They will attend classes in the US, France, Italy and other Western nations. She believes such exchanges can bring foreign advanced management, ideas and technologies to Beijing, thus to make Western-style food quality and service meet the international standard.

Xin explained that food flavors of various nations should be included in Beijing's Western food industry, such as the US, France, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Thailand. It is estimated that the number of tourists from home and abroad will reach 7-8 million in Beijing during the 2008 Olympics.

"Currently there are only 3,000 Western-style food restaurants in Beijing. I'm confident that in the near future the demand for Western-style food will dramatically increase in Beijing's market, " she said.