Non-Competes: 7 Numbers Behind What Happens When Your Chef Walks Out With the Recipes

In this article

1. The 7 numbers behind a non-compete that holds up — or doesn't
2. Is your non-compete even worth the paper it's on?
3. Your action plan for the coming month
4. Conclusion: a signature isn't protection

Your sous chef hands in notice on a Tuesday. Six weeks later he opens two streets over, with a menu that looks suspiciously like yours — and the first thing you do is pull out the non-compete clause he signed three years ago.

For most hospitality businesses, that piece of paper turns out to be worth less than the folder it was filed in. Not because the lawyer who drafted it did bad work, but because a non-compete clause has to clear conditions most owners have never heard of — a salary threshold, a mandatory payout, a maximum duration — and those conditions differ by country. What's standard practice in Germany doesn't legally exist yet in the Netherlands. And even where the clause does hold up, it never protects the dish itself: recipes aren't covered by copyright anywhere in the EU.

Most articles on this topic stop at "have a lawyer draft a non-compete" — without the numbers that actually decide whether that clause is worth anything. This one does the opposite: 7 concrete, sourced numbers, from Belgium's salary threshold to what copyright actually covers. At the bottom sits a calculator that runs your own situation — country, salary, duration, compensation — instead of a rule of thumb that happens not to apply to your contract.

Two things up front. This article is about what a departing employee can and can't legally take with them — not about finding new staff once that chef is gone, and not about the name on your door: our guide on trademark protection covers that separately, with its own numbers. And this isn't legal advice. The figures below are based on the law in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands as it stands in 2026 — have your own contract reviewed by an employment lawyer before you rely on it or act on it.

The 7 numbers behind a non-compete that holds up — or doesn't

Each number stands on its own, but they build on each other — and number 7 leaves the contract behind entirely and covers what a non-compete never protects to begin with: the recipe itself.

1. €44,447 — the salary below which a Belgian non-compete simply doesn't exist

In Belgium, a non-compete clause for a regular employee is void by operation of law when annual gross salary doesn't exceed €44,447 (the 2026 threshold, indexed annually). Not "hard to enforce" — void, as if it was never signed. Most commis, sous chefs and even a fair share of head chefs at an independent restaurant fall under that line, which means the clause sitting in their contract is dead on arrival.

Between €44,447 and €88,895 sits a middle band: the clause is only valid for roles a joint committee or sector-wide collective agreement has specifically designated — not automatically for anyone who happens to earn that much. Only above €88,895 does the clause apply in principle without that extra condition, subject to the other rules below. So check the departing employee's gross salary before you even bring the clause up — that one number often decides everything.

2. 50% — the payout Germany and Belgium both write directly into law

Where a non-compete can be valid, the same percentage keeps recurring across countries. In Germany, §74(2) of the Commercial Code (HGB) mandates compensation of at least 50% of the employee's last total pay (including regularly-paid variable components) for every month the clause runs — without it, the clause is simply invalid. Belgium's rule is similar: where the clause is valid, you must pay at least 50% of gross salary over the restricted period, or formally waive the clause within a fixed window (see number 6).

That number changes the maths entirely. A non-compete isn't free protection you write into a contract and forget about — it's a running cost the moment you actually want to invoke it. Holding a chef on a €48,000 salary out of the market for twelve months already costs roughly €24,000 in compensation in Germany or Belgium. Work out your own number in the calculator below.

The same kind of clause, four completely different obligations — the country on the contract decides, not the language you're reading this in

Belgium 50% of gross salary, mandatory

Germany 50% of gross salary, mandatory

France 30% of gross salary, mandatory

Netherlands 0% no statutory requirement today — a reform bill would raise this to 50%

Percentages are what the law or settled case law in that country requires for the clause to stay valid — not what an employer might voluntarily offer. France's figure is a practical floor from case law, not a fixed statutory article.

3. 30% — the minimum French courts still accept

France has no salary threshold like Belgium's, but it has an equally hard rule: since a 2002 ruling by the French Court of Cassation, a non-compete without a contrepartie financière (financial counterpart) is void. Courts assess case by case whether the amount is "derisory" — 15% compensation was struck down for a warehouse manager, while 30–40% typically holds, depending on seniority, role and how broad the restriction is.

For a French location, that means a non-compete with a token payout of a few hundred euros is, in practice, worthless paper. A court doesn't look at what was signed — it looks at what genuinely stands opposite the restriction, and that has to be proportionate to what the employee is giving up by not being able to work elsewhere.

4. 0% — what the Netherlands currently requires you to pay

And here the picture flips entirely. Unlike Germany, Belgium and France, the Netherlands today has no statutory requirement to pay for a non-compete at all. A Dutch employer can, in theory, hold a chef to a non-compete for free — the exact opposite of the 50% rule two numbers up. Other hard conditions still apply: the clause must be in writing and signed individually, and for a fixed-term contract the employer must give a specific written justification of the compelling business interest the clause protects — without it, the clause is simply void.

This is exactly why "I had a non-compete drawn up" means nothing on its own without saying which country. A reform bill is already on the table that would bring the Netherlands to that same 50% floor, with a maximum duration and a ban for the lowest pay bands — don't plan around today's free-of-charge situation as if it's permanent.

5. 12 months — the ceiling most European courts won't go past

Separate from the country, there's a second recurring limit: duration. A five-year non-compete banning a chef from cooking anywhere in Europe won't be upheld by nearly any European court. In practice, six to twelve months is treated as the reasonable ceiling — longer is possible, but you run a real risk a court simply reduces it to a shorter period it considers reasonable, or strikes it out entirely.

The same logic applies to geographic scope: the wider the area (all of Belgium instead of your own city, all of Europe instead of your own country), the more likely a court finds it excessive. A clause that actually holds up is narrowly drawn: this role, this region, this duration — never "everywhere, always, for everything".

6. 15 days — Belgium's own countdown clock

Belgium adds a mechanism of its own that few owners know about: after the contract ends, you have 15 days as the employer to formally waive the non-compete clause in writing. Miss that window and you stay bound to the compensation duty from number 2 — even if you never intended to actually invoke the clause.

That means doing nothing is the most expensive option. A departing chef doesn't just leave you "free to think it over" — inside those 15 days you're actively deciding: do you invoke the clause (and pay for it), or do you waive it (and pay nothing)? Put that deadline literally on your calendar the moment anyone bound by a non-compete leaves.

7. €0 — what copyright protects of your recipe, anywhere in the EU

Even a non-compete that does hold up never protects the dish itself — and here the story stops being about a contract and turns into a completely different question. The Court of Justice of the EU ruled in the 2018 Levola case that a taste, and by extension a recipe, doesn't meet the "precise and objective" standard copyright requires. Ingredients and method are fair game everywhere in the EU — anyone can recreate them, including a chef who just left your kitchen.

What can genuinely help is trade secret protection, under EU Directive 2016/943 — but only if you actually treated the recipe as confidential: restricted access, a confidentiality clause, no copy sitting loose in the kitchen or on a shared, unprotected drive. Without those active steps, you have nothing to show a court. This is exactly the difference from the name on your door, which registering as a trademark can genuinely make enforceable — a recipe works fundamentally differently.

Four layers, from nothing to a genuinely enforceable right. A non-compete sits in none of them — it governs who's allowed to cook, not what's protected

Ingredients & method

Zero protection, anywhere in the EU. Copyright covers the precise expression of an idea, never the idea itself — and legally, a recipe is an idea (the Levola ruling, 2018).

The written text, photos, menu copy

Thin but real: the exact wording of your dish description or your own photographs are copyright-protected — recreating the dish itself is still fair game.

A genuinely guarded process

Actually protected as a trade secret (EU Directive 2016/943) — but only if you can prove you actively kept it confidential.

Name & logo

Fully enforceable once registered as a trademark — see our separate guide on trademark protection for the numbers behind that.

None of these percentages is a figure set in law — they illustrate the relative strength of each layer of protection, from zero to fully enforceable.

Is your non-compete even worth the paper it's on?

Your action plan for the coming month

You don't need to memorise this article — you need it the moment a key person leaves, or before you hire someone new. Three steps, a quarter of an hour each:

Today, for free:

• Pull up the non-compete clauses already in your staff contracts and note, for each: the country, the gross salary and the duration
• Run those numbers through the calculator above and note, per contract, whether the clause stands or falls
• List which recipes or processes you genuinely treat as confidential — that's the first step toward trade secret protection (number 7)

This week, structurally:

• Restrict access to your most important recipes to whoever genuinely needs them — no loose sheet in the kitchen, no shared folder without a password
• Have an employment lawyer check whether your existing clauses meet that specific country's threshold, compensation and duration rules
• Register your name and logo as a trademark if you haven't already — a non-compete protects neither (see our trademark protection guide)

On every new contract:

• Decide deliberately whether a non-compete is worth it — including the compensation you might one day have to pay for it (number 2)
• Put the 15-day deadline (number 6) straight into your calendar for the moment anyone bound by a clause actually leaves
• Build your hiring pipeline so a departure is never a crisis — our guide on finding hospitality staff goes deeper on that

Conclusion: a signature isn't protection

This article isn't an argument against ever having a non-compete drafted — in the right country, with the right compensation and a reasonable duration, it can genuinely stop something. But the seven numbers above show that most clauses currently sitting in hospitality contracts don't clear those thresholds — and that even a clause that does hold up never protects the recipe itself. Protecting your business against a departing key employee actually takes three separate tools: a clause that genuinely meets the rules, active confidentiality around whatever genuinely needs to stay secret, and a registered trademark for the name. Our guide on staff turnover goes deeper into what a departure costs you beyond this.

And once that foundation is in order, that's exactly the moment to put the rest of your business on the same structural footing: your bookings, your revenue and your occupancy in one screen, so an investment like this one is never separated from how your business is actually doing. See what it costs — a one-time purchase, no commission per cover.