Vojtech Vaclavik designs chef shoes to fix kitchen backaches

The founder of Prague's Kro bistros and the restaurant Alma, Vojtěch Václavík, has teamed up with footwear brand Pár to create special work shoes for restaurant staff — an idea born of his own experience: years spent standing at the stove left him with chronic back pain.

Václavík worked his way through the kitchens of Prague's Sansho, the Michelin-starred restaurant Fauna in Oslo, and Hergetova Cihelna before opening his own places in the centre of Prague. Regular visits to a physiotherapist led him to a simple conclusion: to spare the back under all that strain — chefs can spend up to fourteen hours a day on their feet — you have to start with the right shoes. “I believe a good foundation for the rest of the body starts with the shoes,” the entrepreneur says.

Ever since opening his restaurants, Václavík had been reimbursing staff for quality work shoes, but he decided to go further and teamed up with the Prague footwear duo Jan Kloss and Darina Zavadilová, founders of the Pár brand, long known for its revived sneakers.

“It all started on Vojta's initiative. We knew each other through mutual friends and used to go regularly to Kro at Jiřího z Poděbrad. Vojta himself wore our shoes to work and complained that in the restaurant trade, shoes are completely overlooked. So he came to us and asked whether we could adapt them to the needs of a kitchen,” Zavadilová says.

The result is a model called Chef: it looks like the brand's other models, but the sole has been completely redesigned for wet kitchen floors and constant cleaning, with a smooth surface that is easy to wipe down, breathable and tough enough not to be pierced by sharp kitchen tools. The shoe also has a slightly raised heel — a small insole tweak that boosts comfort during long hours on your feet.

According to Václavík, good-quality work shoes are still a rarity in Czech gastronomy — largely because of high staff turnover, which makes it unprofitable for owners to invest in such projects. The restaurant-industry shoe collection will not be a one-off: the Pár brand, which manufactures its shoes in Portugal, is ready to offer it to other establishments wanting to provide staff with a single, quality line of footwear.