Our program is designed to teach students the basic skills needed to work as a line cook in a local food service operation and needed to work for a local caterer. Students will have the opportunity to earn the following certificates: ServSafe Food Handlers Certificate; the Skills, Tasks and Results Training Kitchen Certificate offered through the American Hotel & Lodging Educational Institute (AHLEI) & the Guest Services Gold Certificate through the AHLEI. The hard skills taught in the class include, but are not limited to Safe Food Handling, Utensil and Equipment Identification, Knife Skills, Product Identification, Food Service Math and Recipe Comprehension, Cooking Terms and Techniques, Line Stations, Basic Baking, Stocks & Sauces and Writing a Prep List.
The program is an 8 week on the job training program where students will be operating a food service business. The first training site is located within the corporate office of Goodwill Industries of Northern Indiana. In this facility, students will get first-hand experience operating a cafeteria that serves 80-100 people breakfast and lunch on a daily basis and they will get experience in operating a catering business that works out of this same location which focuses on events with less than 100 people and on weekday breakfast and lunch time catering to local businesses. The class will be 6 hours per day Monday through Friday. Students will spend approximately 4 hours in the kitchen learning job skills and an hour in the classroom learning basic knowledge required to work in a commercial kitchen. The remaining hour will be for meals and breaks. Students will be provided a uniform, a weekly $50 stipend, transportation assistance if needed and two meals per day.
The limited focus of this program is designed to provide the basic skills needed to obtain a higher paying position within a food service business which should help with employee satisfaction, employment retention and self-sustainability.
We are also partnered with Goodwill Industries and they will provide a case manager for our students who will help students throughout the program and keep in touch with them after they complete the program. Goodwill will also offer to our students the opportunity to be a part of their life skills training and job readiness training. This partnership will help our student not only find employment, but also prepare them to retain employment or find new employment if needed in the future.