Culinary Arts Program

why a chef? it's just it's in your blood once you've got the passion or we call it the juice uh... it's hard to give up it's hard to give up our Culinary Arts apprenticeship program is in fact a degreed program as well as a journeyman status on-the-job training program uh... the program is a sixty two credit program students work six thousand hours on the on-the-job training in nine areas of concentration everything from stewarting and washing dishes all the way up to being leads to Sous chef so by the time they graduate they are Sous chef status or second-in-command journeyman cooks we have over a hundred and thirty students apprentices then we have about seventy sponsoring houses within ninety mile radius where we differ from the traditional culinary school is our students come one day a week for theory and their labs te rest of the time they're actually working with journeyman chefs and executive chefs honing their skill uh... culinary schools lots of students go five days a week and they have classes and they take their labs we throw our students to the wolves right off the bat our students are geared towards the hands-on learning and they get it, they get it our instructors are all industry people uh... who come to class and teach a class one day a week and the rest of the time they are actually out in the industry uh... training their people and running a business apprenticeship is earn while you learn they are actually paid a wage while they ...uh ... while they train so when they, when they graduate they have a journeyman an associates degree and they're ready to go an executive chef that's interviewing and hiring would much rather have someone who was has been in the field knows the equipment knows the sense of urgency verses someone comes out with book smart your can't teach urgency in the classroom these students have to get out there in the industry and work it our students are actually hired by the time they were in their third year they actually have been recruited by any number of houses uh... before they even graduate we have about ninety eight percent placement uh... students take everything from nutrition, to purchasing, to culinary accounting and the lab classes, is exactly that its hands on they're fabricating fish they're doing classical knife cuts they're doing classical sauces uh... we have students that are traditional students write out a high school we have mid twenties i even have a couple in their sixties that are changing careers it's a creative field but most of it at the beginning as far as apprenticeship is learning the fundamentals and, and honing your skills really from a classical knofe cut to a classical sauce and developing a pallet so that some day you can in fact create your own, you do have to be a technician as well as an artist in this field we are in a two point three million dollar culinary training center uh... that was built in the spring of two thousand eleven our students now come and spend the entire day on one side of the hallway we have our theory classes on the other side we have our labs both baking and savory and students actually spent the entire day here bring their lunch or cook their lunch and uh... I couldn't ask for anything nicer than what I have we are state of the art students will get their own workstation uh... but they have the ability to look up uh... at the chef's table and watch chef fifty-two inch screens either at the screen or directly at the chef himself so there's no way to miss it the cool thing is this we have the capabilities of taping vignettes from the chef's demo that the student can then go back and review that demo so not a lot of places can do that uh... and that's very cool uh... we have state of the art stuff we have stone ovens uh... for stone work we have rationale ovens that cook nine different ways we have conventional ovens, convectional ovens sautee stations, fry stations it's our job here at the training center to get the students comfortable with every piece of equipment that's being utilized in the industry not every house has a buffalo chopper you know, but we have one we want them qualified on these pieces of equipment so if they end up in a house that has those pieces of equipment they're comfortable in using them we're making journeyman chef capable of going anywhere in the United States within a matter of days be able to throw down with best of them