This pre-employment program is geared to low-income individuals in the downtown east who wish to professionalize their skills to work in Toronto’s food industry. Upon successful completion of this program, graduates are better able to pursue entry-level jobs in a professional kitchen, further their catering businesses or work as vendors in the food service sector. Our programs include:

• Sustainable Food Sector Training Program, in partnership with Dixon Hall and cater Toronto, for individuals currently receiving social assistance through Ontario Works.

• Culinary Enterprise Training to support local caterers and food vendors to professionalize their culinary-based small businesses.

• Safe Food Handlers Certification Training.

• Culinary Skills Training Curriculum includes supportive business-skills programming, including ESL, Kitchen Math (scaling up recipes for large meal service), invoicing, budgeting, time management and computer literacy. Culinary training focuses on kitchen and food safety, including knife skills, cooking techniques and terminology, menu planning, baking, breadmaking and pastry, presentation and food styling, kitchen culture and kitchen hierarchy.