Chef Excellence Master Classes

Chef Excellence – a skills package designed especially for existing Head Chefs, Sous Chefs and Chef de parties in Gloucestershire is about to enter a new stage. The scheme funded and developed by Gloucestershire Learning and Skills Council and Tourism Skills Network South West have now created a set of master classes in response to county Chef demands.

The final master class to take place will be Managing People. Being a Head Chef is more than just cooking food - its about the people who are working with you. Whether its just you and a Commis Chef, or you and a team in the Kitchen, its all about working together and building a team that can produce great food.

Do you have people working for you? Would you like to get more out of them? Then come along to find out more about how to build a team, how to motivate and delegate to your staff, how to manage people issues and how to generally be a great manager! This masterclass is for Head Chefs or for people who are aspiring to be Head Chefs and who manage people in the Kitchen.

The class will take place on Monday 9 June from 2.30 - 5.30 at Chargrove Business Centre, Cheltenham.

Please fill in the attached booking form and return to kelly.gingell@gloucestershire.gov.uk

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Chefs4Schools

Chefs4Schools is a new local initiative developed by the Tourism Skills Network Gloucestershire, which aims to link local chefs with local schools in order to provide support for the School Food agenda.

With many schools now delivering / seeking to deliver GCSEs in Hospitality & Catering there is a real need for industry support to ensure that delivery is consistent with current industry practice. Therefore, one of the main objectives of Chef Excellence is to create a team of local chefs who would be willing to deliver chef demonstrations in schools in order to provide young people with some practical cookery skills and inspire them to seek a career as a chef.

Furthermore, with the changes in school food and a greater focus upon nutrition and diet, industry support is also required for our school cooks in assisting with this transition.

So how can we do this? We are all passionate about what we do…. We know that. However, experience shows that in order to add real value to schools we have to understand their needs and practicalities of dealing with education system.

An information day was held in August and there are now chefs trained to deliver presentations in schools. If you would like a chef to deliver a presentation in your school, please fill in the attached booking form and return to kelly.gingell@gloucestershire.gov.uk

If you are a chef and you would like to become involved in this project, we have organised another training day for Monday 16 June from 2 - 4pm in Cirencester. To register your interest please contact kelly.gingell@gloucestershire.gov.uk

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Chef Excellence

Gloucestershire Chef Excellence is a management and business skills programme aimed at senior chefs working in hospitality & tourism in the county. It is a 'pilot' training programme which is funded by the Learning & Skills Council and is being managed by the Tourism Skills Network in partnership with Gloscat. It has been designed in response to industry requirements.

Programme 1 was delivered between June & November 06 with 20 chefs enrolling.

Programme 2 commenced on 26 February 07 and involves 8 days training over a 3 month period. Click on the attachment for programme information.

At the end of Programme 2 an evaluation report with a suggested format for future delivery will be presented to the Learning and Skills Council.
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Chef Conference

The first Gloucestershire Chef Conference took place on Thursday 06 April 2006. The conference launched the 'pilot' Chef Excellence Award in addition to presentations from Michael Caines, Gloucestershire Tourism, British Nutrition Foundation, British Food Fortnight organisers and local supplier Mise en Place. For information on the event please click on the icon (you may need to save the document before you can open it). _________________________________________________________

Chef Blog

For on-line discussion with fellow chefs visit www.chefexcellence.com
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