Reply To: Voc Talk Café by Après-cours – Food & Tourism

  • Robin Long

    Member
    18 October 2023 at 8:40 am

    Oct 16, 2023: The Future of the Trade

    Hello everyone! If you missed this week’s Voc Talk café, here is the summary. You can check out the recording and minutes on the Voc Talk café by Après-cours website!

    As a society, we enjoy eating out and having a dining experience and the front of the house staff is an integral part of this. We recognise the need for servers and maitre d’s and we know the transferability of their people, management and sales skills, but as a collective we have a hard time seeing past the perception that being a server is not a legitimate trade, it is something you do ‘while you are waiting for something else.’ We explored some of the difficulties in recruiting students for the program, and some of the innovative program offers centres have tried to increase student inscription. The discussion revolved around programs of study in other parts of the world that combine cooking and F&B, the workforce resolution to have a work-life balance that is very hard to do in the restaurant world, and how the front of the hours curates and creates and experience for the diner. The cultural and social aspect of dining and relaxing is an integral part of who we are as humans, and the desire for this continues to grow even as the workforce struggles to find workers. We finished our discussion with a look at a pilot project with an industry partner and RAC to assess workers and support their missing skills with on-the-job training. This situation could be an interesting asynchronous learning project, lending itself to project funding through a TechnoFAD measure.

    Thanks to all who attended for the great discussion, and we look forward to the next session!

    📱👩‍🍳 Robin