Education/training
Field to Fork event whets appetite for food service careersGeorge Orwell and Jeff White have something in common. Both men washed dishes to make a living. The great English writer Orwell barely supported himself in a hellhole of a kitchen in a Paris restaurant. White did rather better than that. At 20 he was washing dishes in his hometown of Burlington, Ont.; six years later, he owned his first restaurant. He now owns all 14 outlets in the Philthy McNasty chain he founded. |
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 [ 2007-11-28 ] |
Jeff White founder and owner of 14 outlets in the Philthy McNasty chain of restaurants, poses with some of the students attending the Field to Fork event held earlier this month.
In other words, lowly employment in the food service industry need not stay lowly if employees are motivated and look at the broader picture.
That was the main message the Field to Fork career event and trade show sought to convey to more than 1,600 high school students and 250 post-secondary students at the Toronto Congress Centre on Nov. 14.
Mark Cator, chair of Field to Fork and event co-founder along with the Canadian Meat Council, says he and the organizers want to give some insight into the scale and scope of the industry.
"Cooking, in the big picture, is just a small part of it," says Cator, who is only too aware of public perceptions of burger-flipping drudgery.
As well as publicizing the success stories of the food service business -- such as Louie Mele, president of McDonald's Canada, who began his career with a spatula and meat patties in Windsor, Ont. -- and its size and heft, Field to Fork had another idea in mind recruitment.
$50 INCENTIVE
It's no secret the food service industry expects a labour shortage in the next decade. And even now, White says, businesses such as his are competing for employees from the same limited staff pool. Already incentives are common, and White himself offers his restaurant workers $50 if they introduce a new employee and he or she sticks it out for a bit. Future recruitment was clearly important for the 37 exhibitors and the Canadian Association of Foodservice Professionals on hand at Field to Fork.
There were firms from distribution, manufacturing, restaurant operations, marketing, agriculture and hospitality. Many of them were also sponsors of the event, which is free to students, but expensive to put on: the first Field to Fork in 2001 cost $45,000 says Cator; this year's outing cost about $150,000.
Stephanie Cooper and Somica Blake are both students who attended Field to Fork '08, and who both came away impressed. Cooper, a fourth year student in Hospitality Operations Management in George Brown College's Bachelor of Applied Business program, has volunteered at the event for three years now.
Cooper says overall, the high school kids learn that food service and hospitality offer career options they may not have considered.
And it's not all about acquired hard skills either, she says, since there's plenty of room in those sectors for students to exercise their soft skills too.
Blake, who's in Grade 11 at St. Francis Xavier Secondary School in Mississauga, isn't sure about a career in restaurants or hotels since she loves to write, but admits she and her classmates were taken with the show Field to Fork put on.
It wasn't some boring performance the kids were made to sit through, Blake says, nor did anyone talk down to them. And as well as giveaways there was also plenty of food for thought: "Many people consider McDonald's a dead-end job," Blake says, "but that's not true."
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