Handy guide to... running a community chef project - Kent Trust Web

Venues and equipment
The chef will need to have access to community venues providing cooking facilities to
run the cooking courses. These will need to be identified by partners before the chef is
in post and hire rates (if applicable) negotiated, though hopefully partners will be able to
provide facilities for nothing or a nominal cost. Venues with cooking facilities may
include early years’ settings, Children’s Centres, schools, youth clubs, churches,
community centres, Healthy Living Centres, and homeless shelters.
If local venues providing cooking facilities and equipment are limited the chef may need
to be provided with portable cookers and equipment which will add to the cost of the
project. Once in post the chef may also have some ideas about what equipment may
need to be purchased so some budget may need to be held back.
Recruitment
It is worth involving the Food Partnership in the recruitment of the community chef to
encourage the members to engage with the project. In Kent partnerships were tasked
with creating the job description and advertising, interviewing and selecting the two
chefs.
As a guide the chefs were required to have:
at least five years experience of working in a catering environment
experience of working with a cross-section of organisations and communities,
including disadvantaged groups
good working knowledge of principles of healthy eating and the national healthy
eating agenda
basic catering qualification and Basic Food Hygiene Certificate
excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
The first stage of the recruitment involved shortlisted candidates conducting an
interactive cooking demonstration with an audience including future users i.e. elderly,
children, people with special needs and professionals such as Environmental Health to
assess working practices. Successful candidates were then invited to interview
conducted by a small panel of key partners who then based their decision on the
cooking demonstration, audience feedback and interview.
Who should cooking courses be aimed at?
Almost any community group can benefit from a cooking course. The two chefs in Kent
ran courses with a variety of groups such as families, school children of all ages,
adolescents, teenage parents, dads, homeless groups, pensioners, and British Minority
Ethnic groups. Courses were adapted to suit the group so for instance the chef ran a
beer and curry course for dads while concentrated on healthy weaning foods for parents
of babies. Each course ran weekly for 6-8 weeks and lasted a couple of hours.