A New Recipe for School Food Careers

Apprenticeship is a proven strategy to meet the needs of today’s workforce, and has scaled over the last decade into critical sectors like health care, IT, finance, agriculture, manufacturing, and more. These innovative new models and approaches enable greater access for workers, learners, and employers.

Chef Ann Foundation’s Healthy School Food Pathway is an example of how innovation can elevate the quality, scale, and impact of an important professional sector that has not been represented in apprenticeship. It is the first pre-apprenticeship and Registered Apprenticeship in the nation designed to strengthen the school food workforce.

School food departments across the country face persistent workforce challenges: staffing shortages, high turnover rates, and limited training opportunities for kitchen staff. Healthy School Food Pathway provides school food professionals with the training and skill-building to enter and advance in the sector, and it helps school districts build the capacity to serve students more healthy, scratch-cooked school meals.

JFF’s Center for Apprenticeship & Work-Based Learning has had the opportunity to serve as an evaluation advisor for the Healthy School Food Pathway program and a critical thought partner to Chef Ann Foundation leadership as they actively expand and scale this model across states. We are excited to see innovative models such as this take hold and be utilized to meet the pressing needs of a labor force that is critical to the success of children and their communities.