It is no secret that the hospitality industry is a popular and booming sector in the UK, but a chronic shortage of skilled workers in the wake of a post-brexit, post-pandemic world is pushing hospitality into crisis. Numerous positions that have become available are going unfulfilled due to the skills shortage and lack of supply in the labour market.

The Hospitality Recovery Grant

At the end of June, we proudly announced the Hospitality Recovery Grant from Leiths Online Cookery School – a partnership between Workshop and Leiths School of Food & Wine. The £750k grant fund aims to help the UK hospitality sector bridge the skills gap in professional kitchens with immediate effect to help ease the recruitment crisis. We are providing 100 free places and a further 1000 part-funded places on Leiths professional online courses.

The grant is aimed at both restaurants and individuals looking to improve their skills. For employers, the grants can help up-skill the existing workforce and help widen recruitment for lower skilled staff that can be quickly trained to a high standard by Leiths Online teachers. For hospitality employees, the grant could help boost individuals’ CVs’ and take their culinary career to the next level. 

Flexible, professional cookery training to help close the culinary skills gap.

Currently, we’re offering three courses: Essential Cooking, Chef Skills and Introduction to Patisserie. We have broken the online training to assist on two levels; those who are within the industry at present at an unskilled level and those looking to embark on a career and have absolutely no experience at all. The training can be done full-time or part time, and can take as little as six weeks to complete, enabling a confident impact in a professional kitchen. 

One of the most important parts about this grant is that all the courses are learned through Workshop’s pioneering learning technology, enabling students to easily develop their skill set between shifts or anywhere with kitchen space, using just their phone, tablet or laptop. As always, the course is led and mentored by a Leiths teacher, and students will be able to receive expert feedback from expert mentors during the course. 

“Everyone deserves access to quality education.”

Camilla Schneideman, MD Leiths School of Food & Wine, commented: “As a cookery school at the heart of the sector, we have been canvassing the opinions of chefs and restaurant groups to establish how we can best serve the industry we take great pride in training people for. The one tool that we have in our armoury which could reach a large number of people are the Leiths online courses. The courses can be taken anywhere as long as you have kitchen space and a smartphone, and can fit around shifts.”

“Everyone deserves access to quality education.”, continued Josh Taylor, Co-founder of Workshop, “With this grant we hope to help close the skills gap in the hospitality sector and give aspiring chefs across the country a chance to thrive in their hospitality careers, by making top-quality culinary education flexible and accessible to all.”

We’ve already had incredible support from significant hospitality groups, chefs, and personalities within the hospitality industry including Henry Harris, Prue Leith, David Moore, JKS restaurant group & Theo Randall, Hawksmore and more.

Over the past months, we’ve had hundreds of applications come in from individuals looking to upskill themselves to small business owners looking to train their staff. We’re delighted to be running this initiative to help get the hospitality industry back on track.

Henry Harris, Chef “The Leiths Hospitality Recovery Grant gives those who are genuinely interested to work in professional kitchens the opportunity to master the entry level skills that will make a pro kitchen more familiar. From a chef perspective, it brings trainees / juniors into kitchens who can progress more quickly because they have a sound foundation level skills set. Furthermore, for prospective candidates knowing first hand how Leiths teaches from a personal perspective, it provides an enjoyable way to train and learn.”

Learn more about Hospitality Recovery Grants from Leiths Online Cookery School.