Cantor Family Grant: Cogswell Culinary Corner Enhancements
- School Year: 2020-2021
- Applicants: Anna Elfenbaum, Lead Teacher & Patti Buccheri
- School: Post-Secondary
- Subjects: Other (Vocational / Culinary / Business and Life Skills)
"The Post-Secondary program, for students ages 18-22, addresses the individual needs of students which includes vocational experiences. Within our program, Cogswell Culinary Corner is an on-site vocational experience that houses a full scale professional kitchen. Students plan and cook food items for sale within the program. Each week a cohort of students chooses an item(s) to produce and sell to our community. This process includes costing, advertising, preparing and producing, pricing, packaging and finally, delivering delicious culinary treats. Students produce approximately 100 pieces to sell on a weekly basis. After expenses, they earn on average $100/week. Now that students are developing the skills mentioned above, we anticipate a higher profit margin as we add to our repertoire of food items. Not only does this process teach our students important vocational and life skills, more so, we find that students look forward to planning and creating each item. More importantly, the pride that they take in delivering the finished product every Friday shows them that they have the ability to be employed in the future. The grant from FWHPS has allowed us to purchase a 20-quart commercial-sized stand mixer that will increase our production capabilities going forward, we are excited about future expansion to create a fully operating food service outlet. In order to promote buy-in, our students have committed to raising the balance of the cost of the mixer through sales of their products."