How the CIA is prepping students for the new norm

Any bright-eyed students thinking they’ll glide seamlessly from the gleaming kitchens of The Culinary Institute of America to a career planning delicious and creative menus are in for a rude awakening. So, the culinary school is focused on giving students an immersive reality check, with new programs and a new facility designed to provide a hands-on example of the role of the modern foodservice director.

“We are educating our students more and more on not just how to cook, but what’s happening in the world and how to respond to some of the issues that consumers have,” says Bruce Mattel, associate dean for food production, which includes oversight of the noncommercial foodservice/high-volume production curriculum, at The CIA’s campus in Hyde Park, N.Y.

That includes recently added competencies in marketing, merchandising, designing interactive menus, health and wellness and small-batch cookery. Last year, The CIA also added a new culinary intrapreneurship concentration to its bachelor’s degree program.

Students in the program design a QSR-style concept that’s vetted and voted on by industry folks, administrators and their peers. The winning idea is developed and executed in The Egg, The CIA’s real-time teaching facility, which also serves as a functioning foodservice operation for students. “The idea is that they’re designing a concept and a prototype of a concept with the intent of being able to franchise it or expand it into multiple units,” says Mattel. “When they design that, they consider so many other issues than just, ‘Let’s make food that people will buy.’”

Related:CIA facility combines state-of-the-art student feeding, noncommercial training

Does Mattel have any concern that the emphasis on other skills will turn students off to the foodservice director career?

“I think people will continue to be interested,” he says. “But I think what may be required is a little bit more emphasis on the type of talent people want to recruit.”