Over the last couple of months our senior teams here at The New World Trading Company have been working hard to establish an all singing, all dancing, brand new program. The program not only promotes development in both personal and work life, but also focuses on fun, engagement and recognition for our teams. Allow us to introduce you to our Chef Academy.

The NWTC Chef Academy is a new band of chefs who want to both learn and develop themselves within the kitchen. The academy will support them through an apprenticeship, as well as in-house training and gives its members the opportunities to get involved with more things, including menu development cook offs! The Academy is there to nurture and develop our incredible people, preparing them with the skills and tools they need to progress into kitchen management in the future.

Our 5 existing apprentices are; Francesco Interlici and Kirk Baker (The Club House, Liverpool), Habib Boukabrine and Milton De Pina Lopez (The Oast House, Manchester) and Marek Maronde (The Botanist Didsbury). 4 of who took part in our first EVER apprentice cook off at the end of last month. Not only was this to inspire development and a whole heap of fun, but the winning dish is to feature as a special in the home site of its respective chef! Talk about exciting!

This meant that each of our incredible apprentices got to show off their new found skills to create a main dish that would fit in with the menus of their venue. The judges included our very own Executive Chef, James Scott and two of our Directors, Matt Bamber and Natasha Waterfield. Each dish was tasted by the trio and then rated a score out of 10 for taste, presentation, back story and cleanliness of cooking area. Once they had all been presented, whoever got the highest score won!

All apprentices were able to spend some one-on-one time in the development kitchen with James to work on their dishes meaning some culinary creations really were made. The winner, however, was The Club House’s own Francesco whose dish will be featured on the menu in Liverpool for one week with all proceeds going to a charity of his choosing. His dish was also so yummy that it will even be considered in the next new menu roll out so if you didn’t get to try this taste bud extravaganza then fear not!

This is just the beginning of our Chef Academy, as we are currently looking for more chefs to join! Not only are we so excited to see where this adventure will take all our phenomenal apprentices, who have been working so hard, but we cannot wait for the next Apprentice Cook Off and see all these young chefs demonstrate their amazing talent yet again!

To view our current vacancies and begin your next adventure with NWTC, click here