Community Kitchen students graduate from an intensive 14-week job training program that prepares them for a career in the food service industry.

Community Kitchen

Community Kitchen is a culinary job-training program for low-income or unemployed adults. During the full time, 14-week/400 hour program, students are trained in basic cooking skills including various aspects of food service operations, knife usage and care, kitchen safety and first aid. Instruction by two experienced professional chefs is supplemented by internships in local restaurant and institutional kitchens. Students use fresh fruits and vegetables as well as other donated food items to create nutritious meals for distribution to Kids Cafe, a Food Bank community after-school meal program for children at risk of hunger. Nearly five-hundred children are fed each day at Kids Cafe sites in Providence with meals prepared by the Community Kitchen program.

Since the program began in 1998, it has graduated 33 classes and more than 235 students. Community Kitchen graduates are working at many of Rhode Island’s finest restaurants, as well as at local hospitals, colleges, schools and health care facilities. Some have started their own catering businesses.