Newcomer Kitchen Food Entrepreneurship Training and XP Food Incubator Programs...

 

It's been a very busy term since the start of school year 🍂. As quickly as another cohort at Newcomer Kitchen began, how quickly it is also coming to an end, with just three weeks left...

Do you know a newcomer woman who would like to learn how to prepare meals like this to sell to the public market, and meet other women from around the world to learn and cook together? Ask her to come and take part in our innovative IRCC-funded food entrepreneurship training program 'Willing To Work' where you "earn as you learn" with 100% revenue from real life food activities flowing back to the participants.

Prepping in the commercial kitchen at Trinity St.Paul's Church

Here, our current day group DISTIINCT (women from Iran, India, Nigeria, Cameroon and Turkey) completed 50 meals Friday in a sold out social impact event we partnered at Crescent School with teachers and staff. We were delighted to offer such diverse and delicious meals (both meat and non-meat) in our Prepared Meals experiential module as one of three market avenue teachings to take their food business. The outcomes introduce newcomer women to the social and economic aspects of living in Canadian society. Upon completion, they will be more prepared for employment, acquire more confidence, feel more connected to their community and develop more entrepreneurship readiness.

ANNOUNCEMENT: We are calling on participants for our next term that starts in January 2024 for 14 weeks in a hybrid online and in kitchen cooking format. Please see flyer for more details and share this to any newcomer woman who would benefit. Cheers 🤗!

To get a better glimpse of what to expect in our program, sharing our first event that starts with every term- Product To Market... Excited to pop up in The Evergreen Brick Works at their last outdoor market weekend late October before things moved inside. What a beautiful day out and what a busssy market 😁! We almost Sold Out on our lovely Sweets and "Tea" Box For Two to share with a friend or loved one loaded with fall flavours of pumpkin, apples, cinnamon and cloves.

DISTIINCT is a group of women who are passionate about cooking their own unique foods yet love the cross cultural fusion of flavours without borders. You can taste the spectrum of love in this sweet box of five treats and cookies #glutenfree and two "tea" blends #caffeinefree hand bagged from Cameroon- dried hibiscus petals, lemongrass, ginger and mint, and Turkey- dried apples, red dates, cinnamon stick and cloves.

And it all began in September with this ... What AmaZing women we have in both our day and evening programs from all over the world. We look forward to learning from each other, especially cuisines for our first time such as foods from Uganda and Cameroon 😋!

As part of a warm up exercise for the women to get to know each other with a lesson on what preparations goes into a food demo, participants in our 'Willing To Work' program took turns to prepare a live online recipe demo from their cultures.

A+ to all for their mise en place- set up, presentation, thoughtful and interesting storytelling and choosing a simple but delicious dish that was captured in the time limit given. The only miss was not being able to reach through that screen to taste. Bravo everyone 👏

AND... we have our second program, XP #foodincubator that supports entrepreneur-ready alums with deeper-dive resources, independent coaching and more business opportunities!

A weekend Storytelling and PR workshop at Newcomer Kitchen with seasoned storyteller and entrepreneur Jim Adams was part of developing market strategies for your brand. We have created additional enriched lessons and I have been involved in their coaching from branding to recipe writing and costing their individual menus to a deeper dive soon on target marketing to bring their ideas  to life. The next stage is promoting them to our clientele and anew- an opportunity to make money and test the market before they go at it on their own. 

"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." -- Maya Angelou

Another good money generating avenue is conducting food workshops. This has been hugely popular and successful in our past pre-covid times and what better than to relaunch these 'demo and dines' than with these women who are ready for entrepreneurship with their cultural specialties right before the holiday.

To teach this and the complete package to present to our corporate clients, we held a Grilled Cheese workshop as an example of taking an idea, making it fun and educational, getting hands on interactive and sitting down together to eat afterwards.

It was totally enjoyable and totally delicious learning about the different kinds of cheeses, the history of the American grilled cheese sandwich and how to make the best with various gourmet fillings.

After a period of individual coaching on menu selection, recipe writing and costing, we were ready to host our first XP menu tastings of appetizers, mains, sides and desserts from each of the women from Morocco, India and Nigeria. Our goal was to share feedback, provide pricing input and marketability before we shared their completed menu with our clients for potential catering business opportunities! Everything was so tasty!!

So proud of these ladies💗!

Hugely honoured to be part of your entrepreneurship journey! You Can Do It 👊💥