Grow, Share, Prepare to kick-start food careers in Plymouth

Tamar Grow Local are looking for volunteers in Plymouth interested in a future career in the food industry.

Grow, Share, Prepare is a project where jobseekers will gain a wide-range of skills working with different businesses, restaurants and chefs in Plymouth and play a key role in helping to develop a market-ready prepared meal made from seasonal local produce. The ‘ready-meal’ will be for sale at local outlets and will support Plymouth’s Grow, Share, Cook project with a donation from every meal sold.

Grow, Share, Prepare working with The Real Farming Trust has received National Lottery funding from The Big Lottery Fund and support from Plymouth Community Homes. The project aims to firstly prepare people looking to work in Plymouth’s burgeoning food scene by carrying out short courses around barista training, bread making, pastry school, using seasonal produce to create soups, stews and curries, knife skills, hygiene training and working in a commercial kitchen. The second part of the project will see volunteers help to come up with ideas and help develop a healthy ‘ready meal’ which will be available to purchase from outlets in the city. Ideas for the ‘ready meal’ will be road-tested with residents from Plymouth Community Homes.

Rachael Forster from Tamar Grow Local said: “Plymouth is a really exciting place for food and drink right now and is where a lot of opportunities sit for jobseekers. We want to give our group of volunteers who may not have any experience with working with food or in a food environment a head start and specialist training to kick start their careers. Our work with Tamar Valley growers and producers will mean there will be a strong emphasis on using local produce throughout the project and that will inform what the volunteers are making at each session.”

Rachael continued: “So far we have some brilliant business partners in the city on board to lead our volunteer workshops including The Pastry Club, Column Bakehouse, New Continental Hotel, The Hidden Olive, Kate Allen from Gnosh and Casey Warrington from the development department at Yeo Valley. We hope that working with these chefs and businesses will provide some really valuable work experience and provide some real excitement and inspiration for getting started in working with food.”

Grow, Share, Prepare will start in January 2018 and run until May 2018. Anyone interested in applying for the volunteer position should be actively interested in finding work in the food industry and contact rachaelforster@tamargrowlocal.org for further information. No previous experience is necessary.