The National Restaurant Association Military Foundation will host 30 award-winning military service members to a week-long education program at The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in St. Helena, California, November 18–22.
The Foundation’s 2013 Armed Forces Forum for Culinary Excellence program aims to hone participants’ culinary and foodservice management skills and inspire future careers in the restaurant and foodservice industry. The participants are recipients of the Foundation’s excellence in foodservice awards and represent the U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, Air National Guard, and Air Force Reserves.
The forum features interactive seminars, hands-on cooking activities, and mentoring and career-coaching sessions; including interactive tasting seminars on flavor dynamics and global cuisine, a CIA campus and herb garden tour, a knife skills demo, sessions on making healthier meals and repairing and reviving recipes, as well as techniques for cooking seasonal dishes.
The National Restaurant Association has worked for many years to build career opportunities for military personnel and veterans. Those efforts include the NRA’s long-time involvement with the Air Force’s John L. Hennessy Award, the Marine Corp’s Major Gen. W.P.T. Hill Award, and the Air National Guard’s Sgt. Kenneth Disney award programs.
More than 250,000 military veterans are employed in the restaurant industry. In the next five years, the NRA projects the number of additional employment opportunities to increase by 25,000.
