BARRE — On a recent afternoon in an industrial kitchen in Barre, a group of about 11 students gathered around chef Jamie Eisenberg as she taught them how to artfully cut mushrooms.
Eisenberg slid the knife gently around the mushroom as she explained how to use the fungi in recipes or dry them to add to soup stocks or even pizza dough.
The students could have been at a culinary institute or in the kitchen of a high-end restaurant. These culinary acolytes, however, were working in a food pantry.
Community Kitchen Academy, run by Eisenberg and a chef from the Vermont Food Bank, teaches low-income, unemployed or underemployed people how to cook and find jobs in the industry. The program is a collaboration between Capstone Community Action and the food bank.
It has operated in Burlington since 2009 and in 2013 Eisenberg opened a Barre campus. She hopes to start branches in Rutland and Brattleboro.
The program has two goals: It teaches adults job skills, and it provides the food shelf with prepared food to give to customers.
Between Burlington and Barre, the program has a 91 percent job placement rate. All students except two in the four classes at the Barre facility found jobs, she said.
“Finding sustainable employment is our big mission,” Eisenberg said.
Last week, students took a break for lunch and talked about why they applied for the program.
They removed their chef skull caps, as they ate French onion soup, broccoli slaw and meatballs and marinara sauce dressed in their checkered culinary uniforms.
Three weeks into the class, they have learned knife skills, how to analyze recipes and how to be detail-oriented. Later, they will learn measurement skills and complete a research project – studying a term in a dish they will prepare as part of the project.
The class plans to take a field trip to New England Culinary Institute in January.
“When we go there, you want to dress your best,” Ivana Austin tells fellow students.
Austin learned about the program when she came to pick up groceries for herself and her six children at the pantry, she said. She saw a brochure and asked the lady at the front desk what it was about.
Her goal is to get a job so she can buy a house for her and her children, ages 17, 16, 12, 10, 8 and 6. Many nights, she and her children all have homework. She does hers after they go to bed.
“It’s just kind of teaching my kids that it’s never too late,” Austin said.
Others say they want to be professional caterers or run a baking business.
Paul Grace, who commutes daily from Rutland, wants to attend the New England Culinary Institute and become an executive chef at an off-the-grid restaurant that runs on solar panels and gives back to the community.
As students gain confidence in their new skills, they juggle various hardships. Finding child care during the day or at night can be tough. They also have difficulty when they find jobs and no longer qualify for Reach Up or other state benefits.
Students fall off the so-called “benefits cliff” when they make enough to disqualify them for subsidies but not enough to afford what they could buy with the subsidies.
A detailed report released this month called for more job-skills training programs like this one.
Courses at Community Kitchen last 13 weeks and meet Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., just before school lets out so students can pick up their children.
“We treat it as a job. We run this like a workplace,” Eisenberg said.
The program guarantees students that they will be able to find an entry-level job or better. Many start as dishwashers, prep cooks or line cooks, and some move up the ladder quickly.
“Mostly, it’s because they have the willingness to learn, rather than the skills,” Eisenberg said, noting that many big-name chefs started as dishwashers.
Students spend about half their time learning culinary skills and the other half learning professional skills that can apply to any job, such as resume-writing, interviewing, how to show up on time, how to go above and beyond and how to maintain a smile.
“I’m not going to make someone an excellent cook, but I can make them an excellent professional,” she said.
The prepared foods that students cook – about 700 pounds per student during the three-month class — goes to the food shelf at Capstone so people can take home prepared foods in addition to bulk items.
Eisenberg is a professional chef who taught at NECI for 10 years. She created the prepared foods departments at City Market in Burlington and helped start the prepared foods department at Healthy Living in South Burlington.
She has also worked in restaurants and runs Poorhouse Pies in Underhill. She felt drawn to working with special populations after doing some volunteer work in Burlington.
The kitchen in Barre has a walk-in refrigerator, freezer, baking area and a large cooking area with gleaming, stainless-steel equipment.
The program is also looking to rent the kitchen to micro-businesses to generate revenue to help fund the academy.
