Hospitality Skills Academy – Employer Partnerships

Our award-winning Hospitality and Culinary Arts department is fully equipped with kitchen, restaurant and patisserie facilities along with expert chef lecturers to provide all of the skills students need to work within the culinary and hospitality sectors. If you manage a business within the sector, we want to hear from you.

At WestKing, we are the UK’s leading school of hospitality and culinary arts with a plethora of food-related TV shows and innovative new food products being brought to the table almost daily, there’s never been a better time to work with a forward-thinking world-renowned institute.

With our extensive gastronomic practice and proven excellence, the college is committed to innovation and high performance in Hospitality and Culinary Arts. We have enviable links and collaborations with the international hospitality industry, leading chefs’ associations and principal figures from the world of gastronomy. We are devoted to high-quality training and development.

About the Hospitality Skills Academy

The Hospitality Skills Academy is part of the Mayor of London’s Programmes that support Londoners hardest hit by the pandemic in sectors key to London’s recovery and long-term economic growth. We proudly work with the Mayor of London and a fantastic range of businesses to produce our Skills Academies.

Our Hospitality Skills Academy combines this experience with a range of new initiatives to provide flexible wrap-around training and professional development. We provide free training opportunities and support packages to help Londoners get a job in the Hospitality and Culinary Arts sectors. We do this by providing bespoke flexible learning programmes to fit individual circumstances and availability. We aim to give them the confidence and skills they need to be employable within three to five weeks, and a guaranteed job interview with an employer who is accredited with the Good Work Standard.

Our Mayors Skills Academies are all credited by The Quality Mark which identifies our academies to be excellent, industry-relevant training in the capital. The Quality Mark Statement also represents our commitment to including a combination of sector-specific questions, and wider cross-cutting issues like diversity and inclusion, sustainability, Good Work and the engagement of under-represented groups.

Our Facilities

Our award-winning Hospitality and Culinary Arts department is fully fitted with kitchen, restaurant and patisserie facilities. Take a look at WestKing’s centres and locations here.

Our Courses

The Craft Guild of Chefs, the Institute of Hospitality, UK Hospitality, the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts and The Worshipful Company of Cooks of London represent a plethora of employers in the hospitality industry. We work with them to shape the skills and employment provision in line with short-medium, and long-term industry needs to maximise career opportunities and make the hospitality sector more inclusive.

We, therefore, have designed the following short and sharp courses and have had them endorsed by professional bodies so employers can rest assured that individuals who come through these short courses will have a high-quality entry point qualification to get them started in the workplace.

Examples of our courses include:

Entry-level course with CCCG digital badge

• Essential Kitchen Skills
• Essential Bar, Barista and Customer Service Skills
• Hospitality Skills Passport

Pathway courses, OCN accredited E-certificates

• Kitchen Skills – Level 1
• Pastry Skills – Level 1
• Food and Beverage Skills – Level 1

Other upskill short courses available:

• Bakery Workshops
• Sommelier Workshops
• Butchery Techniques
• Fish Preparation Techniques
• Food Sustainability and Nutrition – Introduction
• Chocolate – Introduction

How can you work with us?

Our employer partners are committed to improving the lives of Londoners. By working with us, you will be helping people upskill or enter a new profession, and at the same time fill vacancies in key industries.

Our partners work with us in the following ways:

• Providing work experience opportunities
• Taking on apprentices
• Identifying skills shortages and working with our colleges on curriculum planning
• Participating in our recruitment events and job fairs
• Creating jobs and guaranteeing job interviews
• Provide professional briefs or input into our curriculum design 
• Join our Advisory Board 
• Host visits, industry insight events or share your experience as a speaker 
• Be a mentor or provide mentors to support new entrants 
• Design bespoke courses to train new entrants  
• Select ‘work-ready’ candidates from our talent pool 

We are looking for more employer partners to offer interview/trial days to our graduates of these programmes. If you are interested in taking part or would like to speak to us about a bespoke upskilling short course for your back-of-house or front-of-house team, then please register your details in the form below or email vince.kelly@westking.ac.uk