Chefs’ Forum Judges School Product Development Competition

In a first for The Chefs’ Forum our editor, Chandos Elletson, was on the judging panel at Ilkley Grammar School for the school’s Enterprise Scheme. The event tested year 8 students who had to create a new sports drink and present it Dragon’s Den style.

The students, who were formed into tutor groups has 2.5 hours to design and present a new sports energy drink. The work was created to demonstrate team building and enable creativity within a framework as well as test students ability to present as a team.

The invitation demonstrates the growing reach of The Chefs’ Forum as more and more schools and colleges take an interest in hospitality and catering.

Catherine Farinha, director of The Chefs’ Forum said of the invitation to judge: “It’s incredibly exciting to be involved much earlier in a student career and start to learn about the choices that younger school students are making.

“We were thrilled to be asked to judge the competition especially as Ilkley Grammar School is one of the feeders into Bradford College where we have a Chef’s Forum Academy.”

Chandos Elletson said: “The competition was fascinating and the level of creativity was very impressive given that each individual group only had 2.5 hours of preparation time in total. The presentations showed how radical some of the students were with the winning groups creating a  new energy drink called Joost – a mixture of boost and juice.”

“With Greene King pub boss Nick Mackenzie calling for more and more graduates to consider entering hospitality it is important to get catering on the minds of younger students as they progress through school – and this is one way of doing it. The whole group of students who participated were clearly interested in the subject and took it seriously. We look forward to doing more in this area.”