CLARK FREEPORT—Hong Kong-headquartered La Rose Noire Ltd. announced it is looking for scholars it would train as pastry chefs and baristas.
Tina Villafranca, La Rose Noire external sales and business development manager, said the program is in line with the company’s corporate social responsibility.
Last Saturday around 100 applicants to the scholarship program were individually screened to qualify for the six-month training.
Villafranca said the training program is headed by Swiss Executive Chef Peter Suter, 74, a 40-year veteran of corporate baking in Hong Kong.
Villafranca added the scholars will be housed in the company dormitories in this free port and will be given free board and lodging, as well as free uniforms and transportation allowances.
“The training is done not in a regular traditional classroom style, but it’s like a hotel kitchen where they have baking lessons three times a week,” she said.
“They are trained to bake [three days a week while] Tuesdays and Thursdays are for academic subjects and physical activities on Saturdays,” Villafranca added.
At the end of the training program, the graduates will be deployed as pastry chefs and baristas in five-star hotels and high-end restaurants with a minimum monthly salary of P15,000, she said.
“We accept 36 scholars every six months. This batch that we are now recruiting starts in July,” Villafranca added.
The program runs twice a year, from January to June and July to December. She said scholars can start applying starting September until October for the January-to-June program.
Villafranca added applicants should be 18 to 25 years old only. Upon graduation, they will be given a certificate from the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority and another one from La Rose Noire signed by Gerald Dubois, who opened the first pattiserie in Hong Kong in 1991.
The program includes training for bread making, pastry making and baristas. “You can see the equipment that we have is hotel grade,” Villafranca said.
“High-school graduates from marginalized communities are mostly qualified. They have to be poor because we will check and that is the requirement of the Department of Social Welfare and Development. This has to be given to people who really deserve an opportunity,” she explained.
Villafranca said the program has already trained three graduate batches of 18, 18 and 32 scholars, and the present batch is the fourth with 32 scholars and the next will be 36.
She added most of the graduates are already working for hotels and restaurants.
“Our international customers would like to hire them as well, but we feel since they are very young we would like to make sure that they are mature enough to handle themselves alone in a foreign country,” she said.
“Initially we are just like hooking them up with our local customers and distributors. We have deployed two to our Davao distributor that is opening a restaurant and we will be deploying another two in Cebu and then 30 in Luzon,” she added.