Skip to content ↓

Gourmet Café

Professional Chef comes to school to help Year 11 host a Gourmet Cafe

 As a school we are always looking for strategies to motivate and inspire Year 11 students, especially those that find the new highly academic GCSE requirements a struggle. The School Diners Project with Mark Lloyd offers an opportunity for students to develop valuable life skills that can be applied to their studies, but also to future choices whether to go into further education or within the world of work.

Mark Lloyd is a Professional Chef who has worked around the world and on various television programmes with Jamie Oliver and the Hairy Bikers to name just two. However, it is his life experiences and his willingness to inspire young people that have encouraged him to launch this project.

Having grown up in the care system and foster homes Mark talked to the students about how this has moulded his life and how it has enabled him to become who he is today.

The students and Mark have been meeting for the last 6 weeks, working through the steps to organise a ‘Pop Up Restaurant’. These steps included choosing a charity to donate the profits, plan the decorations, organise the music and lighting, invite between 80-100 guests (this included parents, staff and local dignitaries which included the Mayor of Peterborough, Councillor John Holditch and Sir Jonathan Lewis, Service Director for Education.

The event was held in November, the students prepared, cooked and served all the food themselves, the guests then paid the amount they felt the food deserved. 

The evening was a big success making £440 profit from the evening for their chosen Charity.