Jacques Pepin Foundation

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic were broad and indiscriminate, and exposed dramatic inequalities within our society in food security, access to health care, education, and employment. The fragility of our food system was revealed, while our beloved food service industry was decimated. At least 45 million Americans found themselves food insecure in 2020, an increase of 10 million from 2019, and millions of economically-secure individuals cooked at home more.

The Jacques Pépin Foundation doubled down on our mission to improve lives and strengthen communities through the power of culinary education.  With 32 cookbooks, and countless awards, our namesake, Jacques Pépin, is the most trusted culinary educator of our time. His sentiment, “We are all equal in the eyes of the stove,” emphasizes the fight against racial injustice. We support regional Community Kitchens helping under-served citizens by raising funds and nationwide awareness using Jacques Pépin’s globally-recognized name and legacy of culinary education for all.

In 2020, our traditional revenue stream from in-person events was cancelled overnight, necessitating new, creative ways to fundraise.  We are applying for The Elevate Prize to continue our video production, curricular work and grants to Community Kitchens -- investments in local communities in need.

The Jacques Pépin Foundation (JPF) supports free culinary and life skills training through community-based organizations that help individuals detached from the workforce gain confidence, skills, and employment in food service.

We believe that learning to cook is joyful and empowering. We created the JPF to promote Jacques Pépin’s generosity and passion for cooking by supporting organizations that provide fundamental culinary and life skills training for individuals with barriers to employment such as homelessness, substance abuse, and previous incarceration. We simultaneously address the problems of several million able-bodied individuals who are detached from the workforce, and job vacancies in food service, numbering consistently 750K annually before the pandemic.

In addition to employment, learning to cook helps people feel good about themselves, take care of their families, budget strategically for food, and improve their health. We provide a range of offerings from culinary curricular tools for educators, to inspiring and entertaining videos for individuals to improve their cooking skills and feed their families. Especially during this past year, Jacques Pépin was able to bring comfort to people across the country in a time of crisis while imparting culinary education and nutritious, budget-friendly cooking solutions.

Millions of people are unemployed with no specific skills for entering the workforce. There is a desperate shortage of workers in the food service industry. Education beyond high school takes many forms including short-term training programs that result in Certificates of Value. Skills and technique training in the culinary arts provides access to jobs and improves not only employability, but self-reliance, confidence, and health.

The JPF is committed to supporting the teaching of culinary skills for employment, personal growth, economic security, and better health. We work to improve and expand culinary training through hundreds of community-based organizations that provide free life skills and training to under-served populations. These organizations use culinary training to help individuals reclaim their lives, rejoin the workforce, and strengthen their communities.

We stimulate and inspire a love of food and cooking. We provide curricular materials such as cookbooks and technique videos. We offer grants to support community-based culinary training programs. We broker relationships between equipment manufacturers and education providers. We help organizations join networks like Catalyst Kitchens and Feeding America to share experiences and best practices. We force multiply by assisting in fundraising efforts for individual organizations to increase their visibility and sustain their work.

Workforce development is an elusive golden goose. Everyone wants individuals detached from the workforce to be able to learn skills that are marketable and that afford progress toward independence. Organizations and agencies that provide education and skills training face innumerable barriers to success, from the capacity of the students to learn and teachers to teach, to life disruptions such as health, housing and employment, to a shifting jobs market. Individuals with barriers to employment such as homelessness, previous incarceration, substance abuse, and poor learning skills pose even more challenges.

Culinary arts training is perfectly suited to address many of these issues. Because the threshold for skills and knowledge are relatively low for food service work, culinary training programs can provide novices entry-level skills in a very short amount of time (12 – 16 weeks.)  Programs supported by the JPF confer on their graduates Certificates of Value, including Food Safety Certification. Perhaps more importantly, learning to cook has the capacity to influence positive character development, confidence, self-esteem, and a sense of purpose. In addition to skills, community kitchens offer wrap-around services to support physical and mental health, and other critical needs. The JPF provides culinary training with the power to improve lives.

Community-based culinary arts training programs, or community kitchens, are community-driven, non-profit organizations that offer basic culinary training to adults and high-risk youth with high barriers to employment such as: limited work history, low skills or education attainment, previous incarceration, homelessness, and issues with substance abuse. Despite documented success at food service training and job placement, these workforce development programs have been mostly overlooked by scholars, as well as institutions, organizations and federal programs dedicated to job training.

The JPF’s support for community kitchens brings the strength, visibility, and exceptional knowledge of Jacques Pépin, one of the most recognized and effective culinary instructors of our time, to helping others. We are uniquely skilled and qualified for this work. In addition to Jacques, our Co-founder and Executive Director, Rollie Wesen (Jacques’ son-in-law), has twenty years of professional cooking experience, ten years of teaching experience at Johnson & Wales University, and a doctorate in educational leadership.

The programs we support are truly win-win-win. They are a win for the individual who gains confidence and purpose, they are a win for society which reclaims a willing worker, and they are a win for food service which gains an educated trainee.