Speech at At-Sunrice Global Chef Academy Graduation Ceremony
Mr Lee Yi Shyan, Minister of State for Manpower and Trade , Industry, The Gallery, Fort Canning Park
Mrs Kwan Lui, Founder and Director of At-Sunrice GlobalChef Academy
Chef Christophe Megel, CEO of At-Sunrice GlobalChef Academy
Graduates of At-Sunrice GlobalChef Academy
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good Morning. It gives me great pleasure to be with you today to celebrate the graduation of 127 trainees from At-Sunrice GlobalChef Academy.
Opportunities for growth in the F&B industry
2. The Food & Beverage (F&B) industry in Singapore employs almost 150,000 employees in about 5,200 establishments. The hotels and restaurants sector contributed $1.44 billion to GDP in the first quarter of this year and close to 10 per cent of overall job vacancies in March 2010. With both Integrated Resorts (IRs) opening up and the addition of new hotels, shopping malls, and foreign F&B establishments such as Texas Chicken, Chili's, Cut and Osia, we can expect some 5,000 new jobs to be created in the F&B industries over the next three years.
3. This positive outlook presents great opportunities to those of you graduating today. It should also inspire those thinking of embarking on a career in the F&B industry. Continuing Education and Training, or CET, will enable our workforce to seize these opportunities.
CET for the F&B industry
4. Since its establishment in 2003, the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) has been working closely with industries, unions and training providers to expand our CET infrastructure and capabilities. To-date, WDA has appointed 49 CET Centres across 24 Workforce Skills Qualifications (or WSQ) skills areas. This includes 5 CET Centres for the Tourism and F&B industries.
5. WSQ training can help existing workers improve their skills on the job. It can also equip new entrants with the necessary skills for a new career. To meet the specific needs of a large employer, WSQ programmes can be organised as in-house, on-the-job training. To-date, more than 2,400 companies and over 81,000 workers have embraced F&B WSQ training through various means.
6. Consider Ritz Carlton's example. Ritz Carlton aligns its training to the WSQ skills framework to enhance the skills level and portability of their workers. The hotel structures its WSQ programme with some modules of training conducted in-house while other modules are conducted at CET Centres such as At-Sunrice. Through classroom training and apprenticeship, Ritz Carlton enables its workers to achieve full WSQ Certificate in Hotel and Accommodation Services.
A new integrated CET Centre for Culinary and F&B services
7. As the demand for culinary standard and service delivery rises, and as the operating environment of an F&B outlet becomes more complex, today's F&B workers and supervisors must have a broad range of skills to do a good job. Such demands require us to redesign and rethink our training delivery mechanism and training contents.
8. I am therefore pleased to announce the appointment of At-Sunrice as a new, vertically integrated CET Centre dedicated to the culinary and F&B industry.
9. In terms of capabilities, At-Sunrice now offers a comprehensive range of programmes that will accomplish two things: One, a trainee can take courses from certificate to advanced diploma levels as he progresses in his jobs and responsibilities; Two, trainees can take courses that allow them to broaden their skill sets beyond their specialised areas, or to become more "T-shaped" as others choose to put it.
10. For instance, an Executive Chef cannot just be an expert in culinary skills, he or she must also be competent in other areas like customer service, business planning, finance and managing an F&B operation.
11. The outcome of this new approach to CET is not just more training places being made available for the F&B industry, the contents of the training will also become deeper and broader, tiered from basic to advanced levels to facilitate career progression. In this way, we hope to produce more versatile and effective F&B specialists and T-shaped executives for the industry.
12. Besides mainstream programmes, At-Sunrice will also pay attention to certain specialised skills that are needed in a growing and sophisticated F&B industry. For instance, At-Sunrice GlobalChef Academy will offer specialised training programmes for sommeliers and bartenders. Working closely with the industry, At-Sunrice also hopes to continue to introduce more modular, professional development courses in response to new training needs of the F&B workers.
Nurturing world class talent
13. Today, we are here to witness the graduation of 127 of At-Sunrice's trainees. Besides very comprehensive classroom learning, the trainees also went through many hours of hands-on practice. In fact, a number of the graduates were mentored by famous chefs such as Chef Patrick Heuberger from Le Bistrot, Chef Julien Bompard from Le Saint Julien and Chef Paul Lenz from Shangri-La. To the 20 mentor chefs who are present here with us, I would like to thank all of you for your time and effort to groom the next generation of chefs, and I urge more practising chefs to contribute in similar ways.
14. I understand that many of our graduates have been offered jobs even before graduation. This speaks well of the quality and the relevance of the WSQ training programs delivered by At-Sunrice.
Conclusion
15. To all graduates, my warmest congratulations once again. I look forward to dining at the F&B outlets that you are going to join, and enjoy the fruit of your learning. I hope that in the not-too-distant future, you too will become famous chefs, and will impart your skills and knowledge to younger trainees at At-Sunrice here or other CET centres. I wish you all the very best in your culinary career.
16. Thank you.