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Culinary program connects farm and kitchen

Tompkins County has New York state’s lowest unemployment rate, at less than four percent. In Ithaca, restaurant jobs have grown by seven percent over the last five years. Now a culinary education program at Tompkins Cortland Community College is training workers for the “farm to table” side of the restaurant industry.

Todd McClane directs the new organic farm at Tompkins Cortland Community College. So far it’s only about three acres, but it’s just one part of the college’s new culinary arts degree program. And McClane has big plans for the farm.

“We have 80-plus acres here that we can slowly bring back into production,” he says.

McClane teaches a class on food systems at the community college, known as TC3, and students visit the farm to learn where their ingredients come from.

“Establishing those relationships with growers, what goes into the seasonality of produce and proteins, whether it’s beef or chicken: those are all issues that need to be realized,” he says.

The other part of the program happens at a new restaurant in downtown Ithaca called Coltivare. Eventually, McClane hopes the campus farm will supply 40 percent of Coltivare’s produce. The restaurant, which opened to the public recently, aims to use local sources for 80 percent of its food. Students work in Coltivare’s kitchen and also take classes in the building.

Denny Boucher runs Coltivare and oversees the students’ hands-on training. He says the area’s other restaurants can hardly wait for the first class to graduate.

“The industry leaders in this town, they’re in dire need of qualified people,” Boucher says.

Alex Susskind agrees. He’s a professor of food and beverage management at Cornell University.

“We keep on opening more and more restaurants, but the staff isn’t growing as quickly as we’re opening those restaurants,” Susskind says.

Susskind says people who know about both ends of the food production process are especially in demand.

“The more that professionals know about the supply chain and how things come about, the better they are at managing it and creating an end product that has more value for everybody involved,” he says.

Tompkins Cortland Community College’s culinary arts program enrolled 37 students this fall, out of a capacity of 120.