West Lothian cook school crowdfunds to train more youngsters

A West Lothian cookery school has launched a crowdfunding campaign to help fund a new kitchen and train scores of young people in food and hospitality skills.

The Larder Cook School, which operates under a social enterprise model, was founded in 2010. Picture: Claire Watson

The Larder Cook School, which operates as a profit-for-good social enterprise, was founded by Angela Moohan – a former community development manager – in 2010. It aims to help change and enhance young people’s lives by supporting them to build confidence and develop skills for work from as young as 11 years old.

The venture has increased the number of young people, aged from 16 to 24, trained in food and hospitality skills from 80 to 200 in the last 12 months. Its crowdfunding campaign, running throughout August, will allow it to train 80 additional youngsters a year and increase staff numbers from 21 to 23.

Following the opening of its East Calder Cafe Bistro and two satellite cafes in Armadale and Fauldhouse in 2018, the social enterprise has supported and trained an additional 15 school aged youngsters in both sites and created 12 jobs across the three community locations.

Support from Business Gateway West Lothian has included one-to-one assistance to develop the cook school’s business model and its sustainability, access to research services and marketing consultancy and training.

Moohan said: “At The Larder Cook School our key focus is on ensuring every young person gets the chance to enjoy a positive education experience in a setting that meets their learning needs through cooking, which helps them to build confidence and learn new skills.

“Now with over 45 per cent of our staff being graduates of our training programmes, our goal is to increase this year-on-year and help so many more youngsters in the community get off to a good start in life with a job they enjoy and feel fulfilled and rewarded in, which our new second training kitchen will allow us to do.

“We are hugely grateful to all of the support we’ve received from Business Gateway West Lothian from strategic leadership to social media marketing, which has really given us the confidence to continue to grow and help more youngsters in the community.”