When you hear the words “Food Service Worker,” what are you thinking of? A burger-flipper? A waiter? In fact, it doesn’t mean what you think it does. Centennial College’s Food Service Worker program is taught at the School of Community and Health studies because it’s actually a program about health. Instead of becoming part of a restaurant, you’re studying to become a part of a health care team that provides the nutritional needs of patients. It’s a certificate program that runs for only a single semester, meaning it provides a quick way to enter the workforce and participate in a meaningful career. To get the real facts, we spoke directly to the program’s chair, Natashia Deer, to learn what it’s really about.
Firstly, you’re not working in a restaurant.
You’re not a waiter or a fast food employee. Food Service Work is actually about health, specifically providing food to patients. Instead of working in a restaurant, you’re actually working in the healthcare industry.
“Students normally work in retirement homes and long-term care agencies like facilities in hospitals,” Natashia says. “If there are agencies that prepare large meals for long-term care facilities, they would be employed there also.”
The career is really about making a lot of healthy food for people that need it the most.
What you’re really doing in this field is making sure people who are in the healthcare system are getting the food they need.
“Students in the program actually learn how to properly produce foods in larger quantities for health organizations,” Natashia says. “Their job is to create meals in larger quantities and make them in a safe manner because they have a food service handling permit. You don’t tend to find them in a kitchen because they’re not trained in that way.”
It’s an important job because your clients have special health needs
In the Food Service Worker program, you learn about the nutrition people need to survive, how diet affects illness and diseases, and how to use that knowledge to assemble therapeutic meals. You’ll learn how to provide a safe and healthy dietary environment.
“If you’re working in those types of care facilities, you need to know about dietary restrictions relating to different disorders,” Natashia says. “You have to be able to handle that food properly, because you are sometimes working with people who are immunocompromised, or who have special diets related to diabetes, so you have to be able to develop diets and meal plans related to those particular disorders.” She adds that even people on chemotherapy need a special diet.
Our program directly connects you to the industry before you even graduate
Aside from the practical learning you gain in this program, Centennial connects you to the industry in the most straightforward way possible: By putting you in the field.
“Students actually have field placements where they go out and get placed in a long-term care facility, a retirement home, hospital kitchens, those types of agencies,” Natashia says. “They get placements there to see how their jobs would actually occur within those environments.” It’s even possible for your placement to hire you on when you’re done, seeing as you’ve already learned the ropes from them.
You can get into the field, or you can use it as a platform for further education
It’s also possible to use the program as a pathway to get educated even further.
“Some students eventually make their way into our our food and nutrition management program, or even our health environment services management program,” Natashia says. “They can go and work in these agencies, put some time in, get additional courses, come back and have different model routes they can take to advance their career. It’s for individuals who want an entry into food preparation related to disorders going into that healthcare field, and it allows them to branch into management, or let them go into a supervisory role, or can have them even open up their own company related to developing larger meals for particular companies.”
If you’re business-minded, you can use it to start your own company
“There are students that have actually developed a company that specializes in diabetes meals, so they know how to prepare those types of meals,” Natashia says. “They package them and then provide them to individuals that have those types of disorders. They’ve created their own company out of it. So, it depends on where they want to go, and there are a few avenues open to them. It just depends on what the person wants to do, and we try to make sure in the program that they’re aware of the different areas that they can possibly go.”
It’s a great program for beginners or international students
“It’s just a great entry-level program,” Natashia says, “and if you’re trying to figure out what you’d like to do, it’s a great program for newcomers, or individuals that have been internationally educated, but now they’ve come to Canada. It’s only a semester, so this gives them the ability to get themselves accustomed to the Canadian workforce, our policies and how we actually do things.”
By Anthony Geremia