Broadmoor Technical Center in Overland Park, Kansas, earned this year’s CAFÉ/Kendall College Green Award, presented at the 13th-annual Leadership Conference of the Center for the Advancement of Foodservice Education (CAFÉ) in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on June 22.
Sustainability is the key to Broadmoor’s culinary-arts program’s Seed to Harvest education—exemplified in the classroom, at the school’s farm-to-plate public restaurant and on the program’s own urban farm.
The farm allows high-school students to participate in planting, maintaining, harvesting and preserving food during the school year. More than 10,000 pounds of organic produce is harvested from the quarter-acre plot. The program utilizes more than 90 percent of all produce; the remainder is sold to generate funds that help cover farm expenses not funded by Shawnee Mission School District 512.
According to chef-instructor Bob Brassard, CEC, other sustainability lessons taught on the farm include composting, water conservation and recycling. Through numerous community partnerships with farmers and nonprofit organizations such as Cultivate Kansas City, as well as corporate partners, students are exposed to sustainable growing and selling practices while promoting sustainability education to customers.
Brassard and chef-instructor Justin Hoffman oversee Broadmoor Bistro, the 120-seat public restaurant staffed solely by students in grades 10-12 who cook, serve and run the restaurant’s operations. The menu, which changes every two months, reflects seasonal, casual bistro fare featuring farm produce.
CAFÉ’s Green Awards, founded in and sponsored by Chicago-based Kendall College since 2009, comprise the first national awards program to recognize secondary and postsecondary culinary-arts, baking/pastry and hospitality-management programs for their commitment to ecological sustainability and teaching its tenets. Selection criteria are based on the integration of sustainability into educational programs and/or operations.
As 2017’s Green Award recipient, Broadmoor Technical Center received a $1,000 grant and engraved plaque from Kendall College and a complimentary full registration to CAFÉ’s 13th-Annual Leadership Conference at the International Culinary Institute of Myrtle Beach—part of South Carolina’s Horry Georgetown Technical College system—June 22-24.
Broadmoor Technical Center joins previous Green Award recipients Santa Rosa (Calif.) Junior College and Triumph High School, Cheyenne, Wyo. (2016); Kent Career Technical Center, Grand Rapids, Mich., and Batavia (N.Y.) Career and Technical Education Center (2015); Miami (Fla.) Culinary Institute (2014); Cascade Culinary Institute, Bend, Ore., and Metro Tech High School, Phoenix (2013); Seattle Culinary Academy (2012); Colorado State University, Fort Collins (2011); Technology Center of DuPage, Addison, Ill. (2010); and Johnson & Wales University, Charlotte, N.C. (2009).
