Culinary Institute of America Launches Food Business School for Entrepreneurs

One of the top culinary schools in the United States is getting even better. Today registration officially opened for The Food Business School, a new entrepreneurship and innovation-focused spin-off of the Culinary Institute of America, based at the culinary school’s Napa Valley campus.

Instead of focusing on the finer points of knife skills and pastry techniques, the Food Business School is aimed at professionals, executives, and food entrepreneurs with courses that focus on problem solving and turning good ideas into actionable ventures and initiatives. Courses are planned with instructors who have excelled in their professional fields, with the school tapping business professors from prestigious surrounding universities like Stanford and UC Berkeley, along with celebrity chefs like CIA graduate Michael Chiarello.

“An unprecedented expansion in food industry innovation and investment, coupled with a growing urgency to address global food systems crises, offer a distinct opportunity—and challenge—to shape our food future,” says FBS Dean and Executive Director William Rosenzweig in a press release announcing the school’s launch. “At The Food Business School, we guide and empower food innovators at all stages of their careers to become the successful catalysts of tomorrow’s food solutions.”

The school is offering three formats: online courses, 3-4 day immersive Innovation Intensives programs, and multi-month Venture Innovation Program (VIP) programs that will combine on-campus and online courses. The long weekend programs promise to cover a range of topics that go beyond the restaurant business to also explore work in R&D and packaged consumer goods manufacturing. Current classes on offer cover pop-up restaurants, scaling up a food business, creating prototypes, and innovating in the field of packaged foods. The longer programs will provide extra support to budding entrepreneurs, and will be available starting in 2016.

“The Culinary Institute of America has a long history of educating and supporting the world’s leading chefs, tastemakers, and foodservice innovators,” adds CIA President Dr. Tim Ryan in the same press release. “The Food Business School represents a strategic extension of our college’s unique capabilities and resources to serve a broader and vital constituency of students and future leaders committed to transforming the world through food.”

[SOURCE: Eater]