July 2008 saw the opening of a special food experience in St Barnabas Church in Dartmouth– a high quality, professionally run restaurant that also has a social conscience. Dartmouth Apprentice is owned by the charity Training for Life and is the second Apprentice restaurant co-founded by the social entrepreneur Gordon D’Silva and the celebrated chef and restaurateur, Prue Leith. Consultant Chef Clemente Maiorano devised the original menu, set up and oversaw the operation of the kitchen during the first season, before handing over to the permanent team in early 2009.
The restaurant is located within what we call a “Prospect Centre”, Training For Life Dartmouth, and has three simple purposes: to give the diners in the restaurant a top quality [but affordable] eating experience, to prepare unemployed people for jobs in the hospitality industry and to support the training needs of hospitality employers in the Dartmouth area.
Dartmouth Apprentice cooks modern Italian food to a standard that has already won recognition. What makes Dartmouth Apprentice stand out is that 100% of all its profits – your money – is reinvested to help unemployed people. Since its opening, the first group of Dartmouth apprentices has been recruited and began their training in September 2008.
In addition to the training centre and restaurant, the Prospect Centre includes a social housing unit. This is made up of 11 self contained flats and a central communal area. The unit is designed to support people who are homeless and provide a low cost temporary residence while they find work and a permanent home. The unit is run by Training For Life, with Signpost Housing Association, quite independently to the restaurant, but it supports the needs of the restaurant by providing homeless apprentices with a stable residence during their training. Homeless people are referred for the flats by South Hams Council.
How does it work?
Dartmouth Apprentice is managed by industry professionals and staffed partly by trainees. We call them apprentices. It provides training and work experience for people who, for one reason or another, have found life tough. Few of them have ever worked successfully, most have left school without qualifications, some have experienced homelessness, some have experienced problems with the law; some have recently left the armed forces. All have been trapped in long-term unemployment.
Dartmouth Apprentice is about people taking responsibility where everyone has the potential of making a positive contribution to society. For the restaurant customer, for example, by simply eating at Dartmouth Apprentice, you are making a difference. For the apprentice it can mean a new life built of economic self sufficiency and for government and society, the creation of citizens who are less likely to reappear as a recurring cost to the benefits or even penal justice systems.
Eating at Dartmouth Apprentice is really dining with a difference!
We opened our first Apprentice restaurant, the Hoxton Apprentice, in May 2004 in London. In summer 2010 we open our third, the Barking Apprentice.
