One of London's leading restaurant groups, JKS, is launching a new Apprenticeship Academy in an effort to mitigate the staffing crisis in the hospitality industry. The new programme, or rather programmes, will involve stints at restaurants within the group as well as a range of perks. The group, which was founded by the Sethi siblings, Karam, Sunaina and Jyotin in 2008, runs some of the city's top restaurants, including Lyle’s, Kitchen Table and Berenjak.
The first programme is a 12-month front-of-house scheme, which is made up of six two-month placements at restaurants in the collection. The second follows a similar format but involves eight two-month placements, focusing on back-of-house instead.
Both will involve monthly sessions with a training manager, who will oversee the apprentices’ progress. The programmes will then culminate in formal end point assessments, where apprentices will have to demonstrate the knowledge and skills they have gained. Those who are successful will then be offered a permanent role at one of the restaurants.
Apprentices will be compensated £18,000 per year, which, depending on their age, could be above the typical salary for similar positions. During the programmes, candidates will also be able to eat at one JKS restaurant in the group every quarter for free and receive 50% off at all JKS restaurants.
Additional perks will include retail discounts, subsidised gym membership and site visits to some of the farms, vineyards, distilleries and breweries that supply restaurants in the group.
To find out more about these exciting opportunities, visit the JKS website.
For more tasty JKS content, read our interview with Chet Sharma, chef patron of BiBi, this year’s best restaurant in London. In the interview, he talks about his influences, leaving a potential career in physics and why he doesn’t like the term ‘Indian restaurant’.
Elsewhere in foodie news, find out why Marks and Spencer is scraping ‘best before’ dates on fruit and veg.