City and Guilds recipe for success with Cilantro Culinary Academy
City & Guilds are a global leader in skills development, providing services to training providers, employers, and trainees across a variety of vocational sectors to meet the needs of today’s workplace. Our qualifications and apprenticeships are valued by employers across the world, helping individuals develop their talents and abilities for career progression.
The workplace environment is changing rapidly, and employers are finding it more challenging to attract and retain the right talent. Cultivating and building this talent from the foundation up is the key to success. But how do providers ensure quality delivery that leads to career success for learners?
City and Guilds have launched its evolved provision in Hospitality & Catering in response to the changes in the learning and workplace environments.
Established in 2006, Cilantro Culinary Academy, a well-established partner of City & Guilds is Malaysia’s Largest private culinary and pastry vocational academy.
Recognising the importance of knowledge and skills in a chef, Cilantro Culinary Academy offers their students a global approach of 5 qualifications from 4 countries comprising local and international certifications that will provide graduates a competitive advantage in their career paths.
Each student’s work is monitored closely by the chef instructor in-charged as student to teacher is low to ensure students get the needed attention and guidance.
At City & Guilds, along with their other companies in the group, believe in the power of skills to build successful careers, businesses, and economies.
The City and Guilds Group are able to provide a broad and imaginative range of products and services that help people achieve their potential through work-based learning.
The Group’s purpose is the same today as it was 140 years ago – to help people, organisations and economies develop their skills for growth.
Their friendly and professional team works together in a diverse range of roles to support the future of work and learning around the world. If you share City and Guilds commercial focus and passion for helping people to realise their potential – discover more about the exciting careers and great benefits they can offer you.
In 2017, Cilantro Culinary Academy was been awarded the International Centres of Excellence (Asia Pacific) by City & Guilds, UK.
Cilantro Culinary Academy is the very first private vocational culinary and pastry academy in Malaysia being awarded with WACS Recognition of Quality Culinary Education Award. Today, they are still maintaining a very positive working relationship with WACS in Paris, France working in partnership with City & Guilds.
As a winning vocational academy, they recognise the global demand on skilful and knowledgeable chefs around the world. Cilantro Culinary Academy partners with International Management Institute, Switzerland (IMI) to prepare their students for their BA (Hons) Degree in International Culinary Arts. With this opportunity, they continue in gaining good market share nationally.
Cilantro Culinary Academy has been constantly preparing new strategies to integrate into a new learning system that would help students to not only acquire new skills but to create a fun learning environment. This project will be on the pipeline which will be introduced as soon as possible. We believe such learning method will benefit learners no matter where they are located.
Adapting to the COVID-19 crisis, Cilantro Culinary Academy has reacted with the current situation swiftly.
Cilantro have started to deliver City & Guilds refreshed global hospitality qualifications evolved to ensure learners are fully equipped for the modern workplace. They were co-created with industry experts and with Worldchefs to reflect the skills and competencies required by employers around the world.
They cover transferable as well as job role-specific skills, set out by employers, offering a holistic approach to training learners to be work-ready. Sustainability awareness is a vital part of the offer, addressing a critical challenge for the hospitality industry globally.
In short, the new qualifications carry the same trusted standard of content as before but with updated and enhanced content to reflect today’s workplaces.
This means it will be available to them throughout their training to learn, practice or refresh their knowledge whenever they want.
As part of City and Guilds’ innovative approach, they have also introduced digital credentials as a key feature of the new Global Qualifications. Digital Credentials are a secure and verifiable record of achievement. Every learner who completes their qualification will now receive a digital credential in addition to their City & Guilds certificate. They can share their digital badge via social media showcasing their achievement and the skills they can offer to employers.
Cilantro Culinary Academy is ready to be the first culinary and pastry vocational academy in Malaysia to offer Hybrid Vocational Online Learning Programme (HVOLP) which is going to make full use of technologies to continue to set trend to stay competitive in the market.
The content within our solution has been put together by subject matter experts and is aligned to UK, National Occupational Standards Levels 3 and 4.
Training providers can now link their qualifications directly into the Global Hospitality Certification, our brand new global certification for the hospitality industry, developed in partnership with Worldchefs and employers around the world.
This link will put their learners onto the path of continuous professional development and recognition in the industry. Global certification helps learners become more employable by allowing businesses around the world to see and verify their skills.
Benefits of linking to Global certification:
- If you have a workplace component in your training that meets the requirements set out in the Global Hospitality Certification, you can attach a badge to your programme, making it more attractive to learners;
- Global certifications recognise and showcase the experience and skills learners gained in industry, beyond their qualification’s achievement;
- Training providers across the world can recognise the skills and experience learners have achieved
- It showcases the relationships you have, as a provider, with employers giving you a competitive advantage and helping to attract more learners.
Global hospitality digital credentials provide a secure and verifiable record of achievement, which can be shared on social media to help make skills and experience visible and easy to understand.
Employers can use the credentials as part of their recruitment and also create a snapshot of skills within their business to identify progression opportunities and development needs for existing staff.
The hospitality industry faces a shortfall of 14 million jobs by 2030. Negative perceptions of the industry, widening skills gaps and retention of talent are just a few of the challenges faced by businesses around the world. So, how can organisations keep up with the demand and thrive?
As a leading innovator in skills development and workplace learning, we’re collaborating with employers to create a solution that can showcase a range of career opportunities within hospitality, to help attract and retain talent in the sector.
Launching a global benchmark
The Global Hospitality Certification, by City & Guilds, is a brand new global skills framework for the hospitality industry. Created in partnership with Worldchefs and employers, it is the first and only professional skills framework in the world. It has been co-designed with industry professionals to recognise the skills and experience of those working in hospitality.
The Certification sets a global benchmark for job roles across:
- culinary
- food and beverage
- front of house
- housekeeping.
The benchmark is quality assured by City & Guilds, building on over 140 years of experience and expertise in designing standards and assessing workplace competencies in the hospitality industry.
Certification is achieved through the issuing of digital credentials, the latest technology in skills certification.
Find out more about City and Guilds’ Global Hospitality >
Cilantro Culinary Academy is a vocational academy which specialized in Professional Chef Training.
For the past 15 years, they focus on Skill and Methods of cooking which has trained over 4000 skill learners contributed to F&B industry in Malaysia as well as to the other side of the globe.
To complete his City & Guilds, Level 2 Diploma in Food Preparation and Cooking (Culinary Arts) in Year 2012 from Cilantro Culinary Academy has provided the culinary skills and crafts that are essential to Eddie Leong Chun How’s education and working experiences. In fact, Cilantro Culinary Academy also helped him to secure a training position in Hotel Mandarin Oriental Kuala Lumpur that notably enhanced his working resume.
In 2011, he was trained intensively to participate in the cooking competition, FHM2011 Culinaire Malaysia. With a passionate heart in cooking he won himself a Silver medal. With his excellent achievement in his diploma, he was nominated by Cilantro Culinary Academy and won the next medal for himself, the City & Guilds Medal for Excellence (2012-2013). In 2013, he was nominated for City and Guilds Lion Award in 2013. Although he didn’t win, but this has never defeated his passion and love in Culinary Arts.
These skills have built a background and solid foundation that eased his transition into University of West London. Eddie’s passion and culinary competence was well recognized when he received “The Terry Farr Culinary Prize” for showcasing the highest level of practical skills from University of West London in 2014. In the same year, he graduated with Bachelor Degree in Food and Professional Cookery.
He began his transit from UK to US thereafter. He participated in the Student Exchange Programme as a trainee in Hotel Ritz Carlton, Orlando in 2015. With the skills and knowledge he learnt, he prepared himself and fit well into the trainee’s life perfectly. He worked with passion each day. With his humble characteristic, he has gained good reputation among his colleagues. It was difficult to say ‘goodbye’ when he decided to get into a new challenge by setting up his own restaurant back in his home country, Malaysia.
Eddie is someone who has great calibre on his goals and achievements. In Sept 2017, he finally owns his first restaurant in town known as” Wings N Boar Restaurant & Café.” The business was the talk of the town and it was well received by the community.
In March 2020, he faced a big challenge that affects his business when The Malaysia government announced Movement Control across nationwide. He has to shut down his entire operations for 30 days. However, he faced this challenges patiently. He continues to be optimistic and believes that he would be back on track again, he believes that nothing comes easy.
Today his business has grown with a positive curve as compare to the year in 2020 and his is able to stay even more competitive as compared to before. The challenges he faced has become an opportunity for Eddie in the Post-COVID-19 World.
With the foundation laid from Cilantro Culinary Academy and City & Guilds Qualification, our learners can excel no matter where they are.
