CHEFS
CHEFS is a culinary training program run by Episcopal Community Services (ECS) in San Francisco. The program prepares adult students challenged by homelessness for entry-level jobs in the food service industry. The 10-week program includes classroom instruction, hands-on kitchen training, and support from employment specialists to help graduates secure permanent jobs. Students earn their Food Handlers Certification and receive a weekly stipend while building their culinary skills.
CHEFS is located on the ground floor of 1064 Mission Street, a project dedicated to a daunting mission: solving chronic homelessness through pioneering program convergence. The project’s vision weaves nurturing design solutions with multi-layered programs and services to create a broad safety net. Together they lift people out of homelessness and into permanent housing with social and health services and job training all under one roof, while creating interconnectivity and improved livability in the neighborhood.
The floor plan of CHEFS positions the teaching and catering kitchen, which prepares and serves over 250,000 meals annually to people experiencing food insecurity, along the beaten path of the building’s Mission Street frontage, encouraging passersby and potential students and supporters to peek inside and observe the program and its students in action.
The lobby forms a spine-like atrium, connecting all the program pieces together and visually linking the interior spaces to the courtyard, where vegetables and herbs for the program are grown. This central circulation space offers views into the CHEFS’ kitchen, a shared conference room, a demonstration kitchen and classroom and the program’s offices.
The demonstration kitchen and classroom can be separated or joined by a Skyfold partition that, when opened, rises into a hidden cavity in the ceiling.
The CHEFS’ Kitchen offers hands-on training in a fully functioning commercial kitchen environment that mirrors a large-scale catering or restaurant-style line kitchen. Each year over 80 students complete the program.
A shared courtyard, serving both CHEFS and the formerly unhoused residents who live on the floors above the program at 1064 Mission Street, offers an outdoor sanctuary and respite from the streets of SOMA. Here, CHEFS’ students and residents rub shoulders, socialize and cultivate raised planting beds together, empowering students to inspire residents to enroll in the culinary training program.
The CHEFS lobby serves as a central atrium, bridging between the street frontage and the courtyard and connecting the catering kitchen, demonstration kitchen, classroom and offices. Students and program staff rub shoulders and socialize in this multi-purpose space that’s also used for demonstrations and fundraising events.
