High school culinary programs are a great way to get students excited and prepared for a career in the foodservice industry. Over the last 3 years as culinary arts instructor at Miramar High School in Miramar, Fla., John Hammett has seen his students go on to get jobs in restaurants and hospitality.

“I have a few now that are seniors that are going, that are going to go into the industry,” said Hammett.

Before teaching culinary arts, Hammett received degrees in baking, pastry and foodservice management from Johnson and Wales in North Miami and worked in restaurants and pastry.

Miramar High School is a Title 1 school where at least 90% of the student body is on free or reduced lunch and from a low income household. While some students take culinary classes to learn life skills, others use it to prepare for a future in the foodservice industry.

Hammett submitted his school for our Cambro Cares program. The goal of Cambro Cares is to support organizations that nourish our communities, and we are always even more thrilled to support the future generations of chefs.

“When I opened up [the donated Cambro products], my seniors that I had last year were like, ‘It’s like Christmas!’,” said Hammett. “It was a great opportunity to show them a lot of the stuff that they will see in the industry because Cambro is a huge company in the industry and now they realize it.”

Hammett requested a variety of CamSquares®, Camwear® Pans, Cambro Lids, and a Camtainer®.

“With the materials that we got from Cambro, it helped show the students the proper way to store food goods that are not in metal containers because we all know storing in metal containers is not always the best thing, especially for certain foods,” said Hammett. “A lot of my students have used [the products], especially when we did simple labs, or when we did bigger events, we were able to use it all.”

One large event Hammett and his students worked on was the Broward County cabinet meeting where many of the nearby principles gather together to discuss school news and issues. 

“We used the donated products to store a lot of our items and prep it, so that the students could make the food and serve,” said Hammett.

For special days like Teacher Appreciation Day, Hammett was able to use their new Camtainer to hold both cold and hot beverages.

“One day, we used it for iced coffee; it still had ice all day,” said Hammett. “Another day, we did it for hot chocolate. Instead of having to hook up the machine to do the coffee, we just make it and we pour it in there and it stayed hot for a while.”

Miramar’s culinary program trains students in kitchen basics, cooking methods, scratch cooking and even how to manage a budget. If you’d like to nominate an organization for our Cambro Cares program, please visit www.cambrocares.com.