What’s it like to work inside a professional kitchen? This nonprofit is giving teens firsthand experience.

Your next fine-dining meal might be made by a Philly teenager.

Sprouts Chef Training, a nonprofit giving mentorship and culinary training to under-resourced youth, is coming to Philadelphia. Sprouts participants are paired with professional, working chef mentors who guide them through a six-week paid internship in a restaurant. The goal of the program is to give mentees the practical experience necessary to begin careers in a notoriously competitive field.

“They‘re learning knife skills, they‘re on the prep line, and they‘re really considered a part of the team,” said Kari Cooper, development director for Sprouts Chef Training. “They‘re working with all the other staff in the kitchen; they’re working on front of house service.

“They’re seeing what all goes into really every aspect of the business,” she said.

The organization was founded in the Bay Area, with the Chefs Training program launching in 2016, and has since expanded to New York City.

A group of Philly’s hospitality leaders are working to fundraise and build support for the program, including Ellen Yin, co-owner of High Street Hospitality and the restaurant Fork, and Fia Berisha and Nicholas Elmi, co-owners of BE Hospitality. Their goal is to raise $40,000 by the end of 2024 to support the training and compensation for a cohort of Philly chef mentees in spring 2025.

“It’s an industry that I’m very passionate about, and I think it is a huge opportunity for people,” Yin said. “The hospitality industry can provide a stable and lucrative job opportunity, and I think a lot of people don’t necessarily think of it because it’s not a traditional career path.”

Sprouts plans to find its first Philly cohort through referral partners at nonprofits and other organizations that work directly with youth (while the program is open to ages 16-28, Cooper said that about 90% all of Sprouts participants are 18 or under). Because many of the mentees may come from under-resourced backgrounds with unique challenges, they will be paired with a Sprouts social worker to help facilitate success in the internship.

Once the internship begins, Sprouts mentees typically spend at least two days a week working with their chef mentors inside restaurants, with Sprouts working as a liaison between the two.

“We‘ve got Michelin star chefs who bring on trainees into their kitchens, and we have local mom-and-pop restaurants that have been in business for 30 years,” Cooper said.

She said she believes that the program’s partnership with dozens of chefs and restaurants is evidence of a cultural shift within the industry.

“The chefs who are at the top now went through a pretty brutal and competitive process to get where they’re at. And I feel like they’re recognizing that it doesn’t have to be that way,” she said.

Yin said that getting hands-on restaurant experience is crucial for young people beginning a culinary career. Without it, the transition can be difficult.

“Imagine a kid who has never maybe had a job, and you’re asking them to come into a business that is very reliant on attendance, on consistency, on hard work,” she said.

Once the internship is over, Sprouts continues working with mentees to help them land their first full-time jobs, pursue higher education, or take the next steps in a culinary career. That includes a personal finance workshop to teach them concepts like budgeting, savings, and student loans.

My time at Sprouts was transformative. It wasn’t just about cooking. It was about creating a family and building confidence

Even if Sprouts participants go on to pursue careers outside of the culinary industry, Yin said that the experience is worth the investment for both mentors and mentees.

“It’s a success if that person continues to progress,” she said, noting that while her Fork restaurant has been open for over 25 years, many of the young people working there have eventually moved on to other restaurants or careers altogether.

“I want them to be closer to their career goal than they were when they came in,” she said.

One Sprouts graduate that may be following that path is Danajah Y., a teen from New York who recently completed an internship with the restaurant Margot in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

“My time at Sprouts was transformative,” she said at a Sprouts fundraising and awareness event in Philly in October. “It wasn’t just about cooking. It was about creating a family and building confidence in an open kitchen. Cooking in front of others with their encouragement and acceptance boosted my self-esteem and allowed me to grow both personally and professionally.”

She said that she plans to pursue a degree in biomedical engineering. And even though she is not furthering a culinary career, she said her experience had helped her grow significantly as a person.

“I realized that I was capable of much more than what the world had initially presented to me,” she said.