Foodservice supplier Ventura Foods donated $10,000 to the scholarship fund of Johnson & Wales University during a recent event at the culinary school’s Providence, R.I., campus.
Ventura Foods, which sponsors the annual Nation’s Restaurant News MenuMasters Awards, was participating in a collaborative event in which chefs from the winning restaurant chains gathered at the university to develop a special menu to be served by the award winners during a celebration on May 18 at Morgan MFG in Chicago.
J&W students Brooke Calhoun, Britney Loh, Zach Pawlowski, and Krys Peer assisted the corporate chefs in developing the menu.
Highlights from the collaboration event can be seen on MenuMasters’ YouTube channel.
“Ventura Foods is proud to sponsor MenuMasters, which celebrates the creativity, inventiveness, and passion of chefs,” said Eniko Bolivar, Ventura Foods’ vice president of corporate communications and social responsibility. “Our contribution to Johnson & Wales is a natural next step in our MenuMasters journey. It’s an honor to further ignite these young chefs’ passion for food by spotlighting menu innovation in the foodservice industry and, in turn, demonstrating all that is possible in their future careers.”
J&W’s dean of the College of Food Innovation & Technology, Jason Evans, expressed gratitude for the gift.
“We are incredibly grateful for Ventura’s support of our programs and students,” he said. “It is because of partners like this that we are able to provide the world-class educational and professional development experiences that have made Johnson & Wales a premier training ground for food professionals for over 50 years.”
The MenuMasters Awards program was launched in 1997 by Nation’s Restaurant News and Ventura Foods and since then has awarded culinary excellence in foodservice.
Learn more about this year’s winners here.
For more information about the MenuMasters Celebration on May 18, visit www.menumasters.com
