May 2004 saw the opening of a new food experience – a high quality, commercially run restaurant that also has a social conscience. Hoxton Apprentice is owned by the charity Training for Life and was co-founded by the social entrepreneur Gordon D’Silva and the celebrated chef and restaurateur, Prue Leith.
The restaurant has two simple purposes: to give its diners a top quality but affordable eating experience and to prepare unemployed people for jobs in the hospitality industry. Hoxton Apprentice cooks modern European food to a standard that has won Michelin recommendation.
What makes Hoxton Apprentice stand out is that 100% of all its profits – your money – is reinvested to help unemployed people. Since 2004, Hoxton Apprentice has created over 150 apprenticeships, of whom over 70% have got jobs , some in London’s top restaurants including venues headed by Raymond Blanc, Gordon Ramsay and Anton Edelmann as well as with international hospitality groups such as Nobu, the Hilton, Compass, Whitbread, Sodexo and…at Buckingham Palace.
How does it work?
Hoxton Apprentice is managed by industry professionals and staffed partly by trainees. We call them apprentices. It provides training and work experience for people who, for one reason or another, have found life tough. Few of them have ever worked successfully, most have left school without qualifications, some have experienced homelessness, some have experienced problems with the law; some have recently left the armed forces. All have been trapped in long-term unemployment.
Hoxton Apprentice is about people taking responsibility where everyone has the potential of making a positive contribution to society. For the restaurant customer, for example, by simply eating at Hoxton Apprentice, you are making a difference. For the apprentice it can mean a new life built on economic self sufficiency and for government and society, the creation of citizens who are less likely to reappear as a recurring cost to the benefits or even penal justice systems.
Eating at Hoxton Apprentice is really dining with a difference!
In August 2008 we opened our second Apprentice restaurant in Dartmouth, Devon. In May 2010 we open our third, the Barking Apprentice.
