Sometimes when we hear “the first of its kind” we might be skeptical. In the case of the newly launched FCSI Foodservice Design Certificate Program at Western Kentucky University (WKU), it is the reality.
The FCSI Educational Foundation teamed up with WKU to develop this innovative, exciting program for both students and professionals aspiring to become foodservice consultants.
Kathleen Held, CEO and president of Cini-Little International, Inc., and a member of the FCSI Educational Foundation board, was part of the team that spurred the development of the Certificate program and connection with WKU to implement the logistics and curriculum. The main driver for such a program is to offer formal training for foodservice consultants at the start of their career, as well as recruit newcomers from the design and hospitality industries to this niche field. “The reality is few people realize that foodservice design consulting is a career path,” Held says. “We’re focused on creating an educated career path for students interested in this line of work.”
For years, consulting firms have had to cobble together teams recruited from architectural, design and hospitality industries with a lot of in-house training. “Most consulting firms are small, so to train an incoming project coordinator person is extremely time-consuming and expensive for firms because they have to take time away from billable work,” Held says. “We’re hoping this Certificate program puts all the pieces together – both for the students and for working professionals.”
The Certificate program, which officially launched on 1 July for the 2024 school year, encompasses six courses (three in the fall, three in the spring) spanning both the interior design and hospitality management departments, including food safety and sanitation; materials and finishes for interior design; digital rendering for interiors; commercial foodservice preparation; menu planning and purchasing; and foodservice design.
Additional learnings taught through the certificate that are critical in the field of foodservice consulting include Foodservice accounting & budgeting; Foodservice equipment laws; Regulations & specifications in foodservice design; Kitchen/interior/architectural design; Foodservice equipment mechanical; Electrical and plumbing systems; Foodservice consulting technology & tools; Equipment distribution; Bidding & procurement; and Project management & quality control.
In addition, the program teaches “an understanding of ergonomics and workflow, sustainability practices in kitchen design and project management skills – that’s a big one,” Held says.
To inform some of those best practices, Held and the EF have been working to recruit FCSI members as guest instructors covering topics such as programming, space analysis, equipment selection, MEP requirements, trends in design, robotics and AI, and more.
Origin stories
The idea of creating an educational path or schooling for foodservice consulting has been brewing in FCSI circles for decades, but the crucial moment toward an actual Certificate program began “with an RFP just after the FCSI TAD Conference in Montreal last year,” says Held.
The EF worked with an educational expert to guide the team through the process of submitting an RFP to universities to gauge interest. About 20 universities responded, and the EF committee narrowed the pool down to six.
“Of those, Western Kentucky was the only university that responded and in the interview actually mentioned the importance of including Revit in the course curriculum,” Held says. That sealed the deal, given the difficulty in recruiting Revit-trained professionals and in Revit training for many firms.
At that point, the EF created a task force of FCSI members to work with WKU administrators to lead the development of the curriculum and logistics for the program.
Garrett Lennon FCSI, principal of JLR Design Group and president of FCSI EF, calls the program a watershed moment. “Since l became a design consultant and joined FCSI, I had often wondered why there was no official educational path associated with our design profession. Most of the learning curve that was taught to new designers took place within the individual firms that they became employed by. This was my experience,” he says.
“That will still take place as firms want business to be conducted according to their particular parameters, but now we are helping establish a platform that gives the student a base knowledge and understanding of the day-to-day role a foodservice designer plays within the design industry. The goal is to lessen the learning curve dramatically.”
In the end, the project took a little over a year to come to fruition. “In academia, that’s actually quite fast,” says Travis Wilson, the former head of WKU’s Applied Human Sciences department, who worked closely with the EF task force and other university stakeholders to get the project approved.
“We saw this as a very intriguing concept on paper, plus the initial response from foodservice industry and student populations have been gangbusters already,” says Wilson, who comes from a design and construction background and now operates General George Stillhouse in Rough, Ky, in addition to teaching at WKU. “The program is beneficial for the school because it diversifies the programming for our students and helps them become productive employees and happy graduates, and it’s great to see more of an overlap between our hospitality management and design students.”
Ann Embry, an instructor at WKU, has since taken over that position, however, Wilson notes she was involved in the planning from the beginning. “We’re excited to introduce a career path that is not necessarily at the forefront of our students’ minds but is very viable and has a lot of opportunity for growth,” says Embry, who is a registered dietitian. “We’re hoping to attract two core markets: individuals out in the workforce and just getting into [foodservice consulting] as a career or maybe who are just getting started and seeking a Certification; the other audience is our current students at Western Kentucky, or those looking at schools and potentially choosing ours because of this offering. Our challenge is to figure out how to work with those two target markets because their needs are very different.”
Pilot project
Sheila Flener, an interior design instructor at WKU was the first instructor for the pilot foodservice design class, with 11 interior design students.
“[The class] was open to all students, but since we hadn’t been able to announce the Certificate at the time, we couldn’t really recruit from both the hospitality and interior design schools,” Flener says. “The interdisciplinary nature of the course is a great benefit for the school and the students – seeing how we can help each other in this profession. We’re seeing interest from students in the business and architectural sciences programs.” Wilson says there are about 300 students across the interior design and hospitality schools; Flener will continue to teach the foodservice design and Revit courses as part of the Certificate.
Though the initial foodservice design course was well-received, Held says the team has decided to switch up the textbook used and add in a few other key learnings. “The first book was more equipment-based; now we’re switching to a more facilities design-oriented book and working with the university to amend some lesson plans.”
It’s vital to get the foodservice design class right, says Embry, because it “is intended to be the Certificate program’s capstone class, which brings together everything the students have learned up until that point and they can put their new knowledge and skills to work in designing a final project.”
Future plans
It has been confirmed that the FCSI Educational Foundation Foodservice Design Certificate will be available in two forms: Students already enrolled at WKU and who meet the course requirements; and professionals who enroll as non-academic credit web-based learning opportunities for professionals seeking career advancement.
WKU administrators plan to launch a robust marketing plan to advertise the class while working with FCSI’s task force to offer the program in a hybrid format to attract current foodservice consultants who want to further advance their learnings – especially in Revit and hospitality.
Through the hybrid program, Wilson says, students not enrolled at WKU can “take courses online for the majority of the program and then come in for an intensive week or two for the food and cooking and face-to-face portion of the program.”
Future students on the program will be able to apply for the The Jo & John Birchfield Sr. Educational Scholarship, named in recognition of the couple who founded the FCSI EF Golf Scramble and Crab Feast that has contributed over $500,000 to the FCSI EF since its start.
Wilson concludes: “We’re really excited to see how this program turns out, and we know it will be very beneficial to keeping our industry moving forward for the future.”
Amelia Levin
