Hospitality House to officially launch today
Hospitality House, a new state of the art training and meeting facility in London's East Finchley is due to officially launch today.
Skills and enterprise minister Matthew Hancock and celebrity chef/restaurateur Jason Atherton are due to attend the official opening of the facility.
Hospitality House is an initiative conceived by the Hospitality Guild, which was itself founded last year as an offshoot of People 1st.
It aims to offer a training and meeting venue for local funded learners, big employers, some of which are supporting the project, and small and medium-sized businesses.
A network of cameras within the training facilities also means that Hospitality House can beam training sessions through the internet to companies and schools across the country.
The building has been provided rent free by McDonald's restaurants and offers kitchen, bar and meeting facilities crammed with the latest technology from a range of hospitality suppliers.
It has been created using public funding from the Skills Funding Agency and through its founding partners - Compass Group, People 1st, City and Guilds, Hilton and McDonald's. Suppliers involved include Heineken, Electrolux and Claremont Group.
Sophie Roberts-Brown, the operations director of the Hospitality Guild, said the building was instrumental in the Guild's aim of making hospitality a career of choice for young people.
The Guild is working with membership organisations, as well as employers, to help map out career pathways through the sector, with the aim of being the first port of call for individuals interested in starting or furthering their hospitality career.
Roberts-Brown said: "Hospitality House was originally going to be an office space that people could use, but our research showed that they wanted a state of the art facility which everyone in hospitality could use. One of the big things that we felt strongly about is that we want small- and medium-sized businesses to have access to the same standard of training that larger businesses have got. The technology here is phenomenal and it is very easy to use."