Programs

Chef Will’s chefs’ knives crafted in Japan were his cherished tools he began collecting at age fifteen. He quickly became skilled knife handler and teacher to his kitchen staff. Chef Will won his first Skills-USA knife skills competition, 1^st Place Trophy and cash award as a sophomore at Charlottesville Area Technical Education Center. He strongly believed that every “good cook” needed to have their “tool-roll” of cutlery and utensils at the ready and be proficient in their knife skills.

Professional skilled trade-persons irrespective of the job, all go through formal education, training, and apprenticeship programs properly uniformed and appropriately equipped with the basic “tools-of-the-trade.” Culinary Arts students are no different, yet many underfunded culinary arts education programs are unable to provide students with professional uniforms, footwear, cutlery, and utensils needed to set them up for success in a highly competitive profession.

Disadvantaged culinary arts students are more often than not, handicapped by the lack of proper commercial kitchen attire, safe non-slip footwear and cooking tools. Therefore they are less likely to confidently present themselves in a job interview and be less prepared to demonstrate essential kitchen skills without professional tools-of-the-trade.

The Chef William-Allen Peterson Culinary Arts Foundation is committed to working with educators to get culinary arts students “professionally dressed for success” and training with good quality equipment. When a student looks and feels like a culinary professional it builds confidence, self-esteem, and a sense of pride in his/her culinary skills.

The Chef William-Allen Peterson Culinary Arts Foundation will draw upon the depth of culinary arts knowledge, skills and restaurant kitchen business experience within our growing Chef Ambassadors Corps to support, assist and collaborate with, high school VOTEC (vocational and technical) Trade, and community college culinary arts Instructors. Our chefs will also participate on the foundation’s internal advisory council, leading scholarship processes and curriculum development.

The Chef William-Allen Peterson Culinary Arts Foundation will provide qualified guest speakers, culinary career advisors where possible in-person. We will also utilize classroom video conferencing technology to positively impact the maximum number of culinarians possible in schools located in our home communities and in urban and rural communities across the country.

The Chef William-Allen Peterson Culinary Arts Foundation will offer culinarians, and schools specialized cooking and knife skills classes, seminars, workshops, and courses as continuing education programs to augment their formal culinary arts education.

To create “earned income” opportunities for the foundation, we will additionally offer cooking enthusiasts private and public professionally conducted cooking events for individuals, teams and groups. We will conduct events at private residences, school cafeterias, teaching kitchens, food trucks & trailers, restaurant kitchens and in the wild!

As the Chef William-Allen Peterson Culinary Arts Foundation grows it will engage in select community-based projects to help feed food insecure families. One area of particular interest where Chef Wills’s “motorhead” wrenching skills and passion for the culinary arts converge is developing viable ways to help reduce food deserts in urban neighborhoods, rural, and Indigenous tribal communities.

Looking forward and when opportunities present themselves, our foundation looks to partner with corporate donors, community food banks and vocational trade schools to leverage our core culinary competencies with controlled environment agriculture (CEA), hydroponic vertical farming and solar tech firms to engineer, educate, train build and feed food insecure neighborhoods and communities with nutrient dense vegetables and fruits

The long-range plans for Chef William-Allen Peterson Culinary Arts Foundation include the development of a specialized culinary academy. Here culinary arts students can receive training in advanced cooking techniques and many methods of live fire cooking uniquely adapted to the hospitality, culinary arts, restaurant, and outdoor recreational equipment industries.

We are planning two facilities; one in the Charlottesville Central Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains area, and the other in metropolitan Charlotte, North Carolina. Each training facility will offer specialized industry education, hands-on knife skills, culinary techniques and live fire cooking programs using a wide variety of modern cooking equipment led by qualified and experienced culinary instructors and working chefs.

Chef Will was heavily influenced by his creative and knowledgeable culinary mentors who taught him many invaluable cooking techniques that prepared him for a working chef’s life in a fast-paced upscale restaurant kitchen. He specialized in “from scratch” dishes ranging from diverse charcuterie starters to flavorful delicate proteins, artisanal produce and kitchen-made delicious chocolate desserts.

The Live Fire Cooking School is a tribute to Chef Will’s deep passion for cooking over open fires. Whether he was cooking riverside on small backpacking stoves; over a blazing campfire at a mountain hunting camp; on his backyard charcoal grill; roasting a whole hog or tending a hundred pounds of meats in an off-set smoker, he was always in his element. His companion toolbox containing his knives, cooking utensils and seasonings were always within arm’s reach!

As Executive Chef at Foxcroft Waverly, Chef Will demonstrated a mastery of his beloved Spanish Josper charcoal fired oven/grill where he produced exquisite Basque inspired dishes.

At the Culinary Academy and Live Fire School culinary students, cooking enthusiasts, small teams and corporate groups will have immersive cooking experiences. Cooking equipment manufacturers will also conduct demonstrations and training on their latest equipment for both commercial and well-appointed home kitchen customers. These activities will create recurring earned income for the operations of the foundation facilities.