A hospitality career program for Durham's next generation.

Part of The Recipe

High School · 6-Month Cohort + Community Expo

The food and hospitality industry is one of Durham's largest employers.

Most young people have no idea what's in it.

The Next Course changes that. Through a free community expo open to all of Durham and an immersive six-month cohort for high schoolers, we pull back the curtain on an entire industry — the careers, the pathways, the people who built them, and the skills it takes to thrive. This is where culinary confidence becomes career clarity, and where young people stop being overlooked and start being prepared.

We build good cooks. We build good people. We build them from the inside out.

The Next Course

Two Components.
One Pipeline.

The Next Course is built in two parts that work together — one that opens the door for all of Durham, and one that walks a select cohort of high schoolers all the way through it.

  • Open to all. Free. No experience required.

    The Hospitality Expo is a free community event welcoming Durham students, adults, families, and job seekers into the full world of hospitality careers. Industry panels spotlight the breadth of what's possible — from culinary arts to hotel management to food media to event planning — with professionals from Durham's community of color sharing their paths, their wisdom, and their real opportunities.

    This isn't a career fair with booths and brochures. It's a room full of people who built something in this industry, talking honestly with people who want to do the same. Every attendee leaves knowing more about what's possible — and knowing someone who can help them get there.

    Open to all. Bring your people.

  • High schoolers. Six months. Built from the inside out.

    The cohort is where the deep work happens. A select group of high schoolers meets weekly for six months — building culinary skill, exploring the full range of hospitality career pathways, and developing the personal and professional tools to enter the workforce ready, confident, and known.

    This is not a class. It's not a club. It's a six-month commitment to becoming — to figuring out who you are in this industry and what you're going to do with it.

    Every session connects skill to career to self. Because culinary education, career awareness, and personal growth aren't separate tracks here. They're the same work, done together, with young people who deserve nothing less than intentional, whole-person support.

Career Pathways Explored

The Next Course doesn't assume every young person wants to be a line cook. The hospitality industry is vast — and we show all of it.

Culinary Arts · Food Photography · Food Writing & Media · Hotel Management · Event Planning · Restaurant Operations · Food Entrepreneurship · Front-of-House · Catering & Hospitality

Every pathway gets real representation — professionals who are actually doing the work, sharing what it took to get there and what it looks like from the inside.

The Culminating Experience

The Menu Pitch

This isn't a simulation. Durham restaurants are the stage. At the end of the six-month cohort, participants don't present a project. They pitch a product. Each cohort member partners with a Durham restaurant to develop an original menu item for real consideration. They own the entire process — flavor development, food costing, menu writing, food photography, server training scripts, and a live walk-through for the chef. Every skill built across six months comes together in one professional-level deliverable, presented to a real audience with real stakes. This is what it looks like when young people are treated like the professionals they are becoming.

Skills Applied in The Menu Pitch

  • Flavor profiling

  • Food costing

  • Menu writing

  • Food photography

  • Public presentation

  • Recipe instruction

Resturant Partners

  • One of Durham's most beloved independent cafes, Monuts has opened their space and their expertise to Next Course participants — giving young people a real professional kitchen context and a real chef audience for their work. Their partnership signals something important: Durham's food community believes in this pipeline.

  • Counting House brings the full experience of upscale Durham dining into the cohort — exposing participants to front-of-house professionalism, culinary standards, and the kind of restaurant environment that raises the bar for everyone in the room. Next Course participants have stood in this kitchen and pitched their ideas to these chefs. That experience changes a person.

  • Que Dogs brings entrepreneurial energy and community roots to The Next Course — showing participants what it looks like to build something distinctly Durham, rooted in flavor and culture, and make it thrive. Their story is one every young food entrepreneur in this city should know.

  • Durham knows The Parlour. A beloved local ice cream shop woven into the fabric of this city, The Parlour brings something essential to The Next Course — proof that a food business can be deeply community-rooted, creativity-driven, and excellently executed all at once. For cohort participants exploring food entrepreneurship, hospitality, and what it looks like to build something Durham is proud of, The Parlour is exactly the kind of partner that expands what young people think is possible. Sweet, serious, and entirely Durham.

The Next Course builds on the foundation of what began as Kitchen Assistants in Training — the KAIT program that first put KKG high schoolers in paid roles at $11–12 an hour and proved that young people from Durham could show up in professional kitchens and thrive.

KAIT showed us what was possible. The Next Course is what's next.

The paid work experience, the professional standards, the expectation of excellence — all of it carries forward. What grows is the scope: more career pathways, a deeper cohort experience, a community expo that opens the door for all of Durham, and a culminating pitch that sends participants into the world with credentials, relationships, and proof of what they can do.

Same foundation. Bigger future.

The Evolution of This Work

  • Deeper culinary knowledge and real kitchen confidence, built through hands-on weekly learning.

  • Clarity on their own hospitality career interests — and a concrete map to pursue them.

  • A professional portfolio: resume, headshots, and a completed menu pitch.

  • Relationships with Durham industry professionals who know their name and their work.

  • The self-efficacy and confidence to show up fully — in the kitchen and in life.

What Cohort Participants Leave With

The Throughline

How This Fits The Recipe

Every KKG program is one step in a larger process — a recipe for what happens when young people are trusted with real tools, real relationships, and real opportunity. The Next Course is the technique: the moment where everything learned in the kitchen gets applied to the world outside it.

The Flavor Lab builds the cook. The Next Course builds the career. And the young people who move through both leave knowing that the industry they're entering has a place for them — because they helped build it.

→ Explore The Recipe — see how all five programs connect

Feed This Work

The Next Course runs on community investment — from the ingredients in the kitchen to the industry professionals in the room to the restaurants who open their doors. Here's how you can be part of it:

Donate — your gift funds cohort supplies, Food Handler's Certification fees, professional headshots, resume support, and the resources that make the Menu Pitch possible. Every dollar goes directly into a young person's future.

Join the Expo as a Panelist — if you work in any corner of the hospitality industry and are willing to share your path honestly, we want you on stage. We especially seek professionals from Durham's community of color.

Open your restaurant or venue — site visits and pitch partnerships are how young people move from imagining a career to standing inside one. If you have a kitchen, we have students who are ready for it.

Hire from the cohort — our graduates leave with credentials, experience, and a professional portfolio. If you're hiring, start here.

Share — every time you share The Next Course, you put it in front of the young person in Durham who needs to see it.