Creativity at the heart of student concepts

As part of their course, our 5th year students have just carried out a week-long project on ‘Concept Design & Development’. The project involved the creation of a ‘food court’ where 15 pop-up restaurants were created one after the other welcoming customers under real-world conditions.

Students on the Master’s degree in Culinary Leadership & Innovation and the MSc in International Hospitality Management worked hand in hand to design 15 operational as well as viable food service concepts.

Divided into several different teams, our students drew up the business plan, wrote the menu, and designed the layout and decorations of the restaurant within a given budget. The outcome was a range of highly original concepts, such as ‘des bouchers du potager’ (the vegetable patch butchers), a 100 % vegetarian concept designed like a butcher’s shop, or ‘les sales gosses’ (naughty kids), a restaurant redefining the dishes we used to eat as children. After three months of preparation, our students were able to successfully manage an ambitious experiment that offered both a strategic and operational vision of the culinary arts and food service professions.

Thanks to a training approach at Institut Paul Bocuse that focuses on application, they were able to experiment their know-how as well as to experience the challenges of the sector to help them better prepare for their future careers.

One final trial before the giant leap into the professional world!