• Develop interpersonal skills, communication and leadership qualities of your team through a fun cooking event.

• Strip back hierarchy to demonstrate leadership through action, team-work and communication.

• Hands-on cooking to stir up competitive team spirit.

At The Cooking Academy we spice up traditional development days with engaging and competitive cooking challenges. Teams can be pitted against each other to create and serve a ‘Michelin’ standard banquet dinner. The leadership team can then either enjoy the meal as a group, or for added fun, invite their teams to serve and enjoy the dinner they have cooked together. All of this is taught, supervised and judged by our highly experienced Chefs.

Download our corporate brochure to share the concept with your colleagues.   Download Brochure Testimonials

Why choose cooking as your leadership and

development event of choice?

Cooking has a unique ability to put everyone on a level playing field, which encourages openness and for people to embrace new ideas. It breaks through any overly risk adverse cultures to develop the ‘can do’ mentality. Working together to create a beautiful meal, which is later shared as a team, provides a relaxing and convivial atmosphere compared too many other events. Cooking is also very similar to the office environment, with delegation of tasks, oversight, encouraging experimentation and sharing the results as a team, making it perfect for coaching the soft skills modern businesses require.

Itinerary

Our events can last from as little as 2 hours through to an evening or whole day. They are fully flexible, built around your needs, with a typical example below:

• Welcome drinks and canapés.
• A spice trail or presentation to introduce the speciality ingredients.
• Team challenge and menu assessment – get into teams.
• ‘Ready Set Cook’ – 75 minutes of cooking to complete the challenge.
• Stop cooking and judging of dishes.
• Teams sit down to eat and drink together.
• Prize giving to the winning team.

Our events are entirely managed by our team of chefs and event managers; we provide all necessary equipment, ingredients and even a mobile kitchen where required, so all you need to do is turn up and enjoy the day.

Locations

Central London, including the City and Canary Wharf, St Albans, Cambridge, Hitchin, Slough, Reading, Luton, Birmingham, Oxford and our home in Rickmansworth.

Group Sizes

Group sizes range from 6 to 100 people.

Customise Your Event

We can create bespoke events to suit your company requirements. We have expert Chefs and offer a whole range of cuisines ranging from Japanese, Indian and Thai to Italian and Desserts. Speak to our Event Planners today to build an event perfect for you.

“Just to say a big thank you for another successful team-building event. I was delighted to see how the event really brought them all together to work to achieve the tasks and they all really enjoyed themselves and have been buzzing about it in the office ever since. In fact it’s generated a lot of interest in cooking and they’re all keen to practise the recipes at home.” Liz Barber – DLL Financial Solutions   “Our cookery event was designed to improve inter-team relationships and encourage colleagues to get to know each other outside the workspace, since happy employees mean happy customers – and growing revenues. Our objectives were met 100%, exceeding everyone’s expectations.” Thomas Schneider – Concur Technologies   “Wow what a night!!! Feedback from everyone is AMAZING, they all enjoyed every minute even the stressful moments, and there were a few! Everyone is talking about it today! Thank you so much for putting on a great event for Phil and the team it will certainly be one to remember! Great food, wonderful helpful, calm chefs and great friendly staff, truly was special so thank you! The Global Team loved every minute and will take a great memory back to their home towns!” Jan Spelman – Sodexo