Coming up in Mumbai is a pastry training school equipped with sleek gadgets reminiscent of a science fiction movie set. Manoj John takes a walk through the gangway.
With globalisation, the world is shrinking more and more—especially the world of pastry. The world’s top pastry training institutions are assimilating India fully into their fold. City and Guilds of London, the 140-year old vocational training body, is the latest to expand its footprint in India when a new European-style pastry school goes on stream in Mumbai.
“It was our dream to start a pastry school. We wanted to provide the level of education expected by a five star hotel to the students in India. We wanted to offer international standard in pastry training,” says Vikas Bagul, who quit his plum job in Marriott to launch the pastry school jointly with noted chef Anil Rohira.
Bagul was winner of the World Chocolate Master from India for three years, and has many accolades to his credit. Rohira was the Pastry Chef of the Year (USA) in 2009, and US team captain and winner of the best sugar showpiece and entre met at the World Pastry Cup in Lyon in 2003.
Be in business
The two chefs have been conducting training programmes as part of their job, and now they have decided to join hands to set up the School for European Pastry in Mumbai. “I conducted workshops and taught even while I was working as a chef. In my two years’ stint at Marriott, I conducted three workshops. Teaching is not something new to me,” says Bagul. Rohira, export corporate pastry chef at chocolate manufacturer Felchlin, Switzerland, also has 20 years of teaching experience behind him. International celebrity chefs will be visiting the School with Ewald Notter slated to arrive first in April. Five to six international chefs will be visiting the School every year to teach. Just after its opening in March, two World Pastry Champions are visiting the school.
The School is planning to offer three types of courses. The six-month course is essentially an entrepreneurial programme aimed at those who want to set up their own pastry shop. There are 18 modules covering a wide gamut of topics in bakery and pastry. The course will have a module on how to set up one’s own pastry shop. The students will be advised on how to obtain the governmental licences and will be briefed about the regulations governing the bakery industry. The School will also apprise them on the formalities for imports and exports. “The course will prepare them for procuring the best equipment and the best ingredients within their budget,” says bagul.
Assignments include setting up a virtual pastry shop anywhere in the country. How much space is required, what the target market is, where the raw materials must be sourced from, what the staffing requirement is, what must be the marketing strategy—all these will be covered in six months. by the time a student passes out, she will have done a project report for opening her pastry shop.
The Indian pastry education sector has been witnessing cut-throat competition. There are big players such as Lavonne Academy of baking Science and Pastry Arts, bangalore, which are firm-footed in the sector. besides, there are institutions such as Dy Patil University that are offffering government-recognised pastry courses. Bagul and Rohira will have a formidable challenge before them to raise the bar for the pastry education sector.
Click away everyone today wants to tag photos on Facebook and Instagram. Professional food bloggers and social media strategists will teach how to take maximum benefit out of the digital media. There will be field trips to pastry shops and production areas of bakeries where the students can see the backend of the operations.
There will be four days of exclusive practical sessions and one day of miscellaneous activities. On Friday, students can experiment with their own ideas and have interactions with food bloggers, writers, nutritionists and food photographers. This course is affiliated to Manipal Association, which partners with City and Guilds of London.
Besides this, there are many short courses of two days’ duration, and workshops and master classes conducted by visiting faculties. The short courses are affiliated to Felchlin, which will issue the certificate.
The target students for workshops vary on the basis of the topic. The workshops on cake can be attended by those who want to set up cake shops. The workshops on chocolate are for those who are interested in setting up chocolate shops. One can learn three days of basic things or undergo six days of in-deep training.
Courses are specialised and intensive. The School also provides continued education for working pastry chefs who want to upgrade their skills. Anyone above 16 years of age can join the course. “Passion for pastry is the important criterion here. We will have a stringent screening procedure to see whether the candidate has the passion to take up pastry as a profession,” says Bagul.
Sci-Fi
The School is digitally connected to the world. It is a paperless school. Every student gets a work station equipped with Wi-Fi Internet connectivity. He can access the study materials collated by the school.
The working tables are equipped with electronic plug points for connect lap tops and cooking tools. There are Bluetooth speakers and microphones, which the teachers will be using. There is also facility for live streaming. There are multiple plasma screens, and every table is equipped with camera.
“We use the best ingredients and the best equipment available in the world market. Our equipment is world class. They are better than those in some of the five-star hotels. We use the highest quality ingredients which even some of the five-star hotels do not use,” says Bagul.
Students can connect to the social media network. “In today’s world, social media is a very critical tool. All good pastry shops and chefs are sharing everything on Facebook and Instagram. If you want to keep abreast with what is happening in the world of pastry, it is absolutely imperative to get glued on to the social media. With YouTube and Facebook, one gets to straight away see what is happening in other countries,” says Bagul.
The first batch will take only 16 students. The school will hire more chefs as teachers as it goes ahead. There is a team of marketing, administration, housekeeping, kitchen and other staffs besides two chefs. “This is the first school we have opened. We are planning to open more schools in India as well as abroad,” says Bagul.
“My mission is to have the School recognized as the top pastry school in the country. We do not want to limit ourselves within the country. We will be going global in times to come,” he says.
“We are becoming entrepreneurs but running a training institute is different from running other businesses. It is the same thing for us to work for a five-star hotel and working on our own,” says Bagul.
The school expects to break even in two and a half years. We will market through social media as well as via advertisements. “We do not find any challenges ahead. We have another partner who has been in the hospitality industry for a sufficiently long time,” says Bagul.
