Free training and insertion in the labour market move the Gastronomia Periférica school

With a school that has already trained more than a thousand people in 23 states of the country, Gastronomia Periférica offers free training and insertion in the job market in the food sector. The project started in 2018 as an app, transformed and today works as a gastronomy school and restaurant. 

The school takes into account the routine of people who live on the periphery to achieve its main objective: “What makes someone from the hood give up on training is the need to work. With distance learning, that person can fit the course into any moment of their life”, explains Adélia Rodrigues, co-founder of the company. 

Thus, training is mainly done online: first, students attend classes through an internet platform. Afterwards, a deepening is done, when it is possible to ask questions with the teacher, live, through the platform. Finally, comes the practical part to acquire the technique, which is always done on weekends. 

The person undergoing training receives internet assistance, food card and the value of the ingredients for carrying out the practical classes. After training, there is a new stage, which is to take this student to work in a restaurant or other initiative in the field of food.

From periphery to periphery 

In São Paulo, where the company was founded, Gastronomia Periférica maintains its own restaurant, Da Quebrada, located in Vila Madalena. “The idea is that, once trained, people occupy a space in our kitchen and that there is an environment of innovation”, says Adélia. Both in São Paulo and in other states, the school partners with restaurants and other local initiatives to try to ensure the employability of students. 

Being from the hood and running a restaurant in Vila Madalena, a privileged area of ​​the city, is part of the trajectory of resistance defended by Gastronomia Periférica: “This is a provocation that I always hear, that we are from the periphery, but we are in Vila Madalena. But every other restaurant in that area has peripheral people! The difference is that we are the protagonists of this process, we are not just in the back of the kitchen”, she points out. 

For her, militancy comes from peripheral origins. Adélia is from Maranhão and lived in Ceilândia, on the outskirts of Brasília, before moving to Jd. Boa Vista, west of São Paulo, when she was still a child. The co-founder, Edson Leite, is from Jd. São Luiz, south zone of São Paulo. 

“We both come from the periphery and had our lives transformed by education. But what about those who are already adults and didn’t have that chance? We live in a capitalist system, so we started to ask ourselves how we could look at the system and bring opportunities for income generation and social investment to adults. From there came the idea of “Gastronomia Periférica”, says Adélia.

Food, affection and work 

According to Adélia, many restaurants went bankrupt during the pandemic, which is why the market is still in the process of economic recovery. The events area, on the other hand, is booming. The high demand for food at corporate meetings happens because food creates connections: “Food acts as an icebreaker, bringing people together”, she says. 

She points out that to work in the food market, whether in the restaurant sector or  in events, it is important to have kitchen training. “Many people enter the labour market thinking that they will already be chefs, but in the kitchen, everything is a process. It’s a lonely profession, there are many hours in a closed space, dealing with an exhausting routine. And the training makes the person feel empowered for the role they occupy”, defends Adélia. 

And nobody teaches the notion that cooking requires one step at a time, she continues: ‘Perhaps the person enters the kitchen to wash dishes or salad. So you need to think calmly and plan if you want to pursue a career in the area. Many students enter the kitchen and discover that they don’t like cooking, for example. In this case, the person can work in the salon. There are several possibilities in gastronomy, ”she warns.

From Earth to Table 

The Da Quebrada restaurant always uses a seasonal menu, offering organic and seasonal food. These are, therefore, menus made especially for certain periods, which may or may not be repeated at another time. It all depends on what the producer offers. 

“It may be that a food never appears on the menu again, because we assemble it from what the producer plants, and not from our demand. In addition to strengthening the farmer, the seasonal menu encourages the creative development of the cook”, explains Adélia. The food is purchased in Parelheiros, a district in the southern part of the municipality of São Paulo, which has been emerging as an important centre of family and organic agriculture in recent decades. 

Bringing reflection on the relationship that people establish with food is also a goal of the restaurant and the school. For Adélia, people in general, including cooks, are no longer concerned about whether food is in season, forcing a demand that promotes the availability of certain foods all year round. The classic case is that of strawberries: “Many people order strawberry cake for parties, even when it’s not in season. In that case, why not make it with seasonal fruit?”, she asks.

Partnerships with private company 

Gastronomia Periférica is a social business that works through partnerships with private companies. Among the sponsors are Grupo Carrefour, Mãe-Terra, Fundação Tide Setubal, Grupo BRF, Continental and others. The “Unidos pela Comida” project, carried out jointly with Unilever, for example, fought hunger throughout the pandemic. 

A new restaurant school will also be opened through a partnership with Instituto Bacarelli, to feed the children who live in Heliópolis [considered the largest favela in São Paulo] and who receive musical training at the Institute. At the same time, all of Gastronomia Periférica are carried out by teams that have already gone through their training. 

The demand for the course is high and vacancies are insufficient to meet so many subscribers. Therefore, to participate in the training, you must first go through a selection process that follows certain criteria. According to Adélia, women are a priority, especially black, brown or indigenous women, as they are among the most vulnerable. 

“Last year, for example, we took a training course in a village in Dourados. Our intention was to bring knowledge so that the women there could organize themselves and generate income, transforming not only their own lives but also those of their families”, says Adélia. In addition to women being a priority, there are other selection criteria linked to origin in the territories, age and the very objective of the course being offered: the cooking and entrepreneurship course, for example, prioritizes women over 40 years old, due to the impact of ageism. “We always need to read the context of what is socially established and try to deal with it in order to break the bubbles”, she explains.

Women and the kitchen 

I ask Adélia why the school’s priority is women since they are already culturally inserted in the kitchen process from a very young age and end up being most responsible for preparing the families’ meals. Do they need to go through a qualification course? Is the knowledge they acquire in the course of life not enough to work in kitchen spaces? 

Adélia is categorical in her response: 

“Yes! We are pushed into the kitchen, many even dislike the cooking process, precisely because it has become an obligation in domestic work, and that we have to perform as part of a social role, a work that is neither paid nor recognized as important by society. But that’s not enough! We need to go deeper and, often, rescue our own food cultural heritage, especially in big cities, which has been lost”, she says. 

“Nowadays, for example, we no longer eat the childhood foods that our grandmothers used to make. The city offers a lot of ready-to-eat food, and processed food, all very fast. And it becomes a status too… having the possibility to buy frozen food instead of making your own food gives you the status of a modern person, of someone who doesn’t have time and decides what to eat quickly”, he continues. 

“There is also the issue of technique: we women know how to cook, many learned when they were still girls, but we do not necessarily know how to do a good pre-preparation so that there is no waste, or even measure the time spent in the kitchen and which should be taken into account when it is necessary to price a product, or the quantity of ingredients to be used in recipes… So, yes, women need training!”, defends Adélia. 

Want to support this cause? 

It is possible to make training and donations through the website! 

For more information, follow the social networks of Gastronomia Periférica on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.