International Food Services is an international maritime catering company with a huge passion for food, people and data. They offer various catering services to commercial and offshore vessels. To do so, they work with a network of ship suppliers in almost all ports worldwide. Besides supplying provisions, they also organise ship chef training courses in the Philippines, Belgium and Angola. For the theoretical part of this training, they use the IFS Coach. Read the interview with Rodrigo Gelle, Marketing & Communications Coordinator, here to learn more about their IFS Coach.
Choosing the tool
Before the pandemic, the company trained their learners to become cooks in a 10-day physical training course at one of their training centres. Half of the Chief Cooks Course was dedicated to theoretical lessons (food safety, shipboard safety, preparing budgets,…), and the other half to practical cooking lessons.
During the pandemic, they immediately saw the impact of the lack of marine chef training: chefs were making more mistakes while ordering provisions, their costs were rising, they had less control over the quality of their service, but most importantly, more complaints were coming in from customers. A well-trained cook manages his budget better, creates less food waste, creates better menus, remains with the company longer, you name it. The company therefore benefits greatly from having well-trained and supported staff.
So we desperately needed to modernise, but we obviously wanted our training to maintain the same quality standard. Thanks to IFS Coach, we were able to reduce our Chief Cook’s Course from a 10-day physical training course to a 5-day physical training course (practical cooking classes only). This made our operation much more efficient. As such, there was obviously a positive impact on the anticipated budget, but also on the amount of training courses we were able to offer, on the speed at which our trainees could attend the training and on the content of the courses.
Rodrigo Gelle
The absolute favourite
The IFS coach has a bunch of advantages:
- Educate more people.
- Seafarers have a better understanding of the subject matter.
- Seafarers can do it at their own pace.
- Seafarers literally have all the information in their pockets.
- The Wall lowers the threshold for communicating with each other. As a result, certain issues can be resolved faster or feedback can be requested.
- Additional smaller refresher courses can be offered smoothly. This gives the chefs permanent support from a distance.
Training is at the heart of our business. That is why we are always looking for ways to improve the way we work. Both our CEO, HR, the entire management team and the trainers were closely involved from the start. It was very important to us that everyone was on board. The experience and expertise of our CEO was crucial in this project: he was a seafarer himself, built the training and gave training to the seafarers himself.
Rodrigo Gelle
Methodology
Learners always receive access to the IFS Coach via a welcome e-mail 3 weeks before their cooking classes start. They use their own smartphone to follow the courses. After completing the courses, they may start the mock exam, if they pass this they may come to one of our training centres. Here they attend cooking classes and take an official final exam (in the IFS coach). They get a certificate of theory, practice and their skills/attitude. The complete training in the IFS Coach is recognised by FPS Mobility and Transport. The training was created in function of the seafarers’ own experience: it had to be available offline, it had to be intuitive, user-friendly, easy to understand and translate.
By using simple maritime language, showing lots of illustrations, applying different learning methods and regular testing, the learners also actually felt that everything was tailored to their needs.
Learning & Development Awards
Stimulearning hosted its 12th edition of its Learning & Development Awards on 16 March 2023. International Food Services was 1 of 8 winners of an L&D Award, but also won the Jury Award! A wonderful recognition of their hard work and passion.
Would you like to hear Rodrigo explain himself? Then watch the video below. (Dutch)👇
