Chef Innovator Residency Program
Memphis Public Libraries
Innovation Synopsis
MPL’s Raleigh Library includes a teaching kitchen in response to community requests. A recent expansion of MPL’s award-winning Innovator-in-Residence Program added a chef at Raleigh to teach customers cooking and food prep techniques that prepare them to launch a business, join the workforce, pursue a side hustle, or cook healthier at home. Additional classes in graphic design, digital marketing, resume building, and online research for recipes and health information increase digital literacy and connect participants to jobs in food service. The Chef Innovator does much more than teach hard skills. She also connects participants to networks of current and aspiring culinary, health, and wellness practitioners for collaboration, inspiration, and a sense of belonging. She serves as an individual mentor and an inspiring role model for every participant. Data shows that people with mentors and expert networks are more likely to succeed. Lives are transformed by the Chef Innovator Residency.
Challenge/Opportunity
The Chef Innovator addresses both workforce and community health challenges. Raleigh Library’s service area is 76% Black, and 26% live in poverty. It opened in 2020 with a cooking facility included based on community feedback regarding the need to address these issues through free library programs. The Chef Innovator addresses the issue of poverty/unemployment by:
• Teaching cooking techniques as a marketable job skill;
• Teaching entrepreneurship, including basic bookkeeping, marketing, and digital skills;
• Providing direct mentorship and connection to networks that support participant goals.
She addresses the issue of serious community health challenges by:
• Teaching healthy home cooking skills;
• Showing participants where and how to shop for fresh, healthy food on a budget;
• Connecting participants to local entrepreneurs who grow and sell ingredients like vegetables and herbs for less than at the supermarket;
• Educate participants on the connection between diet and disease.
Key Elements of Innovation
The Chef Innovator is a working entrepreneur who serves as a role model and teaches community members about healthy eating while coupling formal culinary education with job-readiness and entrepreneurship skill building. She fosters the in-demand market-relevant skills of commercial cooking and kitchen management while connecting participants with resources that teach them digital skills like online job search techniques, document/graphic design, internet research, food photography, social media, and traditional marketing. Through engaging programs like the $10 Dollar Dash (in which participants visit the supermarket across the street, purchase $10 worth of ingredients, and make a full healthy meal at the library) and Kitchen Hustle (in which a small cohort of emerging entrepreneurs meets weekly to develop, launch, and grow their businesses, learn the skills necessary to succeed, and build community), the Chef Innovator is changing lives and supporting community health and prosperity.
Achieved Outcomes
The Chef Innovator’s curriculum fuses health literacy, digital literacy, job-readiness, entrepreneurship, & connection to networks and library resources to create pathways out of poverty & opportunities for improved health. Since her standing-room-only kickoff event in Aug. 2025, nearly 100 have attended her programs, including 12 cohort members for the weekly Kitchen Hustle entrepreneurship series & 6 mentoring sessions addressing specific financial & business challenges of local food entrepreneurs. One mentee recently received her business license! The Chef has engaged partners like the Pursuit Center, a nonprofit offering resources to justice-involved youth, whose clients have a 96% non-recidivism rate. Visits to Raleigh Library support their success. She is planning a large-scale healthy food festival for Spring 2026 that will bring program participants & community partners together to learn, grow and connect. We expect at least 350 (and up to 750) participants.
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