As a leading brand in culinary vocational education, New Oriental Cuisine Education, under China East Education (00667.HK), has established a corporate cooperation network spanning diverse sectors. Its partners include various tiers of brands, such as chain restaurants, star-rated hotels, and Michelin or Black Pearl-awarded restaurants, forming a school-enterprise collaboration system that covers all sectors and meets multi-level employment needs.
From March 24 to 25, New Oriental Cuisine Education conducted in-depth follow-up visits to several high-end benchmark dining brands in China, including Beijing's Siji Minfu, Holiland, King's Joy, and Huaiyang Fu. Through on-site evaluations of educational outcomes and precise alignment with corporate talent demands, the program aims to transform industry-education integration from paper agreements into a sustainable, mutually beneficial ecosystem. This shift upgrades talent training from basic skill-based to high-quality skill-based, paving a high-end career path for students through advanced school-enterprise collaboration and continuously strengthening the brand’s reputation for premium culinary education.
During the visits, New Oriental Cuisine targeted top-tier brands to accurately address the demand for high-end culinary talent. A graduate employed at King's Joy remarked, "At New Oriental Cuisine, I not only mastered solid professional skills but also developed strong vocational qualities, which helped me grow quickly at a Michelin three-star restaurant like King's Joy."
In response to the trend toward premium and quality-driven development in the dining industry, New Oriental Cuisine Education has been expanding cooperation with high-end brands such as star-rated hotels, Michelin restaurants, and leading catering groups. It has developed a targeted training and deep-collaboration educational model to precisely meet the high-end sector's need for versatile talent skilled in refined techniques, standardized production, menu innovation, and comprehensive service. By jointly building training bases, co-developing specialized courses, and inviting corporate mentors to teach on campus, students can align with Michelin kitchen standards and learn the operational logic of top brands while still in school, ensuring talent development resonates with the demands of the high-end culinary industry.
The follow-up visits directly addressed challenges in bridging education and employment. For long-term core partners like Siji Minfu and Holiland, with collaborations spanning over a decade, the team discussed practical measures with senior executives, including targeted training, joint practical training, and curriculum updates, integrating corporate employment standards and career advancement systems into the teaching process.
For high-end brands such as the Michelin three-star vegetarian restaurant King's Joy and the one-star Huaiyang Fu, New Oriental Cuisine focuses on high-quality employment, striving to cultivate specialized high-skilled professionals. By proactively expanding high-end career tracks and optimizing the talent supply structure, it enables more students to enter the fine dining and quality service sectors, achieving the leap from skill mastery to premium employment. School-enterprise cooperation has evolved from one-way talent supply to a full-chain collaborative model involving customized talent development, shared standard-setting, and joint growth support. A graduate working at Holiland's headquarters shared, "Working at Holiland headquarters exposes me to many cutting-edge industry concepts, offering vast opportunities for personal growth." High-end employment platforms not only enhance students' professional competitiveness but also vividly demonstrate the outcomes of New Oriental Cuisine's high-quality employment initiatives.
The effectiveness of industry-education integration is ultimately reflected in employment quality. At Siji Minfu, 15 out of 26 head chefs nationwide are graduates of New Oriental Cuisine, with over a thousand alumni employed cumulatively. Holiland, collaborating with the school for 14 years, has hired more than ten thousand students, providing them with extensive development platforms. New Oriental Cuisine translates industry needs into teaching content and refines talent training based on corporate feedback, making education more market-relevant, high-skilled professionals more competitive, and employment more secure. Each follow-up visit serves as a review of educational quality and a reaffirmation of the vocational education mission.
This research confirms that culinary vocational education is rapidly penetrating the high-end dining sector. The trend toward premium, institutionalized industry-education integration has become a key pathway for vocational education to empower industrial upgrading. By deepening cooperation with high-end brands and refining long-term collaborative systems, New Oriental Cuisine Education not only opens professional pathways to premium culinary careers for students but also drives the dining industry's transformation from skill-based to quality-oriented and innovative through talent supply-side reforms. This injects sustained momentum into the high-quality development of China's culinary vocational education and the premium upgrade of the dining industry.
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