This story is a collaboration between Verite News and Open Campus.
Last year Brianna Blunt was hired at Cochon, an upscale Cajun restaurant in New Orleans. As a prep cook, she spent hours each day prepping ingredients for a range of Louisiana delicacies they might offer on a given day: catfish, crawfish, gator, rabbit, gumbo, oysters and all types of pork.
She worked alongside seasoned cooks, some with decades of experience in culinary arts around the world. It was nerve wracking. After all, she had only graduated high school two weeks prior. Her coworkers were initially skeptical of this teenager tasked with keeping up in the James Beard-nominated restaurant.
“I’m young, I’m Black, fresh out of school, came in, new face, fresh meat. So I got a lot of attention,” Blunt said.
The hospitality industry in New Orleans is known as a common starting point for young people working their first job, with its low barriers to entry for unskilled workers. But it’s unheard of for a teenager to start out at such a highly-acclaimed restaurant as Cochon.
Blunt was brought to Cochon through an apprenticeship that put her on track to become a line cook. Over a year later, she fulfilled that, and now works on the line as a garde manger responsible for preparing and plating salads.
“I feel like I [have] a leg up when it comes to work because my apprenticeship was my first job, and it put me in a high end restaurant, a nice restaurant, instead of me having to go to fast food and trying to work my way up,” she said.
She’s found fulfillment in cooking since she was young, and began to see it as a career option when she was introduced to the New Orleans Career Center (NOCC), a workforce training program serving high school students. She landed her apprenticeship with Cochon through the program.
“I just feel like for someone my age, 18, straight out of high school, getting straight into a higher end job, being able to do that, that’s a lot for me,” Blunt said.
NOCC is part of a small crop of nonprofit programs that have cemented their place in New Orleans’ hospitality landscape. The massive industry, which includes food and beverage establishments and hotel accommodations, is the backbone of tourism here. And it’s sustained by a large share of underpaid workers in dead end jobs — workers who are disproportionately Black and Brown.
Nonprofit programs are laying a path for youth, who might otherwise fall through the cracks of the industry, to pursue a meaningful career. Whether or not young workers from these programs will experience career gains in the long term is still unclear. But this investment in youth has highlighted that there’s plenty of room to better support individuals in the workforce.
A tough industry to work in
Workforce training programs for youth have maintained a steady presence in the city’s hospitality landscape in recent years. It’s a booming industry constantly in need of staff — visitors to the city spent $10.4 billion in 2024 according to New Orleans & Company, the city’s marketing arm for tourism.
In these programs, young people receive hospitality skills training with a focus on culinary arts. They function as bridges to employment and higher education outside of a school setting.
A handful of nonprofit programs operate in this space. NOCC serves high schoolers and offers programs in different industries. Reconcile New Orleans and Cafe Hope are hospitality-focused with restaurants that double as a training ground and a source of funding for the training programs.
It’s a shifting landscape. Liberty’s Kitchen was a program with a popular Mid-City eatery that closed in June. Its director told Gambit it closed due to financial challenges and a competitive landscape for programs. The national Job Corps had a culinary program in New Orleans before its federal funding was fully slashed this summer.
These types of programs didn’t have a big presence in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Reconcile’s chief program officer, Monique Robinson, said the storm and its aftermath created an urgency to help the city’s disconnected youth, also known as opportunity youth — people aged 16 to 24 who aren’t in school and aren’t working.
According to the most recent data from Measure of America’s Youth Disconnection report, Louisiana has the highest youth disconnection rate of all U.S. states at 15.5 percent, with New Orleans nearly matching that at 15.6 percent. About 1 in 5 Black and Latino youth are disconnected in Louisiana.
“A lot of the organizations after Katrina emerged because you had opportunity youth here … and they’re not in school, they’re not at work. So that’s where you see an explosion of workforce training programs.” Robinson said.
It makes sense for hospitality to be a backdrop for job training in New Orleans, a city with tens of thousands of jobs in restaurants, hotels and bars that support the tourism economy.
In 2024 there was an average of about 36,000 employees working in accommodations and food services in Orleans Parish, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That number is above 60,000 in greater New Orleans.
Despite being among the top employed industries in New Orleans, hospitality workers make some of the lowest wages, according to The Data Center, a nonprofit that analyzes data in Southeast Louisiana.
In May 2024, food preparation and service workers had an average hourly wage of $13.92 in greater New Orleans, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The living wage in New Orleans for an adult with no children is $20.78 per hour and for an adult with one child, it’s $35.49 per hour, according to MIT’s Living Wage calculator.
Average annual earnings for accommodations and food services full-time workers is $33,456, according to the U.S. Census. This includes reported tips.
And hospitality jobs tend to have limited opportunities to advance within a business, especially restaurants. A 2015 Data Center report found that among all local-serving industries in New Orleans, hospitality had the lowest share of available “good jobs” that offer stable incomes and upward mobility.
On top of meager pay and few opportunities to advance, hospitality jobs can be strenuous and stretch workers to their limits. Blunt said people tried to warn her about entering the industry for these reasons.
“A lot of people was telling me that’s not really something you should do,” Blunt said.
But it didn’t stop her. She has dreams of owning her own restaurant one day.
“I kind of knew this is what I wanted to do, but I had no idea of how I was going to get there. And NOCC really helped get me there,” she said.
Creating a robust pipeline of talent
NOCC’s culinary program, launched in 2019, offers tuition-free workforce training for high school juniors and seniors. Its funding mostly comes from private grants and government funding. NOCC also helps students prepare to enter the workforce with activities such as resume building and mock job interviews.
In the 2024-25 school year, 98 percent of the 48 culinary students were credentialed at the end of the year with either a ServeSafe Food Handler or ServeSafe Manager certification. These certifications aren’t widely required for hospitality jobs but they are encouraged.
“When a kid is graduating high school and they’re going into this environment, and they already understand the core skills to function and operate in a kitchen, even [for] an entry level line cook. That’s better … than the bus boy. They’re already two steps ahead,” said Carlin Jacobs, chief program officer at NOCC.
This sort of boost can be a game changer for young workers of color entering the industry. According to research from The Data Center, New Orleans restaurant workers of color disproportionately work in lower paying positions, such as bussing tables.
That’s partly due to occupational segregation, said Allison Gerber, vice president for the Center for Economic Opportunity at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Restaurants have a history of front-of-house jobs being occupied by white workers and back-of-house jobs occupied by workers of color. White workers in visible positions are exposed to more tips and are more likely to develop transferable skills that make them marketable for other jobs, she said.
“I do think that those patterns reproduce over time seemingly on their own, unless you disrupt them,” Gerber said.
NOCC’s program is helping culinary students, most of whom are Black, avoid that.
Jacobs said industry partnerships are essential to the program. Partners will bring in chefs to do culinary demos for students — like butchering a pig — or do site visits at hotels such as Windsor Court and the Ritz Carlton.
With the help of its partners, NOCC wants to address industry-wide concerns like high turnover by creating a “robust pipeline of talent,” Jacobs said.
Ben Hammond, corporate executive chef for the Link Restaurant Group, said the COVID-19 pandemic had a lasting effect that exacerbated retention efforts.
“There isn’t a restaurant group you would talk to that doesn’t say that. So if they were building from within, COVID made it where they had to start looking from outside,” Hammond said.
The hospitality industry hasn’t fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic which shrunk the workforce.
In the metro area, available jobs shrunk by nearly 25 percent in 2020. Three years later, that figure increased to nearly 63,000 jobs, according to The Data Center, and that’s still lower than pre-pandemic numbers.
And historically, it’s common in the industry for workers to spend short stints working at one establishment before leaving for another in search of better pay, different responsibilities or a better work environment.
The Louisiana Restaurant Association launched the state’s only culinary apprenticeship program in 2020 in part to address this. Jonathan Baynham, executive director of LRA’s Education Foundation, said the program is a “retention tool” that also serves to connect employers with skilled workers.
Baynham said that there are currently 38 active apprentices and only one works outside the New Orleans metro area. Most apprentices come from community programs like NOCC.
Unlike a traditional employee who moves up if the timing is right and a new position is available, the apprentice model is structured for a worker to advance within a restaurant. For example, the line cook tract begins with an apprentice working as a prep cook and advancing into a line cook position after about a year.
Hammond, who oversees Cochon, said they’ve brought on four apprentices so far, and three still remain in the industry.
At Cochon, apprentice pay is aligned with that of regular employees: prep cooks begin at $17 per hour and line cooks begin at $18 per hour. Apprentices have incremental pay increases based on how many hours they’ve worked.
For young workers like Blunt, the apprenticeship earns them decent money and sets a clear path to advance — all in a first-time job as a teenager.
Hammond said he enjoys the success of the apprenticeship program and the long-term commitment it creates in workers. But he warned that it shouldn’t be seen as a one-stop solution for employee turnover.
“Our main goal is not just getting apprentices because we have high turnover. That would just be kind of foolish. If you have high turnover, you’ve got to look within and start looking at how you’re managing people and how you’re hiring as well,” Hammond said.
Connecting to opportunities
Reconcile New Orleans is the largest program in the city targeted to opportunity youth with about 130 people served annually. Many come to the program from low income backgrounds or unemployed, and about one third have experience in the justice system according to 2023 numbers. The program has a robust staff to assist in social services that ensure their youth’s basic needs are met.
Youth in the program receive stipends that total $2,650 across the 14-week program.
It’s organized into four tiers that measure youth progress: work readiness, skills training, career exploration and an externship. An externship is similar to job shadowing and less intensive than an internship.
“They just want you to get out here, you know? They want you to explore. They want you to find a job so you can ease in with what you like. I hope I get a career that can last me as long as I’m on this earth for,” said Jerry Baldwin, a 21-year-old in the program.
Most people in the program stay in hospitality, but others, like Baldwin, pursue other careers.
In any case, Reconcile staff are charged with finding an employer match that aligns with the organization’s values. They look for employers whose wages start at $15 per hour or more, offer benefits and have clear opportunities for employees to advance within.
“Can you forgo the immediacy of let’s say, working in a French Quarter restaurant or a bar, versus doing this for 14 weeks so you can get to an employer that we vetted, that has benefits, the opportunity for advancement?” Robinson said.
Reconcile celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. But it didn’t begin operating in its current model until after 2020, Robinson said. She said Reconcile used to function as a transactional “pipeline” in service of local restaurants that just needed bodies to fill positions.
Now, the youth are prioritized and positioned to pursue a meaningful career in the industry.
In 2024 Reconcile graduated 76 out of 130 people who were served — its highest annual graduation rate.
But there’s still the question of long term outcomes of the current model, which are still taking shape. One of Reconcile’s significant sources of funding, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, is invested in studying alumni retention in the industry, according to Robinson.
The Hilton Foundation’s most recent grant to Reconcile in April was $1.25 million.
“We want young people to be connected to opportunities. And it’s never been about just in the hospitality industry. [Hilton] have been very transparent with us, and we’ve been transparent with them by saying everybody’s not going to the hospitality industry, and these are the reasons why,” Robinson said.
Hilton also gives grants to NOCC and other nonprofits that serve opportunity youth in the city. New Orleans is one of four cities worldwide that the foundation is supporting in its opportunity youth initiative.
Robinson said that most Reconcile alumni stay continuously employed at restaurants for over a year following graduation.
That was the outcome for 24-year-old Keenan Jordan. He said he’s one of the youngest cooks at Compère Lapin, a highly acclaimed restaurant in New Orleans that blends Caribbean and New Orleans-style cuisines.
“I’ve been there for a year, so just to see that accomplishment is just like, it’s different, because I’ve been moving around a lot lately and never been able to plant my feet,” Jordan said.
Jordan started there as an apprentice after completing Reconcile’s program in 2024. But prior to starting at Reconcile, Jordan struggled finding his footing as an independent adult. Navigating the job market was difficult. And without financial support from family, he was homeless for a short period.
Just over two years later he’s in the midst of a culinary career, which he calls a dream. He envisions himself in the future owning his own business or working in another high class restaurant.
“I’m working under a James Beard-awarded chef [who] spent her whole life doing this, and she’s still doing it … I want to be there someday. That’s what’s pushing me, that’s what’s motivating me, that’s what’s keeping me going,” he said about Compère Lapin’s chef and owner Nina Compton.
A ripple effect on the industry
Across workforce programs for youth, it’s unclear what share of alumni land in decent hospitality jobs. Reliance on voluntary reporting from alumni on their whereabouts means that programs might only hear from standout workers.
Still, the presence of workforce programs for youth has highlighted how much they’re needed in New Orleans.
Gerber, whose work focuses on economic success for youth, said youth workforce training programs have long been approached with a “just in time” mindset. Meaning, programs will ramp up efforts when economic conditions are favorable or when the industry in question is seeing increased investment.
“The expectation that you can just turn on and off programming is, I think, a challenge. And I think as funders, public and private … there has to always be a baseline capacity in the community if you want them to be able to grow,” Gerber said.
More businesses are getting involved in supporting the workforce.
Last year, New Orleans & Company launched a committee for human resource leaders to connect them with resources that can support employees. At a recent meeting, leaders learned about Oyster Sunday Benefits, a health insurance and benefits marketplace made specifically for hospitality jobs.
And the tourism-focused organization has launched two training programs: one for mid-level employees advancing into management and another teaching hospitality basics and life skills.
Workforce programs for youth set the tone for this type of investment in hospitality workers. They hope it will produce a ripple effect that creates better outcomes for the workers vital to New Orleans’ economy and its culture.