McDonald's offers training at S'pore technical college

Instead, it will set up a training cafe at ITE College West in Choa Chu Kang so students can learn fast-food restaurant operations and customer service.

To open early next year, it will train 320 students from the food and beverage operations and service management courses per year. The training will be conducted by McDonald’s employees.

While the curriculum has not been finalised, Goh Mong Song, deputy principal at ITE College West, said there would be various training stations to provide students the opportunity to learn about fast-food restaurant operations in an authentic learning environment.

“Currently, the students go through similar training at Amber@West, a fine-dining restaurant located within ITE West,” said Goh.

“The McDonald’s training cafe will introduce students to quick-service restaurant operations, to complement their training at the fine-dining restaurant,” he said.

The training cafe will also serve as a test bed for new recipes created by ITE’s culinary students.

While it will not be open to the public yet, there are plans to develop it into a social enterprise cafe, with proceeds donated to charity, said Goh.

Students may also be offered management associate jobs at McDonald’s when they graduate.

Christina Ong, 28, an ITE graduate who rose through the ranks at the fast-food chain and now oversees the Resorts World Sentosa outlet, said: “Most people think working at a fast-food restaurant is a low-end job, but I hope the training cafe will allow them to see the opportunities McDonald’s offers to its staff.”