Adding a new food college to our training mix

Adding a new food college to our training mix

Training gives our colleagues the confidence to share their knowledge and skills with each other – and our customers. With this in mind, we recently opened a new food college to train the next generation of Sainsbury’s bakers.

Our food colleges help our colleagues make the most of their personal and professional talents, and are a key ingredient in making Sainsbury’s a great place to work. They also prove our commitment to instilling the skills and know-how to serve our customers with whatever they need, whenever they want it.

Since 2010, we have opened seven food colleges. Together, they have provided over 33,500 colleagues with externally accredited training that directly supports our business strategy while developing our in-house talent.

In January 2017, we opened a new bakery college in Bromley-by-Bow, London, to replace our original facility in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. We invested £1.4 million in the new site, which is twice the size of the old college and remains the only one of its type in the UK retail sector.

Rather than training all our bakers at this facility, we will focus on a select number of bakers who can pass on the lessons and skills they have learnt to their team members once they return to work.

Ruth Jennings, Qualifications Manager: “The new bakery college in Bromley-by-Bow has excellent facilities and the capacity to train more bakers, bakery managers and leaders than ever before.

“Together with the top-class instruction from our trainers, we are seeing fantastic results from all of the colleagues who have completed courses so far.

“We aim not only to continue delivering top-quality freshly baked goods to all of our customers, but also to inspire the next generation of great British bakers.”

“We aim… to inspire the next generation of great British bakers.”

Ruth Jennings
Qualifications Manager

The college can train up to 600 colleagues annually and offers a wide range of courses. Some of these are managerial, but most focus on developing practical skills.

As well as catering for people with experience, the courses are designed to attract people whose ambition is to make the grade as a top-class professional baker.

600

bakers a year will attend our new bakery college.