03/09/2026
⚜️ Mentorship Matters: The mentor as a role model
What students learn when nobody is teaching
At some point in every chef’s journey, the classroom gives way to the real culinary world.
The familiar routines of student life on campus are replaced by the rhythm of a professional kitchen: new colleagues, new standards, new expectations, longer hours, clients and service. Knowledge must now be applied in real time, under real pressure, alongside people who depend on one another to get the job done.
For many ICA students, their first industry placement is their first experience of becoming part of a professional kitchen brigade. It is an important transition — and one that can shape far more than their practical skills.
Behind every meaningful industry placement lies a unique relationship between student and mentor that can shape far more than practical skills.
What does it mean to be a mentor?
A mentor is not simply someone who tells a student what to do. A true mentor teaches by example and, importantly, becomes a role model.
Students observe constantly. They notice how an experienced chef communicates with colleagues, responds when something goes wrong, handles pressure, receives criticism and maintains standards at the end of a long shift.
These lessons may never appear in a curriculum or assessment, yet they can become some of the most influential lessons of a young chef’s education.
ICA students arrive in the industry having already been introduced to a culture of respect, dignity, discipline and excellence. Their mentors play an important role in reinforcing and expanding upon those foundations within the reality of a professional kitchen.
Of course, real restaurants and hospitality businesses face real pressures. Difficult services happen. Mistakes happen. People have bad days. Challenges cannot simply be removed from the environment. But this is precisely where mentorship becomes meaningful.
Excellence does not mean that challenges never arise; it is often how those challenges are handled that provides the most valuable lesson.
A student who watches a chef remain composed under pressure, address a problem respectfully, take responsibility for a mistake or find a constructive solution is learning something that extends far beyond the kitchen – they are learning what professionalism looks like.
The influence of example
The mentor may never know how much influence they have had.
A comment made during a busy service, a correction delivered with patience, an explanation offered when it would have been easier simply to give an instruction, or the example set through everyday conduct can stay with a student for years.
Today’s student will eventually become tomorrow’s colleague.
Perhaps one day that student will become a head chef, business owner, employer or mentor themselves. The standards they carry forward may have been shaped, in part, by the people they encountered during their first experiences in professional kitchens.
That is why mentorship matters.
At the ICA, we are deeply grateful to the chefs and industry professionals who understand that welcoming a student into their kitchen means accepting a responsibility that extends beyond the student’s placement.
They are not simply showing a young chef how a kitchen works. They are showing them what kind of professional they can become.
Next in the Mentorship Matters series: Another Classroom
We explore why an industry placement is far more than a student stepping into a professional kitchen — it is considered an alternative classroom, where knowledge is put into practice and valuable lessons are learned in real time.
