KasvisPro - Buckets Full of Vegetables

Food service professional, do you need the latest information about vegetarian food? Come with KasvisPro to hear more about it.

Public food services have a leading role operating in sustainable and responsible way. Providing vegetarian food reduces the climate and environmental burden of food services. Adding vegetarian food to the menu also follows nutrition recommendations and enables food choices that support the customers’ health. Food services can enhance the attractiveness and availability of vegetarian foods by providing them daily. Tasty and nutritious vegetarian foods encourage customers to try them also at home.

Vegetarian food and plant proteins in food services – KasvisPro training offers up-to-date theoretical knowledge in the form of inspiring videos and reflection tasks. In cooking workshops delicious vegetarian food is prepared together using standard recipes for professional kitchens.

The KasvisPro training consists of two parts

Part 1: Vegetarian food information for professional kitchens

Theoretical training consists of videos related to following themes: ABC of Vegetarian Food, Tasty and Sustainable Vegetarian Food and Exciting Vegetarian Food. The theoretical part also includes exercises that encourage participants to reflect how the new knowledge can be used in their own work.

Part 2. Buckets full of vegetables

Practical training takes place in cooking workshops where food service professionals prepare vegetarian foods together. They also discuss and share experiences in using plant proteins and making vegetarian food. The recipes used in the workshops are pretested and suited for catering on a large scale.

Toolkit for using plant proteins and preparing vegetarian food

After the training, the participants have an opportunity to enhance their competence in five online workshops. The use of plant proteins and the preparation of vegetarian foods will be further promoted. Co-creation and peer support are utilized to support the food service professionals in changing their daily practices and aiming at the more plant-forward menus.

The training materials, recipes and the participants’ good practices, tips and ideas will be collected to the KasvisPro toolkit (in Finnish). The toolkit will be accessible and usable to everyone at the KasvisPro’s main website in summer 2024.

The KasvisPro training project aims to increase knowledge and improve practical skills in using plant proteins and preparing vegetarian food in the professional kitchens.

The target group of the project is the staff of the professional kitchens that provide public catering services. The training is targeted especially to the food service professionals who are responsible for planning menus and developing food products.

The KasvisPro training project will enhance the understanding about the health and environmental effects of plant proteins and vegetarian foods. The project aims to increase the attractiveness of plant proteins and vegetarian foods amongst both the food service staff and the customers.

As a result, the availability of the vegetarian food recipes suitable for institutional food services will get better. In the long run, also the culture of collaborating and sharing knowledge will improve amongst the professional kitchens.

Work packages of the project

* Planning and producing the theoretical training

* Planning and implementing the cooking workshops

* Publicizing the results and supporting their use in practice

* Managing and reporting

Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences SeAMK carries out the KasvisPro training project in collaboration with the lead partner South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences – Xamk and other partners Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences, Savo Vocational College and Ammattikeittiöosaajat ry.

The project is funded by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Finland from the Fund for the Promotion of the Food Chain. The funding is granted by the Finnish Food Authority.