Fund the apprentices
Auction proceeds go directly to our apprentices' tuition — turning one dinner into a year of culinary education.
Impact · C·CAP Partnership
Stewardship is a core value — not a campaign. Through the Culinary Careers Program (C·CAP), we invest a share of every season's growth back into the next generation of chefs.
The partnership
The Culinary Careers Program (C·CAP) — formerly Careers through Culinary Arts Program — opens doors for under-resourced students pursuing careers in food and hospitality: culinary training, job skills, apprenticeships, scholarships, and real kitchen experience.
Chef Xport partners with C·CAP to do what we do best: form chefs. We bring apprentices into our kitchens, hold them to the same standard we hold ourselves, and help carry them toward the careers they're working for.
Every chef we develop should leave stronger than they arrived. — Our value of stewardship
Full circle
Before Chef Xport, Chef Jelani was a C·CAP kid — a high-school student learning knife skills, discipline, and what a career in food could look like. The program put him in real kitchens, in front of real chefs, and set the trajectory for everything that came after.
Today he's back on the other side of the pass — teaching C·CAP classes, mentoring students at competitions and community events, and building a scholarship so the next kid gets the same shot he did. This isn't a sponsorship. It's a debt being paid forward.
Auction proceeds go directly to our apprentices' tuition — turning one dinner into a year of culinary education.
Surplus funds seed a recurring scholarship for C·CAP students — built to grow into an annual tradition, not a one-time gesture.
A standing commitment to return a share of every season's growth to the community and the chefs coming up behind us.
The program, on film
In their own words — students and alumni on what the Culinary Careers Program changed for them. This is the pipeline Chef Xport is proud to pour back into.
The founder
I first met Jelani when he was 16 years old, and watching him grow over the years has been one of the great pleasures of this work. The young man who came to us with raw talent and ambition has become a leader who now opens doors for others — exactly the way doors were opened for him. Chef Xport is a testament to what he has built, and the fact that he is using it to invest in the next generation says everything about his character. C·CAP is proud to call him one of our own, and we look forward to what this partnership will continue to bring to our industry.
Through the years
From student days to teaching kitchens, farmers markets, and benefit nights — moments from Chef Jelani's years inside C·CAP.
Student days
With Larry Fitzgerald & Mr. G
Teaching kitchen
Sourcing field trip
Veggie Valet
Benefit night
With Antoni PorowskiBe part of it
Whether you want to attend Harvest Moon, support the scholarship, or partner with us on the work — we'd love to talk.