Culinary Arts-Catering (1261)

After receiving your culinary arts certificate, you’ll be ready to enter the workforce as a:

• Baker
• Caterers
• Cook in a restaurant, institution or cafeteria
• Food preparation worker and server

While having a passion for cooking is crucial to your success, you should also:

• Enjoy working with others
• Be able to multitask and work well under pressure
• Possess a commitment to quality

Explore YOUR career with Career Coach! Career Coach is a helpful tool that will assist you in developing a path from your education to the job market. With Career Coach, you can find:

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Begin exploring your options now! 

We designed this program to lead directly to employment. You’ll learn about food preparation and service, catering principles, and management skills in the classroom and in on-campus labs. Under supervision, you’ll also prepare food and earn production industry experience at multiple off-campus commercial food and beverage operations that are open to the public and that involve both production and service rotations.

By completing our Culinary Arts Catering certificate, you will be able to: 

• Apply industry sanitation and safety procedures
• Demonstrate foundational cooking techniques and knife skills
• Compose a complete meal including culinary and bakery items using standardized recipes
• Exhibit management skills in professionalism, employee relations, food and beverage service, catering principles, menu design, food purchasing and inventory
• Create working recipes based on developed flavor profiles, food costs and nutritional values

Our program is accredited by the Accrediting Commission of the American Culinary Federation Education Foundation (ACEF). Graduates with an American Culinary Federation membership are awarded Certified Culinarian (CC). Find more information about our graduation completion and job placement rates here.

• View summaries of every course at HACC by browsing our class schedules database.

• Review our program guide (pdf) to view a list of required courses, recommended course sequencing and program competencies.

Our certificate is designed to lead you directly into the workforce. However, if you wish to continue your education, we encourage you to earn an associate degree at HACC!

When you complete your associate degree, you can continue and transfer credits to a four-year school.

You may be able to completethis certificate at our Harrisburg Campus through on-campus/in-person instruction.

Conveniently YOURS, all classes are available during the daytime while some evening classes are available on a rotating basis. 

Yes! We offer many scholarships through the HACC Foundation. Each scholarship has specific eligibility requirements. To learn how to apply, please visit hacc.edu/Scholarships.

We offer classes in the spring, summer and fall, and you can apply anytime online. When you submit your application, please include program code 1261. By using this code, you will apply to the correct program. 

Future students, we are excited to connect with you and answer your questions. Please choose the option that works best for you to meet with us.

Current HACC students, please contact our Advising Department with any questions.