META24 WORKFORCE LAB · GRADED TO THE CORE · PROJECT-BASED · CULINARY ARTS & HOSPITALITY · THE LAB'S YEAR · MIDDLE SCHOOL · UPPER SCHOOL · GRADE 6–12 · 1 CREDIT · META24 LAB COMPETENCIES
Culinary Arts & Hospitality · the year
Run the Kitchen · Culinary · in Run the Kitchen · Culinary
The line · the recipe engine · the menu · the safe plate · the service board · why kitchens die
This year is laid from the lab’s own calendar — every course inside the lab end to end, then its floors — not written quarter by quarter. The weeks are the lab’s; the quarter windows are the catalog’s.
THE MIX · HOW MUCH OF EACH CORE SUBJECT THIS COURSE CARRIES · IN ORDER
READING & WRITINGBUSINESS & ENTERPRISESCIENCEMATHTECHNOLOGY & TRADESHISTORY, GEOGRAPHY & HUMANITIESART & DESIGNCODING & AI
The squares are a picture of a course — how much of each core subject its own rooms carry, read from the rooms’ text — never a score of a student. Every course in a lab is graded to the core across the board; the squares say which columns it feeds most.
WHAT YOU WILL BE ABLE TO DO
- Cost a plate and hit a food-cost %
- Build a menu that actually profits
- Run service and a pop-up
AT A GLANCE · 36 WEEKS
Q1 The Kitchen · the line — A costed menu + recipe cards
Q2 The Kitchen · the line → The Floor · hospitality and service — A pop-up P&L
Q3 The House · hospitality & tourism — A costed menu + recipe cards
Q4 The floor — A pop-up P&L
THE COURSES INSIDE THIS LAB · 4
THE ROOMS · 11 · BEHIND LOGIN
Semester 1
WEEKS 1–18 · QUARTERS 1 AND 2Quarter 1 · The Kitchen · the line
WEEKS 1–9 · IN THIS OFFERINGTHE WEEKS · THE ROOMS EACH ONE OPENS
WK 1Sanitation & Food SafetyTHE KITCHEN · THE LINE
This comes first because it’s the one that hurts people. You can make somebody sick — even kill them — with food, and never touch them.
WK 2The Knife
The knife is the first craft, and two small changes separate a cook from a person chopping: how you HOLD it (the pinch grip) and how you guide the food (the claw).
WK 3Mise en Place & Sequencing
Here’s the secret that separates a calm kitchen from a chaotic one — and it isn’t about cooking at all. It’s mise en place: “everything in its place.” You prep completely, arrange completely, and only THEN do you cook —…
WK 4Heat & the Science of Cooking
Cooking is applied physics: you’re moving heat into food. Master the kinds of heat and you can cook anything without a recipe — because you understand what the heat is DOING.
WK 5Stocks & the Five Mother Sauces
This is the architecture of flavor. A great sauce turns a plain piece of protein into a dish, and almost every classic sauce in Western cooking descends from just FIVE “mother” sauces — a family tree Escoffier organized…
WK 6Seasoning & the Palate
This is the week that turns cooks into chefs — because it’s the one nobody teaches explicitly. Every dish is balanced on four levers: SALT, FAT, ACID, and HEAT.
WK 7Protein
Protein is usually the star of the plate and the most expensive thing on it — so cooking it well is where skill shows and where money is saved or wasted.
WK 8Vegetables, Starches & the Plate
Vegetables and starches are where a lot of “home cooking” goes gray and sad — overcooked, crowded, bland — and where a pro makes them the best part of the plate.
WK 9Baking & Pastry
“Cooking is jazz. Baking is engineering.” Where a cook can improvise and taste-and-adjust, a baker works to ratios that are NOT suggestions — a baked good is a chemistry experiment where you set the reaction up front…
THE PROJECT · WHAT THE QUARTER IS FOR
A costed menu + recipe cards
The question. Can you cost a plate and hit a food-cost %?
The make. A costed menu + recipe cards
The evidence. Handed in through Run the Kitchen · Culinary’s own surface and kept in My Work; the Report reads it from there.
Quarter 2 · The Kitchen · the line → The Floor · hospitality and service
WEEKS 10–18THE WEEKS · THE ROOMS EACH ONE OPENS
WK 10Global CuisineTHE KITCHEN · THE LINE
This food belongs to these kids. The story of American food is a story of the African diaspora, migration, poverty, and genius — techniques born of necessity that became the most influential cooking on earth.
WK 11Recipe Math & Scaling
This is the quantitative spine of the kitchen — the math that turns cooking into a business. You’ll read a recipe like a professional (seeing the hidden steps), write one another cook can execute, and SCALE a recipe…
WK 12The Line
Everything comes together here — where cooking becomes SERVICE. A restaurant kitchen at full rush is one of the most intense coordinated environments there is: tickets pouring in, multiple tables and courses at…
WK 13The ConceptTHE BUSINESS · THE RESTAURANT AS A COMPANY
Before a single dish, a restaurant is a CONCEPT — a clear answer to: who is the guest, what is the promise, and what is the price point?
WK 14The Menu (Full Production)
The menu is the product — and building a real one is the whole lab in one artifact. The full production, per the founder’s ask: concept → dish development → recipe writing and testing → PLATE COSTING → menu engineering…
WK 15The Model
The final business skill: knowing the numbers of your own machine BEFORE you build it. Startup cost, prime cost, break-even — and the honest failure math.
WK 16Hospitality vs. ServiceTHE FLOOR · HOSPITALITY AND SERVICE
A robot can serve. Only a person can host. Service is the technical delivery of the thing — the right plate, at the right table, at the right time. Hospitality is how you make the person FEEL while you deliver it.
WK 17The Complaint — Service Recovery
Things go wrong in every restaurant — the wrong dish, the long wait, the hair in the soup, the allergy near-miss. What separates a great house from a bad one is not that nothing goes wrong; it’s what happens NEXT.
WK 18The Review — Reputation Management
The complaint used to end at the table. Now it lives online forever, where a hundred future guests will read it.
THE PROJECT · WHAT THE QUARTER IS FOR
A pop-up P&L
The question. Can you build a menu that actually profits?
The make. A pop-up P&L
The evidence. Handed in through Run the Kitchen · Culinary’s own surface and kept in My Work; the Report reads it from there.
Semester 2
WEEKS 19–36 · QUARTERS 3 AND 4Quarter 3 · The House · hospitality & tourism
WEEKS 19–27THE WEEKS · THE ROOMS EACH ONE OPENS
WK 19Introduction to Hospitality & TourismTHE HOUSE · HOSPITALITY & TOURISM
Before you run a piece of it, see the whole industry — and how big it is. Hospitality isn’t just restaurants: it’s lodging, food & beverage, tourism, gaming, conventions, and recreation.
WK 20Lodging Operations (Rooms Division)
The hotel side of the house. Lodging runs on a flow of business — reservations → arrival → guest relations → housekeeping → security → departure — and every department must perform in synchronization or the guest’s stay…
WK 21Revenue & Yield Management
The most sophisticated module in the lab. The room costs the same to you whether you sell it for $89 or $400 — so what SHOULD it cost tonight?
WK 22F&B Cost Control + Menu Engineering
The money module — where a restaurant lives or dies. You’ll learn food cost percentage, the plate cost card, and PRIME COST (the single number that tells you if a restaurant is alive).
WK 23Catering & Events
Cooking for 4 and cooking for 400 are different sports. Catering and events are banquets on- and off-premise, run on operational controls that guarantee quality at volume — the BEO (banquet event order), the staffing…
WK 24Hospitality Sales & Marketing
You can run a flawless operation and still fail if nobody knows you exist — or if the guests you get cost more to reach than they spend.
WK 25Hospitality Financial Management
Numbers are the language a business speaks — and a manager who can read a P&L and know what to DO about it is worth more than one who can only cook or clean.
WK 26Hospitality Law
Hospitality is one of the most legally exposed industries there is — you serve food, pour alcohol, house strangers, and employ people, each carrying real legal duties.
WK 27Sustainable Hospitality
Sustainability in hospitality isn’t decoration — done right, it saves real money, meets what guests increasingly demand, and is the responsible way to run a business that consumes enormous amounts of food, energy, and…
THE PROJECT · WHAT THE QUARTER IS FOR
A costed menu + recipe cards
The question. Can you run service and a pop-up?
The make. A costed menu + recipe cards
The evidence. Handed in through Run the Kitchen · Culinary’s own surface and kept in My Work; the Report reads it from there.
Quarter 4 · The floor
WEEKS 28–36THE WEEKS · THE ROOMS EACH ONE OPENS
WK 28The lineTHE FLOOR
The floor — the work is done in the room, logged in the room, kept in My Work.
WK 29The recipe engine
The floor — the work is done in the room, logged in the room, kept in My Work.
WK 30The menu
The floor — the work is done in the room, logged in the room, kept in My Work.
WK 31The safe plate
The floor — the work is done in the room, logged in the room, kept in My Work.
WK 32The service board
The floor — the work is done in the room, logged in the room, kept in My Work.
WK 33–36Why kitchens die
The floor — the work is done in the room, logged in the room, kept in My Work.
THE PROJECT · WHAT THE QUARTER IS FOR
A pop-up P&L
The question. Can you cost a plate and hit a food-cost %?
The make. A pop-up P&L
The evidence. Handed in through Run the Kitchen · Culinary’s own surface and kept in My Work; the Report reads it from there.
A course is a quarter, a semester or a year — nine, eighteen or thirty-six weeks — a project a quarter. Offered as the year, a semester or a quarter, it is the same course seen through a window. A lab is a family: its year, each of its tracks as a course, and its rooms. The evidence is what a student hands in through the room; the Report reads it from there. Nothing in the catalog is a grade.
THE PASS · THIS COURSE AND EVERY OTHER ONE
One pass includes Culinary Arts & Hospitality · the year and every course in the catalog. Pick a pass, or enter a school code; checkout stays on this page.