How can you make young people hungry for gastronomy and its purpose? Do this require new perspectives in education and practice — and why is tavern culture more than cooking, even or especially in the countryside?
With interdisciplinary interventions, the Healthy Boy Band collective reliably demonstrates how culinary delights can be rethought. And wants to pass on the joy and openness to newcomers to the industry.
“We spend a lot of extra effort to show that the kitchen and tavern is not just cooking,” says Felix Schellhorn, sharing his thoughts about the Healthy Boy Band's involvement in their cooking activities, which like to expand the usual limits in the catering industry. In addition to him, Philip Rachinger and Lukas Mraz are part of the collective: Together, they explore the art of cooking in which cuisine always touches on culture — however you might define it — and other sectors. In doing so, they not only want to offer quality in every form, but also simply want to have a good time. In addition to cooking, your friends and skills from a wide range of disciplines are included as a matter of course.
This expanded interpretation of gastronomy, for example, led the weekly newspaper “Falter” to write with a wink about the Healthy Boy Band: “The hotel management school has always warned against chefs like this.” The aim behind the Healthy Boy Band's culinary interventions is not just to show that cooking can also be different from what is the traditional idea of an Austrian tavern. This also includes making the industry attractive for young people.
Learn in a contemporary way?
The “Healthship” as an experiment
The trio is therefore also increasingly considering how to motivate young people to enter the catering industry and create perspectives beyond outdated training structures. Schellhorn is certain: How to think of the training system in a contemporary way, make it more appealing and better and how to address a shortage of skilled workers is worth a collective discussion. How not just to whip through a lesson? How to increase quality and enthusiasm even for career changers?
Together with friendship.is, the Healthy Boy Band recently launched a “Healthship” based on questions like these: A fourteen-month internship in which the desire for so-called gastro-cultural fields of activity is to grow — with “healthy education,” as the allusion in the name suggests. “We ourselves are currently thinking about what training courses would really be that could gain a foothold in the future,” Schellhorn points out that the healthcare internship is a pilot project with a unique selling point, which for the first time tests where the journey can go: A laboratory test with a person that brings together new steps in training and practice. Who knows, at best, findings about the potential of such open source access will then be available for further experiments — whether in restaurants or even in design offices, openness to idiosyncratic interpretations of the model is part of it. In any case, it would be desired, describes Schellhorn.
“It's working very well at the moment, our intern Kim is now in the second station,” he gives insights into healthcare. Kim first completes three stints at the respective companies of the Healthy Boy Band members before looking for a company of her choice for the last two months. After starting at Mühltalhof in Neufelden with Philip Rachinger, she now spent four months with Mraz and Sohn in Vienna, then she joined the Schellhorns at Seehof Goldegg. This practical experience is the interesting thing about it: Such an intensive internship period is unusual, Schellhorn knows, you normally have to organise something like this yourself. Because the three were “annoyed that the apprentices do things on a final exam at vocational school that were on menus 40 years ago,” the Healthy Boy Band has now launched their call for applications to them, explains Schellhorn.
With fun on new paths away from routine
“But it's not the case that as a healthcare intern you get the golden spoon and just do it, you're already working hard. During that year, you can see how crazy things can be in the kitchen. “Working methods among young people have changed, but the catering system has largely remained the same. Schellhorn has the impression that there is currently a lack of change processes in companies. He himself — like Rachinger and Mraz — has a renowned family business in the background; at the end of the year, he takes over the Seehof in Goldegg. You don't always have to reinvent the wheel when something works well, he says. If you have personality, commitment and quality awareness, it can still work well in the future to run a catering business in a modern way. Even in the countryside. “But if there is no appreciation for the tavern as a place — not as a restaurant — there will be no more taverns in the future,” he also fears. And supposes: It is not the price and supply that (young) people no longer come to the tavern and talk to each other, but because of social development.
But what is a tavern as a place for more than cooking, what is a lively, local tavern culture?
“The question is always: What is culture? “, interjects Schellhorn, “and does it have the same meaning in the countryside as in the city? “He himself has just completed his studies at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and is familiar with both. There is a larger range of passive cultural offerings in the city — in the countryside, you have to take more into your own hands, he says. Do something active for a culture that definitely belongs here and there: How to talk, what else is happening around and your own everyday routines.
At their gastro-cultural events, the Healthy Boy Band shows that routines can also be broken if you want to think about gastronomy. Never do anything twice and always be challenged is part of the credo: “It is a great learning factor for guests and is already a cultural statement from us that you don't always have to or should have everything under control, but that an exciting, spontaneous moment should, can or should happen.” Passion and authenticity are never lacking. When Schellhorn, Mraz and Rachinger perform in a collective, it should be funny and enriching for them themselves. “It's actually a kind of cultural break from daily routine, which is fun but also a lot of work. And so it is something that allows us to learn how to approach and think differently ourselves in companies,” says Schellhorn. For the Capital of Culture 2024, they are planning “interventions in the usual healthy boy band format: fun, friends and good food.” And since every training course depends on teachers to pass on the joy of the job to learners, their healthcare intern Kim is also involved in the interventions.
Photo gallery © Jana Sabo and Ian Ehm | friendship.is, Hannes Klaeger
