ERASMUS+ • CENTERS OF VOCATIONAL EXCELLENCE
VET Excellence in Sustainable Collective Catering & Restaurants
for collective catering
RestaCoVE develops skills, training and practical tools to make collective catering more sustainable, efficient and high quality across Europe.
18
ORGANIZATIONS
4
MILLIONS FUND
6
COUNTRIES
From our blog
The project
Making canteens in Europe more sustainable
Supporting the collective catering sector in Europe in navigating the green transition through needs analysis, the identification of best practices, and the development of educational models for industry professionals—including chefs, staff, and management.
This is the objective of RestaCoVe (VET Excellence Pathways for Sustainable Collective Catering and Restaurants).
The project, funded by the European Union with €4 million, involves six European countries—Italy, Greece, Slovakia, Romania, Turkey, and Malta—and a network of 18 organizations, including vocational education and training institutions, regional authorities, industry enterprises, and representative bodies.
The Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore is the lead partner of this network.
School, university, workplace, and hospital canteens represent an essential—yet often overlooked—pillar of the European agri-food system. Every day, millions of citizens rely on this sector for their meals away from home.
Suffice it to say that, in Italy alone, an estimated 11 million people rely daily on meals provided by public or institutional canteens, amounting to a total volume of approximately 1.5 billion meals served each year. However, the sector is now facing unprecedented structural and environmental challenges.
Indeed, food systems account for 15% of greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union, and canteen services exacerbate this impact through energy and water consumption and, above all, significant food waste. Compounding this are a serious skills gap and a shortage of qualified personnel at all operational levels.