Centurion is not the obvious place in which you would expect
to find a catering group, but it is, if you think about
it, a very good place to have as your headquarters, and
there is one catering group in Centurion, and a very good
one at that. It all started off way back in 1996, when a
couple of discerning Johannesburg business men decided to
start up a catering school -this was to help fill
the void that had appeared in the country's culinary
industry, a dearth of well-qualified catering staff. They
started up the Prue Leith College of Food and Wine in the
spacious grounds of the old Lyttleton Manor House. The next
component to be added to the group was the Odd Plate Restaurant
in the same grounds as the college. The college has now
been renamed the Prue Leith Chef's Academy and the
restaurant Prue Leith's Restaurant.
But expansion did not stop there. In 2005, at the request
of many of the students and also to fill a need in the industry,
Prue Leith Catering was started, also in Centurion. Like
at the restaurant, students from the academy work in these
two divisions in order to gain valuable workplace experience.
In the same year Prue Leith Placements was started with
the specific idea of placing graduates from the academy
into good positions in the catering industry. A fifth element
is soon to be added in Centurion, Prue Leith Consulting,
making this an exciting group of companies.