A six-month program for graduates of Rwandan culinary schools, built around real markets, real mentors, and a real soft launch on the final day.
You graduated from a Rwandan culinary school. You can run a station. The next thing you want is your own.
This six-month program is for that next step. We teach what comes after the kitchen technique: cost a menu, source ingredients, register a business, lead a team, launch.
Cost menus with prices you bought at Kimironko this morning. Negotiate with a real supplier in front of the cohort.
Each student is paired with a working Kigali food entrepreneur. One-on-one, once a month, for six months.
Pitch to a panel in the morning. Serve twenty-five guests in the afternoon. Leave with a portfolio.
Get it right or be quietly bankrupt. We cost ten menu items at real Kigali supplier prices, build a twelve-month sourcing calendar, and run real supplier negotiations during class.
Woven in: nutrition and allergen literacy across Weeks 7 and 8 — designing menus for guests with allergies, and balanced plates for children, athletes, and elderly customers.
See the full curriculumEach cohort is paired with eight industry mentors — working chefs, restaurant owners, food product founders, hotel F&B managers, packaging suppliers. One mentor per student, monthly meetings in the mentor's place of work, for the full six months.
Mentors are not paid. They give time because they remember being where you are.
Meet the teamThe application takes about thirty minutes. We respond within two weeks.
You probably:
Each intake admits eight students, split into two cohorts of four. The morning cohort runs 8 AM – 1 PM; the afternoon cohort runs 1 PM – 6 PM. Same content, same facilitators, same labs.
Cohort size is small on purpose: four students per session means real attention and real relationships.
Content changes; rhythm does not.
Computer, AI, and spreadsheet skills used in a real restaurant.
Lecture and discussion on the week's main topic.
Second lecture, deeper into the same topic.
Book club and hospitality practice.
Practical kitchen work, prep service, or capstone build.
STRIVELABS INITIATIVE is a non-profit. Tuition for accepted students is heavily subsidised; the application asks about your financial situation so we can match you to the right level of aid.
Every student who completes receives a $1,000 capstone seed grant. Top capstone presentations are eligible for additional support and introductions to BDF, Inkomoko, and Hanga Pitchfest.
Apply nowEach month builds on the one before. The first three are about the business — foundations, costing, brand. The next three are about the business in motion — operations, hospitality, launch.
Look around. Before we plan anything, we look at what already exists.
Topics: restaurant types and business models, profit structures and revenue streams, the delivery economy and ghost kitchens.
Restaurant types covered: fast food, casual dining, fine dining, street food, catering, delivery-only kitchens.
By end of month: business name registered or filed at RDB, capstone track chosen, first one-page concept pitch submitted.
The single most important number in food. Get it right or be quietly bankrupt.
Topics: food cost percentage, markup pricing, break-even analysis, portion control, supplier cost management. The Kasavana–Smith menu engineering matrix becomes a tool you will use for years.
Woven in: nutrition and allergen literacy across Weeks 7 and 8 — designing menus for guests with peanut, tree-nut, dairy, egg, soy, wheat, fish, and shellfish allergies, and balanced plates for children, athletes, and elderly customers.
By end of month: ten menu items costed at real prices, twelve-month sourcing calendar built, real supplier negotiation completed.
Your menu is your top salesperson. Pay them well. Train them.
Topics: pricing psychology, visual hierarchy, customer decision behavior, brand positioning, trilingual menu design (Kinyarwanda, English, French), digital presence on Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp Business, Google Business Profile.
By end of month: locked brand identity (name, logo, colors, typography), trilingual menu in Canva, thirty-day social content calendar with the first week shot and posted.
Set up before you start. Then start clean. Then finish what you started.
Built around Dan Charnas's Work Clean.
Topics: mise-en-place systems, prep lists, inventory control, waste reduction, food safety and HACCP, brigade systems for small Rwandan kitchens. Date Code Genie certification this month.
By end of month: full HACCP plan for your capstone, two real prep services completed, kitchen role rotation across prep, line, and expedite.
Service is what you do. Hospitality is how you make people feel.
Built around Will Guidara's Unreasonable Hospitality and Danny Meyer's Setting the Table.
Topics: hospitality mindset, guest experience design, emotional intelligence, service culture, hiring for the right traits, leading a Rwandan team within Rwandan labour and privacy law.
By end of month: complete hospitality and service system plan, ten service standards, daily lineup template, customer journey map, real mock service with twelve live guests.
The work of six months becomes a real launch.
Topics: capital and financing in Rwanda (BDF, Inkomoko, Hanga Pitchfest), pre-opening compliance, RSSB and PAYE, sustainability and packaging under Rwanda's plastic ban (Law N° 17/2019), full food labeling specification.
By end of month: locked launch schedule, twelve-month cash flow forecast, ten-slide pitch deck, capstone presentation to a panel of judges, real soft launch event with twenty-five guests on the final Friday.
Anything we use in class is here, with links to the source. Reading two or three of these will tell you whether the program is right for you.
The book on hospitality. Meyer's 51 percent rule (hire for emotional skills, train for technical) shapes how we hire and lead.
Free borrow on Internet Archive →The 95/5 rule: tight discipline 95 percent of the time so you can spend foolishly on hospitality the other 5 percent. We read this across Month 5.
Publisher site →The ten ingredients of mise-en-place applied to running a business. The Daily Meeze practice we follow throughout the program comes from this book.
Author site →The only one of the five written by an accountant who became a restaurateur. The financial spine of Months 1 and 6.
Two kinds of people teach in this program.
Daily guidance as you work through the program — Monday through Friday, week after week.
Perspective from inside a real business — once a month, one-on-one.
[Two to four sentences. Background, what they bring, what students often say about them.]
[Two to four sentences.]
[Two to four sentences.]
Each cohort is paired with eight industry mentors — working chefs, restaurant owners, food product founders, hotel F&B managers, packaging suppliers. One mentor per student, monthly meetings in the mentor's place of work, for the full six months.
Mentors are not paid. They give time because they remember being where you are.
Once mentors agree to be named publicly, list them here. Update each cohort.
Mentor a student in the next cohort. One meeting a month, sixty to ninety minutes, for six months.
Apply to be a mentorSite visits expose students to real industry experts in their place of work — restaurants, hotels, packaging suppliers, cooperatives, RSB-certified producers.
Complete the Site Visit Request form at least five working days before the visit. The form covers permission, funding, and (if you are under eighteen) parental consent and chaperone assignment.
The coordinator responds within three working days.
Open the Site Visit Request form →If you cannot host that day, please reply (even briefly). Students learn as much from a kind decline as from a yes.
Every cohort ends with Capstone Day: morning pitches to a panel, afternoon soft launch with twenty-five guests.
This page is where we share what came out of each cohort.
[Two to three sentences describing the business in the founder's own words.]
[Two to three sentences.]
[Two to three sentences.]
As cohorts complete the program, this section grows. Each year is its own subsection.
The application takes about thirty minutes.
After you submit, you will hear from us within two weeks. Shortlisted applicants are invited to a thirty-minute conversation with a facilitator.
Basic contact and background.
Where you trained, where you have worked.
Even rough is fine.
The most important section. Be specific.
Honest answers help us match you to the right level of subsidy.
The form lives in Google Forms. Allow about thirty minutes of focused time.
Questions before you apply? Email info@strivelabs.org — we reply within three working days.
Kigali, Rwanda
Rwezamenyo Sector
Replied Mon–Fri, 8 AM – 6 PM Kigali time. Weekend messages: reply by Tuesday.
[(202) xxx - xxxx]
See the Apply page.
See the Faculty & Mentors page.
See the Site Visits page.
info@strivelabs.org with subject “Donor inquiry”.
info@strivelabs.org with subject “Press inquiry”.