For the last couple of months, budding entrepreneurs and high-school students interested in working in the restaurant industry have taken their studies to the third floor of the Adams County Human Services Center.
The sprawling social services campus at 11860 N. Pecos St., Westminster, has a kitchen and cafeteria on the floor and a large barbecue smoker mounted on a trailer outside. Adams County officials collaborated with John Jaramillo, the co-founder and president of the Colorado-based Hispanic Restaurant Association, to use these spaces as training grounds for new cooks.
They celebrated the launch of what they’re calling the Hispanic Culinary Institute with a ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier this month attended by county commissioners and food vendors and ranchers associated with Jaramillo and his organization.
“We’re always asking the question, ‘How do we make better use of what we already have?'” Commissioner Julie Duran Mullica said to an audience of about 50 people. “Today we get to come together … to take something underutilized and turn it into service.”
Jaramillo launched the Hispanic Restaurant Association in 2021 and has since used the platform to offer taught by culinary director Pablo Aya and guest chefs such as Michael Diaz de Leon of Molino Chido and Manny Barella of Riot BBQ.
The association has partnered since 2024 with EduClasses, which has bilingual classes for food-handler certifications. Though many of the people who have participated in the association’s classes, competitions and events are Hispanic, Jaramillo said they are open to all races and ethnicities.
The idea for an Adams County classroom originated about two years ago when Jaramillo met Commissioner Lynn Baca at a party at the governor’s mansion, he said.
“She asked, ‘How can we help?'” Jaramillo said. “I said, ‘All I need is a kitchen.'”
Jaramillo, a U.S. Navy veteran with a knack for networking, developed a system where participants would practice cooking and distribute their food as caterers. The institute’s catering company helps fund the work, Jaramillo said, as many of the adults who have gone through the program have been sponsored.
Westminster High School students in its culinary arts program became involved after Mario Ortiz, the work-based learning coordinator for Westminster Public Schools, met Jaramillo at an event at the human services building, he said at the ribbon-cutting. (The students were not at the ribbon-cutting, he said.)
Jaramillo proposed giving students internships. Ortiz had two who were part of the Colorado ProStart hospitality program registered within two weeks, he said.
In about a month and a half, they were preparing and cooking burritos and other catered food, including to their peers at Westminster High School and for Jaramillo’s contracts, Ortiz said. They’d arrive early in the morning for their shifts before heading to school for class.
Ortiz sees potential in Jaramillo’s collaboration with Adams County. He is working to get more students their credentials at the Hispanic Culinary Institute and connect them with restaurant apprenticeships in the county.
“I believe that’s what they had in vision,” Ortiz said of the institute’s founders and county commissioners. “Take Adams County residents, build up their skills, build up their knowledge and their passion for culinary arts. Give them the hands-on experience here and then get them trained so that they’re ready to go into Adams County restaurants and help build up our restaurants here.”
A rooftop deck adjoining the cafeteria overlooks the Rocky Mountain foothills to the west. This is now the view of Jaramillo, his instructors and young cooks who are eager to be a part of Denver’s culinary scene.
