Our Mission
The Snapchef Foundation is dedicated to providing workforce development, community building, and sustenance to our community’s most vulnerable.
We Achieve Our Mission Through
- Fostering Lifelong Partnerships with Community
- Community Food Relief
- Creating and Supporting Culinary Educational Programs
Our History
In 1996 Todd Snopkowski was the sous chef of the 1996 Olympic Games hosted in Atlanta, Georgia preparing 30,000 meals a day. One of the biggest challenges he saw was the tremendous waste of perfectly good food. He took charge of a food recovery program in Olympic Village where he would properly handle the food leftovers(HACCP) and give the “extra” to local communities in need.
Unfortunately, he was not permitted to proceed with his plan and all of the food went to waste. Thankfully Todd kept up the fight in food insecurity and almost 20 years later, in 2015 his dream of helping people was finally realized.
In 2015, Todd and Daniela applied for a training grant. The purpose of this grant would be to create a program for which they would offer free training classes to help aspiring cooks and chefs to learn, while still being able to work.
Once the grant was approved, the chef apprentice program was born. The program combines supervised on-the-job training with classroom instruction. Our team leading this program consist of both current and former executive chefs as well as former faculty from some of the best culinary institutions in the country.
The Snapchef Foundation also contributes to raising money for scholarships that help students at Johnson & Wales university with their education. Not only do we help provide scholarships but we also “practice what we preach”, by providing internships to no less than 8 interns per year as well as hiring students both while in school as well as recent graduates looking to break into the business.
When the COVID-19 outbreak occurred, the demand for staffing decreased nearly overnight while there was a dramatic increase in demand for food. Todd and Daniela had the idea to convert the training kitchen into a production kitchen. Together, they teamed up with the City of Providence to provide over 3,000 meals per week to families in need.