Jean-François Archambault and La Tablée des Chefs: Rescue the Food, Teach the Kids

What they do

La Tablée des Chefs sums up its work in two words: feed and educate. On the feeding side, it recovers surplus food from hotels, sports centres, festivals and caterers and gets it to community organizations. It also cooks meals in its own kitchens in Longueuil, Montreal, Laval and Quebec City. On the teaching side, it puts chefs in front of young people, from school Kitchen Brigades to summer culinary camps, so they leave knowing how to cook a real meal.

Jean-François Archambault founded the organization and still leads it as founder and general director. In 2025 he received a Special Lifetime Achievement Award from the Maison de l’innovation sociale.

How it started

Archambault studied at the Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec, where the idea of food recovery first came to him, and went on to work in hotel sales. Around 2000, at the Fairmont, he watched good food from conferences and weddings go to waste while food banks ran short. In 2002 he launched La Tablée des Chefs with a plan to move that surplus to people who needed it.

He knew busy chefs wouldn’t join a complicated system, so he built a turnkey one: food portioned, labelled and logged, with surplus planned ahead. One early test was at the Bell Centre, where a pilot in the executive suites recovered 70,000 meals in its first year, according to Ashoka. Other venues followed.

Why it matters this December

The 2025 annual report shows how far that idea has travelled. The food recovery program rescued 3,523,412 meals and kept 1,057 tonnes of food out of landfills, with more than 400 participating establishments and 288 community organizations on the receiving end. Its Solidarity Soups reached 70 elementary schools in Quebec, and about 15,600 young people took part in the Kitchen Brigades and Cook Up Your Future. Since 2002, more than 95,000 young people have been introduced to cooking and healthy eating.

December is heavy for local food aid: Moisson Montréal’s network reported more than 1.25 million food-aid requests a month in its Bilan-Faim 2026. Rescued meals help right now, and a teenager who can cook a pot of chili from scratch helps a family budget for years.

How to help

• Donate. Make a one-time gift or join La Tablée+, its giving program, through tableedeschefs.org.
• Volunteer or cook. The organization recruits volunteers and chefs, and its site explains how to get involved.
• Bring your workplace. Companies can book its corporate offers or rent its spaces, and hotels, arenas and caterers can join food recovery.
• Watch for the Solidarity Basket. La Tablée has sold a holiday gift basket of chef-made treats to fund its Solidarity Kitchens, which support local food banks. It hasn’t been announced for 2026 yet.

La Tablée des Chefs is at 679 rue Adoncour, Longueuil. Phone: 450-748-1638.

Official website tableedeschefs.org