News and blog
Articles, updates, and back issues of the HWTC newsletter.
September 28, 2026
Read HWTC’s 2025-26 Impact Report
HWTC’s 2025-26 Impact Report, Future-Ready Hospitality: Driving Innovation in Workforce Development is now available for download – highlighting the work we’ve accomplished thanks in part to the support of our generous champions, partners, and sponsors. The report does a deep dive into the scope and impact of our projects, training, and services we offered this…
September 28, 2026
HWTC Helping Employer Recruit Skills-Ready Talent
In partnership with Distillery Restaurant Corp (DRC), HWTC, Dixon Hall, and YWCA brought qualified, pre-screened candidates through DRC’s doors as they look to recruit seasonal hires for their Winter Village. Through this hiring fair, DRC hired 116 candidates – 65 of which were referrals from HWTC. This continued, multi-year partnership promises to bring more of…
September 28, 2026
Say Hi to Stella!
Stella Ozzoude is HWTC’s newest Outreach Specialist, working to engage with potential clients who may benefit from our programs and services. Stella’s background is in employment services, outreach, and community engagement, with experience supporting diverse communities through case management, workshops, and employer engagement roles. Stella majored in sociology, interested in understanding people, systems, and the…
September 28, 2026
HWTC’s BEACON Program Welcomes a New Cohort
HWTC is pleased to announce that through Toronto Pearson’s Uplift Fund, we’ve welcomed a new cohort of women to our BEACON (Building Equity and Championing Opportunities Now) Program. The BEACON Program provides racialized women in hospitality with the tools and training to move into supervisory and management roles. By promoting talent from within, BEACON helps…
August 27, 2026
Laid Off Months Ago and Still Looking? It May Be Time to Change Your Job-Search Strategy
If you were laid off months ago and are still looking for work, you have probably sent out more applications than you can count. You may have had a few interviews, followed up with employers and waited for replies that never came. That can make anyone question their experience and wonder what they are doing…
August 26, 2026
BEACON Is Back: Help a Woman on Your Team Prepare for Leadership
The Hospitality Workers Training Centre is preparing to welcome a new group of women to BEACON, our leadership development program for women working in the hospitality sector. Spots are still available for the upcoming cohort, beginning September 14, 2026. BEACON is designed to help women move into open supervisory and management roles. The program also…
August 26, 2026
What is a hiring event? A guide for Toronto hospitality employers
Most employers who ask us that question are picturing a job fair. A convention hall, and a stack of resumes that goes into a drawer and gets opened three weeks later, by which point half those people have taken other jobs. A hiring event is a smaller room, a shorter distance between meeting someone and…
August 26, 2026
Ontario workplace rules in 2026: what’s changed, and what’s coming on October 1st
A lot of this took effect quietly in January and still hasn’t reached the floor of most restaurants and hotels. Here’s where things stand at the end of August, for both sides of the pass. What changed on 1 January The job posting rules are the big one, and they apply to employers with 25…
July 30, 2026
Where to Send Someone Who Just Lost Their Job
Losing a job is disorienting even when you saw it coming. In hospitality, it happens fast. A restaurant cuts back after a busy season ends, a hotel trims staff once the rush slows, and someone who was working a full schedule last week is suddenly not. If you know someone going through that right now,…
July 30, 2026
The World Cup Rush Is Over. Your Next Move Isn’t
If you picked up shifts this summer because of the World Cup, serving, hosting, working events, staffing hotels, you just got a crash course in high volume hospitality. That is not nothing. That is exactly the kind of experience employers want to see, and it does not have to end when the season does. Late…
July 30, 2026
The Sandwich That Never Left: St. Lawrence Market’s Peameal Bacon Story
Every city claims a food. Philadelphia has its cheesesteak. Montreal has smoked meat. Toronto has a bacon sandwich from a market stall, and the story behind it is older than most people think. It starts with William Davies, who came to Toronto from England in 1854 and started selling cured pork at St. Lawrence Market.…
July 30, 2026
Toronto’s World Cup, By the Numbers
The FIFA Fan Festival at Fort York and The Bentway closed on July 19, the same day Spain beat Argentina in the final. Over 23 event days, more than 350,000 people came through the gates, according to the City of Toronto’s own tournament recap. On closing day, 263,972 fans watched the final across the festival…