Bringing Swiss bakery education—from Lucerne to Shanghai 🇨🇳🇨🇭
This April, Shirley Jiang, the founder of Sinobake Vocational School in China, visited Lucerne, Switzerland. It wasn’t her first visit, however. After sitting down for an interview with Shirley, we learned that she has a long history of East-West exchange. Indeed, her entire professional philosophy—as a Master baker and a 20+ years bakery educator—is built around the spirit of international exchange.
💬 “What I’m doing, no one will do that,” Shirley said, about her desire to open a bakery school in China that offers bakery programs that meet both international and modern standards.
Indeed, Shirley is ambitious when it comes to her school.
💬 “We always knew that Swiss was high-quality education,” Shirley said. But the ability to offer Swiss quality training, that offers flexible learning in a digital and in-person format is a unique selling point in the vocational training sector in China.
Global relevance of accessible bakery education
In 2025, food tourism drove over $1 trillion in revenue for food and drink travel. In 2023, it created 10 million jobs globally.
Despite growth in online learning programs, however, critical barriers persist—particularly the need for hands-on practice with equipment, ingredients, and expert guidance, which online-only formats cannot replace.
On a wider scale, unequal global access to quality bakery training has created hard to fill skills gaps—over 60% of baking businesses report skill shortages in 2025.
👉 What is missing? Affordable, serious career-level education with the benefits of digital flexibility and hands-on training, that bring accessible career pathways for professionals. The exact type of education that schools like Sinobake can offer the market.
But first—becoming a Bakery Master Trainer
This visit to Europe marked a major milestone: Shirley earned her Certified Trainer certificate from the Richemont Centre of Excellence, co-certified by Global Swiss Learning.
Over the course of a year, she completed rigorous theoretical and practical training under Richemont’s Master Trainers, following a Swiss-based curriculum covering baking science, techniques, and recipes.
🟣 Her goal: bring the world-class expertise from Switzerland back to Shanghai, and adapt it to local training needs, so she can deliver Richemont’s blended Professional Bakery Training to her students in China.
Turning obstacles into achievements
Sinobake’s journey hasn’t been easy. From pandemic closures to navigating regulatory approvals, Shirley has worked persistently to build a school aligned with local standards. This year, Sinobake is entering a new phase, relocating to a fully renovated facility designed to expand access and improve the student experience.
When asked what her proudest achievement was over the years, Shirley was humble.
💬 “Before I can say I am proud of what I’ve accomplished, there is still so much more to do.”
Yet as Shirley told us more about Sinobake, we saw clearly that there was already so much Shirley has achieved in such a short time—including her school's partnership with a local association that provides individuals with disabilities professional bakery training.
What’s next for Sinobake?
When renovations are complete, Sinobake and Global Swiss Learning will partner together to roll out blended learning bakery programs to students regionally in Shanghai, to train the next generations of bakers in China.
The goal: to reduce the bottleneck of hands-on training, provide larger access to Swiss training at an accessible price point in China, and support the global effort to continue to close skills gap in the industries that contribute so strongly to our global economy.
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