New Culinary Director Aims to Upgrade Sustainability

by Karen Plourde, Editor, Weavers Way Shuttle

September 5, 2025

Chazz Alberti’s career as a chef has taken him all over the country since the 1970s. But a few years ago, he chose to return to his South Philly roots to be near family. In the spring, he was hired as the Co-op’s culinary director, and since then, he’s been getting the lay of the Weavers Way land.

As with many chefs, Alberti got into cooking as a way to support himself. At the time, he was majoring in film at Temple University and studying with jazz guitarist Perry Lopez. 

“I’d always been kind of drawn to performing arts or creative arts, so I went to ask for jobs at a number of places around South Street, where I spent a lot of time,” he recalled. “I was a vegetarian [and] I went to Essene to do a lot of my shopping, so I asked a couple of restaurants if they needed anyone. One was hiring a dishwasher; the other one was hiring a cook. I like to cook, so I took the cook’s job.”

The restaurant that hired him was evolving from simpler cuisine to a more complex French  menu. “They brought in chefs who I could learn from, and both of those chefs were very willing to teach me,” he said. “It was the American version of an apprenticeship.”

As part of his training, Alberti would stage in other French kitchens, including the iconic Le Bec Fin. “I feel I was really fortunate at the time, because there wasn’t a lot of that going on,” he said. “…There were a lot of new restaurants. It was a very exciting time to be in the business.”

He spent the next 10 years building his resume at various restaurants in the area before being asked to run Sarah’s, the gourmet restaurant at the then-Hershey Hotel (now the Doubletree) at Broad and Locust streets. Sarah’s was the first high-end restaurant in the city that had an all-female floor staff. At the time, French restaurants tended not to employ women at the front or back of the house, in part because no one from the kitchen was allowed to go into the dining room to use the bathroom. 

“I had two women work for me in…the first place I actually had to run a kitchen, and Chazz Alberti they said that they were working in Le Bec Fin as well. 

They staged a revolt and said, ‘No, we’re going outside to use the bathroom. We’re not going to pee in a trash can,’” he recalled. “And really, a lot of things changed because of that.”

Making the Switch

To Sustainability

In 2012, Chazz ran food and beverage operations at the Circuit of the Americas Formula 1 Racetrack in Austin, TX. The following year, he did that again, but coordinated it as a waste-free event for 250,000 people. 

“The company I was working for was very interested in sustainability as a notion,” he said. “But in very big companies it’s kind of hard to execute, because everything has a ripple effect.”

Through that project, Chazz became interested in sustainable cooking, sourcing and agriculture. He joined the Chefs Collaborative, a membership-based 501(c) 3 nonprofit made up of chefs, food professionals, influencers and others whose mission is to inspire and educate chefs and food professionals to build a better food system. He soon became a local leader for the group.

“After the next few evolutions of my career, I thought I’d been too far away from a kind of sustainability and local growth in cooking,” he said. “I’d never done it in Philadelphia. I was working nationally when I was doing all that, so I did more work in Seattle and Chicago than I did here. And I really wanted to be involved with that kind of thinking  — of that notion of great food sourcing and food justice where I live.”

Chazz’s latest goal is “to make a better place for us to eat, better food for us to distribute and make sure everybody gets a chance to buy that food.”

“I’ve been saying now for like, 20 years [that] it’s really great that somebody raised a $25 chicken, but not everybody can afford it,” he said. “So access is of huge importance to me and should be to everybody. As a country, we are able to raise really great food, but not everybody gets to buy it.” 

He believes that the Co-op has a “really great” base of prepared foods going back to the 1970s. “I think the next evolution of that is to be able to source some things that are really specific to us; to find some great ingredients, some great things that people manufacture and get them into our supply chain. And to utilize our farm more.”

Of the current Prep Foods offerings, Chazz’ favorites are the pesto, chicken salads and soups. He also thinks the deli program is “amazing,” although he plans  to work on that next. Once that’s done, he’ll start tweaking the bowl program.

In his short time at Weavers Way, Chazz has picked up on the sense of culture and belonging at the Co-op. “That’s pervasive throughout the organization,” he said, “and what that inspires in me is to make every place that I touch a great place to work.”

He’s already noticed that the back of the house operations are not the “shark tanks” he’s been used to working in. “Just growing that culture of inclusivity and kindness is really important,” he said. “That kind of caring is missing in the industry, and it’s great if we can actually make a place that’s great to come to every day.”