Fifteen Foundation

As you may recall, Jamie Oliver opened the first ‘Fifteen’ restaurant in London in 2002, providing opportunities for disadvantaged young people to gain experience and training.  ‘Fifteen’ restaurants later opened in Amsterdam, Cornwall and more recently, Fifteen Melbourne.  Located in Collins St, Fifteen Melbourne is headed by Australian chef Tobie Puttock, who has worked as head chef for Jamie Oliver at London’s Fifteen.

Birki’s on behalf of Birkenstock Australia strongly supports Fifteen’s vision and is continuing to supply Melbourne trainees with our most popular chef clog; the black Profi-Birki.

Birki’s Sponsors HEAT Foundation

After the successful sponsorship of the Fifteen Foundation, Birki’s decided to go one step further and sponsor local community based foundation HEAT.

HEAT, short for Hospitality Education and Training is a program run by the St. Kilda Youth Service (SKYS) designed to dramatically improve the lives of many young people aged 16 – 20 who are presently unemployed and disengaged from mainstream education.

The program provides an informal learning environment and focuses on helping young people develop self esteem, gain accredited training qualifications in the hospitality industry, work experience and support to make a positive transition into the ‘working world’.


HEAT currently runs three and a half programs per year and Birki’s supplies all students with their number one selling chef clog – the Profi-Birki. We have already worked with SKYS in supplying all HEAT 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 course participants with their clogs and HEAT 14 is just around the corner. We have received a fantastic response thus  far and it has been a pleasure meeting the kids, seeing them grow and watching them graduate.