Viking Cooking School

Viking Cooking School is the consumer-facing culinary education arm of Viking Range, the premium residential kitchen appliance brand that helped bring professional-style ranges into the home. The school offers demonstration and hands-on cooking classes, corporate team-building sessions, and private group events that center on real cooking and home entertaining using Viking equipment. In practice, it functions as both a working instructional kitchen and a live showroom, giving guests direct experience with the brand in a setting that feels like a high-end home kitchen.

The story starts with Viking Range, founded in 1984 in Greenwood, Mississippi, by Fred Carl Jr. as an early pioneer of commercial-style ranges built for residential use. From that core product, Viking grew into a full portfolio of cooking, refrigeration, and other kitchen appliances. As the brand matured, it introduced Viking Cooking School as a way to bring consumers into the world of the product, building out a network of schools and branded cooking experiences that appeared across a number of U.S. markets. Many of these locations were set up as leased instructional kitchens in retail, mixed-use, or lifestyle centers, often adjacent to or integrated with appliance showrooms, which made them a visible, experience-driven use within larger projects.

A key corporate milestone came in 2013, when The Middleby Corporation acquired Viking Range Corporation. That deal brought Viking and its cooking school concept into what is now Middleby’s Residential Kitchen business. The residential brands were later organized under the Middleby Residential umbrella, and in December 2025 Middleby agreed to sell a 51 percent controlling interest in its Residential Kitchen segment, including Viking, to 26North Partners through a new joint venture. As of December 2025, Viking and its related experiential concepts, including Viking Cooking School, sit within this dedicated residential platform focused on premium cooking and refrigeration brands.

Over roughly the last five years, the role of Viking Cooking School has shifted. Public information indicates that the number of dedicated school locations has been reduced from its earlier footprint, and the concept now appears to be used more selectively as an experiential and brand-marketing tool. Rather than operating as a broad national chain pursuing aggressive multi-unit growth, Viking Cooking School today is most often tied to Viking showrooms, dealer galleries, and select partners. For real estate owners and leasing teams, that means the brand typically shows up as a modestly sized instructional kitchen and event space integrated with high-end appliance displays, more akin to a specialty showroom with strong experiential programming than a traditional restaurant or foodservice tenant.

As of December 2025, the exact number of Viking Cooking School locations is not disclosed in public sources, and there is no separate corporate platform that outlines a formal rollout program for the schools. The broader Viking and Middleby Residential business, however, continues to target premium residential customers and design-driven channels, and the cooking school is one of the tools used to support that positioning. Where Viking Cooking School is present in a project, it can serve as a draw for affluent homeowners, cooking enthusiasts, and design professionals, adding event-based traffic and a distinctive experiential element to upscale retail and mixed-use environments. Any future expansion of the concept is likely to follow the strategic direction set by the new Residential Kitchen joint venture, with selective deployment in markets that already support strong Viking dealer networks and design-focused retail and trade activity.