OMG, I was star struck!

At every convention, there are always celebrities that are invited and some do demonstrations or lectures. The International Home and Housewares show is no different. Last year I meet and hung out a bit with Micheal Simon from NBC's The Chew. Super cool guy who is as funny and welcoming as he appears to be on television. Rick Baylis and Duff Goldman were among those who attended.

This year, I meet someone that got me a bit star struck. Without ever seeing any printed picture, I spied a petite woman nearby our both and was struck almost dumb. Rumor had it that she was coming to the show, but I don't bank on rumors. So there I was face to face with a cookbook author to whom I admire just because the use of her book has been very important and reliable. I have had one of her books a good long time and I have not encountered any inaccuracy which is somewhat unusual. I love cookbooks and think of myself as somewhat of a collector. I have been gifted a few cookbooks and inherited a few, but when I purchase one I do so carefully. This lovely ladies book has been proven accurate and well done. I have often used her Cake Bible and loved it so much that I later purchased her Bread Bible which also is a very sound book.

Most of the time, I can read over the recipe and tell if it is workable and plausible. And when I find that I need to used someones recipe I typically need to adjust it to my specifications. With Rose's books I have not found a need to modify them at all. I have used her recipes in different ways other than the printed style but the reliability of her work is phenomenal.

It was such an honor to have met Rose Levy Beranbaum. She was gracious and lovely. She signed copies of her new book and gave them to our C-Cap students, she stayed and took pictures with everyone. I didn't mean to gush but I did. Her recipe for pineapple upside cake and the cheese cake has permanently replaced what ever recipe that I had used before.

http://www.realbakingwithrose.com/

Social Media and the Bakery

So.... today's twist and turns inspire me to talk about the computing age and the impacts to the food industry. When I first began working, right out of high school in the summer before I entered culinary school, no one knew or could predict the radical changes we would undergo to draw, attract, and maintain clients interest and loyalty.

Long gone are the days in which shoppers visited the 'neighborhood's' local bakery for their bread and sweets. The smaller bakeries first felt the squeeze on their ability to retain customer loyalty when the grocery chains incorporated a bakery department with in the stores. Opening the day before 6 am for business offering fresh baked bread, danish and donuts was usurped and firmly belongs to the chain outlets followed by a loss of the cake and cupcake business. Shoppers traded quality handmade products for the convenience of one-stop-shopping in an effort to save time and money, or at least that was the chant of the commercials we watched. Soon the family owned outlets with talented staff were hard pressed to price match the grocery stores therefore many sold or closed the businesses.

Those outlets that remained were ones that quickly adopted new styles and techniques, especially in the wedding cake, sculpted or carved cakes, and fondant enrobed cakes and other unique items. Bakeries could no longer only offer buttercream and whipped cream cakes which meant they were in need of hiring staff who could work with the new skills or retrain themselves to met client demands that the grocery stores did not offer. It should not surprise you that the chain stores added these offerings as well.

Now, any company that survived or was opened after Facebook became a household name with million of users, must use social media often in order to keep their business in viable competition in the marketplace. The showcase window, sign hanging, and a ad in the yellow pages can't keep you in the running to have a great wedding and holiday baking season. This monumental shift, while popular and accessible, brings negatives and positives.

So to the negatives, as I tend to like my bad news before the good news. Small business owners now have to either rely upon the tech savvy to make their online presence and maintain it, or learn new skills and keep in constant contact with their fans and customers. Knowing how to make a business Facebook page, using Instagram, Periscope, and maintaining a business web page, can take a significant amount of time especially when you aren't literate in the first place.

Success in this arena can attract new clients and concentrate your marketing funding to speak to those people in your most profitable demographic, but until the business can spend monies to have a marketing department or a dedicated staff member to handle these activities, the time that keeping up with social media marketing can be time consuming, especially as a new way to communicate are being developed every day.

The good news is that these activities are not expensive, especially if you do them yourself. Advertising your business no longer requires owners to hire publicity, advertising and marketing companies spending money on door tags, sale flyers, hand out brochures, print ads in newspapers, and issuing coupons. All the needs of small business owners to get the word out and keep the attention of customers can be done from your laptop while sitting on your favorite chair.

 I'm currently sitting in my recliner, reflecting on recent events, which prompted this conversation. My clients favorite way to reach out to me is on social media or email. This gives us the unique ability to talk with clients, decipher their requests, devise a design, and take a deposit all remotely. Keep in mind, that's when it all works, but when dealing with technology or learning new tech skills, we all have experiences where either the user or the program has failed to work effectively or not at all.

So over the weekend, I attempted my first podcast recording. I was excited as the conversation was quite interesting but, needless to say, something went wrong. Failing to create a usable recording made the effort as detectable as teardrops in rain. I am hoping that a second attempt to replace that interview will result in success but I know that the second attempt will not be exactly spoken as the first. I want all of the recordings to be very conversational, I do not feel the need to edit or sensor them, nor to have them sound as polished as a television episode.

Efforts to set a second appointment for a taping will have to wait. If it is not confirmed quickly, I will have to create another interview with someone else. C'est la Via, time waits for no one.

Welcome

This blog, and its companion podcast, is dedicated to the explorations of many things revolving around the food service industry. I have been a professional pastry chef in Chicago for over 24 years and I intend to have discussions about many related topics from the changing face of the industry, the pitfalls of business ownership, food trends, what it is like being a minority in this line of work, culinary schools, competition, and just about anything else.

Why did I pick this name for my page? Well, when I was a kid, it was trendy to have, hanging on your wall, the giant fork and spoon. These decorations were wooden or metal and often found in the dinning room or kitchens, as a kid I tried to imagine how big you must be to be able to use them at the dinner table. As I grew up, these wall hangings began to fall out of favor, considered passe, but my love of food, and creating food art, began in the shadow of these relics.

The chef life is never dull and hardly ever simple. Everyone in the industry needs to balance the business with artistry to meet the ever changing demands of the clientele, and that isn't easy. When I began my journey in this industry there was no such thing as a "celebrity chef", no television channels dedicated to our work, and very little that accurately depicted what the day-to-day was like in a professional kitchen. Julia Child lit the torch that peered behind the curtain the separated the front of the house from the back of the house. She was the pioneer that demystified fine dinning and culinary excellence both at food outlets and at home. Anthony Bourdain wrote a best selling book "Kitchen Confidential" that peeled back the facade and took a hard look at the life of the chef will all that it can be, both accelerating and dangerous.

I have come to the conclusion that even with all the media exposure and the developed thirst for all things "celebrity", the Rachel Raye's, the Mario Batalli's, and Guy Fieri's, there is still a lack of respect for what it is we do, and a lack of understanding about what it takes to get into this line of work, stay in the industry, open a profitable business, and have any measure of success. I often find, that when talking to other professionals in other industries, I feel the need to illustrate what it is we do and why we chefs are not to have a nose turned skyward from anyone. Chefs all over the world run businesses, just like any other business, with it's demands of profitability, while using applied chemistry techniques to food stuffs, and mixing in artistry to please a wide audience.Trends change rapidly, similar to the fashion industry, and keeping up with the dietary and taste request of customers keeps chefs consistently training and retraining their skills.

Hopefully, my experiences, and those of my colleagues, will widen your perspective and understanding of this chef life we live. My goal has always been to open my own outlet in Chicago, as for now, I am delving deeper into teaching the next generation of people with great cooking skills, and perhaps some will take their skills on to high heights within the industry. Everything has its pluses and minuses and here's where I intend to share them with you.