Elevator Pitch

If you have any type of career training in the last 20 years or so, you have probably heard about the 'elevator pitch', a short synopsis that gives the listener a clean, precise, understanding of who you are and what you desire to achieve. Two years ago, I turned a short bus ride into a shift in my career path.

The story goes, I had a free convention pass to the National Restaurant Association show at McCormick place. Parking is always hard to find and frequently expensive, I took public transportation. I entered the bus, and sitting a couple of rows back from the driver, was a guy in his chef coat that looked familiar. It took me a few to put it all together but I realized that this chef and I had been connected via social media for a couple of years. Chef Blackmon is a very talented person who is in charge of culinary arts training for Chicago Public Schools. I am limiting his role to just this aspect of what he does for teenagers all over the city of Chicago, Illinois.

As we spoke about our industry, I expressed my desire to begin teaching and had found the school applications online were almost completely geared to academic educators, making it difficult for someone like myself to successfully apply. The story goes, there are often openings for skilled instructors, and I put myself up for nomination and swift as I could emailed my resume. Almost two months later, I got a call about my resume, Chef Blackmon had forwarded my information on to another program in need of instructors. Even without having an opening with CPS, I was afforded the opportunity to interview for another position.

Sometimes you wait in a hallway wondering which door will open for you, other times you wait in waiting rooms seeking the door to get out into a hallway, a path towards new goals. You never know what connection you will make that can propel you into new spheres. Always be closing because when you are not, there is a risk of missing your change to jump in the deep end. No more kiddie pool for me.

Some people are put off by this ideal as they may not be comfortable talking about themselves. I am not quick to do so either, I don't have much of an ego, but I have learned to give out pieces of my career as validation of my skills and ability. Sometimes that's all you really need to do prior to sending off your resume, or even at the interview. For the food business, a portfolio can do tons of bragging for you, not having to speak a word, it is always helpful to have pictures of your work, easily available online for customers and potential employers to review.  This invaluable tool can speak for you, even when there isn't a new opportunity readily available, and having this presence can really come to arms for you.

Our industry runs on sensory perceptions, sights, sounds, smells, and taste all come together to judge your work. While I know you can't duplicate, or represent, all the aspects of food we love without being there in the moment, but pics can be a valuable representation of what is possible. Once you have peeked someone's interest then you can duplicate the experiences.

Always be prepared because not all opportunities come neatly packaged with a bow on top, or are scheduled on a calendar. Be ready, be a pinch polished, learn to speak to your skills instead of heaping on details about yourself to fed your ego.

Going Live

Just like with live television, broadcasting a live podcast can run into problems. Last week, and a couple other time as well, we planned a live broadcast on Blogtalkradio.com only to run into problems. As I have had the opportunity to mess around with my options, I had a plan B. Since it is a program with very little visuals, I quickly went to a taped conversation that I uploaded after the conclusion of the conversation.

There are a few ways that you can create content for your podcast if the server is too busy or something interrupts your scheduled show. I often tape my shows from Freeconferencecall.com. This service allows callers to chat and record the conversation easily. All participants call into a common phone number and the host can use its tools to make a mp3 of the meeting. Most laptops and PC's have options for recording voice recordings. Sometimes the feature may not have options to change the format of the recording, so please check. If you record a conversation in a format not recognized by your broadcast service, you may need a converter software to get the recording in a format the you can use.

I enjoy podcasting. The conversations heard on my show are very similar to conversations I have offline and in real life. The food news, food culture, chef conversations, and the culinary industry are apart of my everyday. And I hope my audience agrees....

We set the goal of one podcast a week, and I hope to always go live on Saturday afternoons, however if we run into issues, we got to tape and upload later. The other reason that may force us to go tape is the availability of our guest. I'd rather tape a podcast with a dynamic guest whenever is best for them than not to get the conversation with the guest.

I got one scheduled for today, so catch us if you can:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/giantforkandspoon/2016/04/24/episode-16-maurice-miles-wy-dolphin-and-foodie

I agree with Micheal Simon

On a aired episode of The Chew, 2/29/16, the topic of food destroyers and binge eating contest was brought up in the first segment. Chef Simon stated that he has never understood the phenomenon of eating more than a human can eat in a week choked down in a few minutes or the videos of people throwing or smashing food. I agree. I have never understood it either, add to that, the trend of folks making giant, over the top foods, from other foods, like taking 20 big macs and making a casserole from them. Yuck

This reminds me of the stories at the Romans before the fall of their society. We haven't yet began using vomitoriums but at this rate I would be surprised if it were to begin. This is the height of greed, excess and privilege. Only in a self centered community will you ever see such habits as their are too much famine in the world for this to make sense. Homelessness in America is the least talked about societal ill and with efforts, not to feed them and house them, but to install fixtures to detract homeless people from sleeping on bus stops and around buildings, I don't think it is at all reasonable to act in this manner. Yet, you can find many representations on social media depicting these acts.

In my opinion, the statement 'less is more' in this conversation is exactly right. We have so many people without and so many people with too much. Food waste is a big problem here. Every year we throw away an estimated 133 billion pounds of food. A lot of the waste happens in grocery retail outlets and in our own kitchens, as we may cook too much one day and not consume it before it spoils. Yet we have food stunts as I like to call them happening all the time. We have television series dedicated to this idea such as Man v. Food. Nothing succeeds like excess.

We humans think we are so clever and know so much but we are only gazing at the world through a peep hole wondering what it is we see. Hopefully the rise of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and the lot, will wake up our society to eating to live instead of eating to excess.

http://www.travelchannel.com/shows/man-v-food
http://endhunger.org/food-waste/

Back to the Celebrity Chefs issues.....

This may not be your issue and you may not agree with me, however, the concept of a celebrity chef is often a separate thing from being a A-list chef. Most world class chefs are virtually unknown to most of the American public.

This morning the nominees for the Oscar award were announced, most nominees were expected and some expectations were not met, as usual. Living in Chicago has always given chefs a great place to work and learn the craft but it is only recently that we have just been acknowledged as a world class culinary city. The James Beard award ceremony was held here and a Michelin Star was finally given here. It is my opinion that there are two classes of this type of publicity rich name dropping realm of the celebrity chef. The first, and often most important realm, is the realm of the hard-working award winning professional chef. These unsung brave knights of the kitchen are superstars and revered but aren't exactly household names. The other realm of celebrity chefs are those television culinary stars that some of us can name and watch often.

Among the television chefs are some well versed real trained chefs that got noticed because of their cookbooks, or from doing some local television segments, or former contestants on a cooking competition. Then there are some that sooo are NOT chefs in any way but have a cooking show due to their persona which was pitched and groomed for television. Once their show was accepted by the viewing audience then the cookbooks, product lines, and other offerings became popular at your local outlets.

I am not a fan of all food centered television and some of the most popular ones do not teach much in way of technique, food knowledge, or culinary exploration. The advent of the Food Network is both good and bad for my industry, for example, Duff Goldman's show Ace of Cakes, brought attention to sculpted fondant cake creations increasing the demand for these type of cakes. Awesome right? Well not completely, some customers who would inquire about getting one of these types of cakes often were victims of sticker shock. These types of cakes can take several days of designing, baking, ordering supplies and/or shopping, and then creating which is why some of these can cost $4 per person and upwards. What is astonishing, to some, is the amount of times spent on these projects because if they were a fan of the show, they saw these items get produced in a half hour or hour show not realizing that it was more than a week of taping that got edited. This would get customers to ask questions like "don't you just order this or that?" not realizing that what they have requested had to be handmade originals and therefore had to be reflected in the pricing.

Champagne dreams with Kool-aid money is an obstacle for some folks but as a well-versed pastry chef I have been able to share with those clients how they can afford to have the showpiece cake they are seeking at lesser pricing by downsizing the cake and adding matching cupcakes to have enough to feed the guest without braking the host bank.

If you are a avid watcher of the food porn now available on the Food Network, ABC, NBC, PBS and many more, just keep in mind that all of these shows have teams of chefs doing the research, prep, and hard work behind the scenes that you never ever see in order to produces these offerings for your viewing pleasure. Hopefully, whomever you watch on television is actually showing you things that you can take into your own kitchen. The fad nowadays is for every actress, actor, singer, dancer, or television personality to have a food line, kitchen equipment, and/or cookbook for sale at your local K-Mart.

Everyone has a relationship with food, if they are in fact a human, but not everyone has a good relationship with food or has had any significant lessons in the kitchen producing good food for others. The companion podcast of this blog, coming very soon, will be made of conversations with all sorts of people about their food relationships including my chef friends. Follow who you like, hopefully I am one that you will follow, but also find out if they actually know what they are doing on your screen or if they are a manufactured celebrity who knew a producer and where blessed to be given a show.

Enjoy  

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.