APPCA Presents Awards of Excellence at Personal Chef Summit at Stratford University
The American Personal & Private Chef Association (APPCA) recently honored four chefs with Awards of Excellence at the 2013 APPCA Personal Chef Summit at Stratford University in Baltimore.
The following received recognition from Candy Wallace, founder and executive director of the APPCA, at the conference’s awards luncheon on Oct. 12:
- 2013 Career/Life Balance: Javier Fuertes, chef/owner, Fitchburg, Mass.-based The Dinner Maker serving central Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire
- 2013 Marketer of the Year: Jim Huff, chef/owner, Queens-based Traveling Culinary Artist serving metro New York and Nassau County
- 2013 Chefs of the Year: Dennis Nosko and Christine Robinson, co-owners, A Fresh Endeavor serving greater Boston
Following the ceremony, Wallace moderated a best-practices panel featuring the four award recipients, who shared their winning formulas for building successful personal-chef businesses with more than 50 conference attendees from throughout the nation.
This year marks the first that the APPCA’s Awards of Excellence program recognized excellence in marketing and career/life balance in addition to overall business excellence via the Chef of the Year Award, which since its inception in 1996 has honored a personal chef only in years in which selection criteria have been met or exceeded by a qualified candidate. According to Wallace, the APPCA will seek candidates for 2014 awards in all three categories based on documented merit.
Wallace’s nearly 45 years of dedication to the foodservice industry and promotion of the personal-chef career path include the last 17 as the foremost authority on personal chefs in the United States. She founded the American Personal Chef Association in 1996 as the first significant national effort to recognize the impact of personal chefs on Americans’ evolving lifestyles and to provide career and management training to those who aspire to become personal chefs with their own businesses. She led the positioning of personal chefs as culinary professionals, culminating in 2002 with a formal partnership with the American Culinary Federation to award certification to qualified personal chefs. In 2006, Wallace embraced the professional-development needs of private chefs by restructuring the organization to become the American Personal & Private Chef Association.
Her many accolades include Entrepreneur of the Year from both the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) and the Cordon d’Or - Gold Ribbon International Culinary Academy Awards. For her career-long support of and contributions to formal culinary training in the United States, Wallace received a Medallion of Excellence from the Foodservice Educators Network International (FENI). She is co-author of the only academic textbook to teach personal-chef business management, The Professional Personal Chef: The Business of Doing Business as a Personal Chef (Wiley, 2007).
The American Personal & Private Chef Association (APPCA), based in San Diego, promotes the “business of doing business” as a personal or private chef through ongoing peer interaction and education while fostering professionalism in all aspects of cookery. Through its Institute and education partners, the APPCA offers sound training in establishing successful and fulfilling careers. For more information, call (800) 644-8389, e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., or visit www.personalchef.com.
PHOTO:Candy Wallace (center), founder and executive director of the American Personal & Private Chef Association, presented 2013 APPCA Awards of Excellence to (l. to r.) Dennis Nosko and Christine Robinson, A Fresh Endeavor; Javier Fuertes, The Dinner Maker; and Jim Huff, Traveling Culinary Artist, on Oct. 12 at the 2013 APPCA Personal Chef Summit in Baltimore.