How adept are your faculty at integrating technology in the kitchen and classroom? Are you training and teaching them to understand issues relating to farming, processing, packaging and shipping of raw materials used in kitchens? Great teachers, like excellent employees in any field, thrive on self-improvement.

By Paul Sorgule, MS, AAC

Your facilities are in order, all of the collateral pieces are designed with wonderful pictures of incredible food and the smiling faces of your students, the website is up to date and your curriculum has been designed with input from accrediting agencies and industry leaders. You invested the time and energy seeking the best possible faculty.

So, everything is ready to go. Open the doors and let the students in. Is anything missing?

When institutions such as yours build their checklists for successful design and implementation of a culinary program, there is far too often one critical piece missing. Staff training and development, just as is the case in restaurant operations, falls victim to the deadly budget cut. Let’s think about this for a moment.

Administrators would likely agree that their most valuable asset is the cadre of great teachers they hire. These great teachers are dedicated to their chosen profession and excited to share their knowledge with students.

 The Idaho Potato Commission’s Cost & Size page ensures less waste, more cost-effective orders.

For students in cost-control classes, the Idaho Potato Commission (IPC) has added another essential foodservice tool to its online resources. The IPC cost and size calculators help take the guesswork out of purchasing Idaho^® Potatoes. From carton to plate, users can rely on these tools to give them real-time numbers for keeping food costs in line.  

To access the Idaho Potato Commission Cost & Size page, click on the toolbar link at https://idahopotato.com/foodservice/cost-and-size. The IPC has also made it easy to order a physical copy of the size guide and cost calculator.

And with power comes responsibility, says this Hoboken chef, restaurateur, author, businesswoman and Latin cuisines historian.

Dr. Maricel E. Presilla, a culinary historian, author and chef specializing in the foods of Latin America and Spain, reminded graduates of The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) they are following a tradition of excellence, and with it carries responsibility. Presilla was commencement speaker at the college’s Hyde Park, N.Y., campus on July 3.

“Keep your sharp knives at hand, but hold onto the wooden spoon,” Presilla told 61 recipients of associate degrees in culinary arts and baking and pastry arts. “A wooden spoon becomes one with the food. It also represents the collective wisdom of grandmothers and home cooks everywhere.”

Presilla is president of Gran Cacao Company, a Latin American food research and marketing company that offers cacao educational programs and premium heirloom cocoa beans. She is also chef and co-owner of two restaurants—Cucharamama, featuring artisanal South American cooking, and Zafra, a pan-Latin restaurant with an emphasis on the cuisine of Cuba, both in Hoboken, N.J. In 2010, she opened Ultramarinos,a gourmet Latin American market, bakery, chocolate shop and cooking atelier in Hoboken. 

Pastry-chef instructors from Joliet Junior College, SAIT Polytechnic and The Pennsylvania School of Culinary Arts hope to become the 12^th, 13^th and 14^th CMPCs in the United States.

Four pastry chefs from across the nation will gather at Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, N.C., Aug. 16-23, for the ultimate test—the American Culinary Federation’s (ACF) Certified Master Pastry Chef® (CMPC) exam. The eight-day long exam gives candidates the opportunity to earn the highest professional distinction available and join the elite group of only 11 CMPCs in the nation.

The Certified Master Chef® (CMC) program was initiated in 1981 and granted official recognition by the World Association of Chefs Societies the next year. The CMPC examination, first held in 1993, requires exacting familiarity and proficiency in a broad range of pastry styles and techniques. The most recent CMPC exam was held in 2005 at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. Frank Vollkommer, CMPC, corporate executive chef at Hillcrest Foods in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., was the only candidate to pass the exam and receive the master-chef certification. Currently, there are 67 CMCs and 11 CMPCs in the United States, with a CMC exam scheduled for late 2014.

“How are you today?”, though arguably better than nothing, is so overused and insincere that it fails to distinguish the service culture of your retail foodservice outlets. To employ an effective interaction strategy (and increase sales), understand that customers respond on conscious and unconscious levels to every aspect of their engagement with your instructors and student employees.

By Renee Zonka, RD, CEC, CHE, MBA

Last month, I wrote about how an “interaction economy” is replacing the “experience economy” with which the United States has identified since 1999 upon the publication of The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage by B. Joseph Pine, II, and James H. Gilmore. As I stated, everyone can identify with the basic premise of an experience economy, in which companies state an “experience” when they engage customers in a memorable way.