Question
Robert Morgan
I am looking for a way to get a part time culinary job, but I am 55 and not looking for full time employment, what do you suggest? This course is my only experience.
Answer
Well, depends what you wanna do. You know, there are a lot of, uh, now coming into the world, there are many, uh, fast casual restaurants where you end up doing a lot of prep work and things like that. And so you might be working on a walk or you might be working in the back of the house chopping vegetables. Um, I'm not sure which program you're on. I recognize your name, Robert m and i I think I have, uh, recently, um, reviewed some of your assignments. I think that, uh, you might want to read the paper if you have a favorite restaurant that you like. I will tell you what I did when I finished Rouxbe, because in the back of my brain, I had this idea that I would work in this favorite little vegan restaurant that I loved. The owner was delightful. He was very creative. He made beautiful food. Uh, most of it was whole food plant-based. And I knocked on his door one day and I said, so I come in here a lot, I love your food. Is there a way that you and I can do something together? And he said, well, what do you mean? And I said, well, maybe we could do pop-up dinners. And he thought, well, he, his exact words to me were, will it generate money? And I said, absolutely it will generate money because the ingredients, when you look at, you know, kale or brown rice or whatever, the ingredients aren't going to kill you. So we ended up doing popup dinners and they worked out very, very well. And, uh, it was very helpful to each of us. Then I will tell you this, I graduated from Rouxbe in the on May 8th, 2015, and about two weeks later, I had gotten a call from Kim Campbell, who is Dr. Campbell's sister-in-law, I'm sorry, daughter-in-law. And, um, she was saying to me that she was coming to Philadelphia. And I was like, oh, you're coming to Philadelphia. I have a great idea. Why don't you let my friend Fernando and I cook dinner for you at his cafe? And so my first true gig as a Rouxbe graduate was making dinner for t Colin Campbell PhD and the film crew from Plant Pure Nation, which is the film, the documentary that his son Nelson had put together, I believe in 2016. So you have to kind of think outside the box. And I, for myself, I'm speaking for myself, I really valued my time at Rouxbe as a student because I learned so much. And it really did give me the confidence that I needed to take my enthusiasm about plant-based food and nutrition seriously. Because when I tell people that I went to an online culinary school, people always go, what? And then I tell them about how much I learned, and then when they taste the food that I make, it's all a selling point. So my point here, Robert, is the world is your oyster mushroom and that you can do whatever you want. And if you have any questions, always feel free to email me, Char@Rouxbe.com, and I will give you some good personal tips. Uh, if I knew where you live geographically, I, um, would also help you out with that. But, uh, I think it sounds like a fun thing to do because cooking is really, really fun.
