Food: Jobs Landed

I have always loved cakes, primarily because I find them to be the closest form of edible artwork.  I am thrilled to be involved in creating edible masterpieces that are equally delicious and gorgeous.  I also love that our refrigerator is currently packed with local damson plums so we can make jam for the coming year!  The support of local producers is a clincher for me.

My particular role, as Business Manager of a very small business, is somewhat to be a jack of all trades.  Which means a lot of variety! My main responsibilities include managing orders, maintaining financials in order to optimize business decisions, and marketing.  The part that I really love, which includes all of the above, is strategic planning: where are we going, and how are we going to get there?  That is so exciting!

My love for cake design stems from an education in art, a passion for food, and a childlike refusal to believe that there is anything I cannot create. While attending the University of Michigan School of Art and Design, I packed up my paintbrushes and headed to Florence for a semester abroad. Though I had hoped that immersing myself in the realm of the Italian masters would rub off on my artistic prowess, I found myself more interested in the perfect foam atop my cappuccino. I began to cook, and realized that I loved it. My time in Italy began to revolve around trips to the local market, home-cooked multicourse dinners with my roommates, and weekend pilgrimages to sample different types of regional cuisine.

Upon returning to the States, my newfound passion for food seeped into my art making. For my art school thesis, I dedicated myself to forming the same connection to food in Michigan that I had experienced in Italy. After working with food producers and artisans in the Ann Arbor area, I created a series of edible monuments to honor each one.

Since graduating in 2007, I have had the to opportunity to work with Eve Aronoff as a cook at eve the Restaurant, as well as with Courtney Clark of Cake Nouveau on a series of Food Network Challenges. Both experiences have been influential in developing who I am as a cook and an artist.

I love what I do, and look at each new cake as a challenge to create something beautiful that will make someone’s day.

Food First by Jennifer is a company that specializes in educating people on how to optimize energy and prevent disease. It is designed to teach people the healing properties of food and empower them to make simple changes to improve their health and lives.

After graduating from Michigan State University, I had a continuum of health issues that compromised my quality of life. It wasn’t until I took a natural approach that my health dramatically improved.

I speak to companies, associations and do one-on-one consultations with individuals educating them on the “food first” philosophy.

I'm the new executive chef at Cork Wine Pub in Pleasant Ridge. I've been with the company since we opened right before thanks giving last year. I started off as a line cook and when the last chef left I took the bull by its horns and ran with it. I enjoy what I do because I get to work directly with local farmers and highlight Michigan produce and we have some of the best in the country! It's a hard, demanding and very gratifying job and I am blessed to be what I am doing, where I am doing it!

I am a Certified Sommelier that runs the wine department at Plum Market West Bloomfield. My job duties include the buying of wine, beer and liquor for the store, and managing a team of highly qualified sommeliers and beverage consultants. I also oversee and help plan all events held within the store at the Cru Winebar. We have a very dynamic and unique program at Plum. We are a large-scale business that has the utmost standards for quality. We directly compete with large grocery chains on name brand items and also specialize in hard to find eclectic products from all over the world. As a team, we take great pride in bringing new and interesting beverages to the public. We consider ourselves educators and enjoy guiding our guests to the beverages that will make them most happy.

As a Detroit native, I was happy to be able to return to the Detroit after graduation.  There is so much happening in Detroit at the community level, and I wanted to be apart of it. There's really no other place I'd like to be at this moment. People care not only about their neighborhoods, but the also the future of their city.  At the Restaurant Opportunities Center of Michigan (ROC-Michigan) we work to improve workforce opportunities within the restaurant industry. I was a graduate student intern at ROC-Michigan while completing my MSW at the UM School of Social Work and was excited to find that there was a full-time position available shortly after graduation.  As the Training Coordinator at ROC-Michigan, I support the training programs that assist low-wage restaurant workers move to higher end jobs in the industry.  There are over 134,000 restaurant workers in the metro Detroit area and ROC-Michigan works with restaurant workers, employers, and many ally organizations to ensure that these are jobs that take the "high road" to profitability, setting the trend for integrity, respect, and good working conditions in the metro Detroit restaurant industry.

I have over twenty five years of experience in the catering business.My experience includes everything from cooking to training and management of many different types of operations. In the recent past, I built my own full service catering company in Washtenaw County called Effortless Entertaining and received caterer of the year in 2009 & 2010 from the U.S. Commerce Association and Southeast Michigan caterer of the year many times. I will work directly with Produce Station Executive Chef Brian Cromwell for all catering events. I will focus on customer relations, sales, and operations of the catering department.

After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1996 I realized that my General Studies degree (even though it was a tremendously rewarding experience) was not extremely conducive to much in my future.  At the time I happened to be working part time at an iconic Ann Arbor wine retailer and I realized how wine, in all of its manifestations and tangents, incorporated the gamut of my studies--history, literature, anthropology, and religion, even philosophy.  However, the most rewarding of all my human experiences have always been related to savoring the fruits of this Earth and I thank my family for that (plus the great cuisine and bounty of my native Peru).  Therefore I could not pass the opportunity to engage in what I classified as my "Grad School" and inculcate myself with the knowledge of wine and food.  I realize now that it has become the brunt of my existence.  I cannot spend a day without cavorting over the pleasures of the palate and all of the social variety thereunder.  Briefly stated: I enjoy food and wine and its history and I have never been the same since I started this love affair.  I would love to share my passion for food and wine with you!

In my position as a Fleet Systems Coordinator my daily duties are never the same each day and my priorities often change in a matter of seconds. I am responsible for the maintenance of our On-Board Computer System that is installed in our nationwide fleet of trucks. Data acquired from the system directly interprets how we optimize our power units, drivers and time. I also provide support to our fourteen distribution centers for our routing system that helps efficiently place new store openings on the most sensible routes, eliminate miles and plan territories accordingly.

In a nutshell, it was Detroit’s vibrant music scene and creative tone that kept me from leaving the state for college. I grew up in the metro area and have been frequenting Detroit since I was a kid. After college though, I chose to stay in Detroit because it offers an edge few major cities can compete with - the ability to start and grow an innovative business in an environment where people care about the prosperity and well being of your business.
 
I actually fell into my job out of necessity to help support my family when unemployment hit our household  pretty hard in 2008. I spent my last year of college creating a business plan for a hobby my Mom started and upon graduation in 2009, I put it into action. Aunt Nee’s currently services Bed Bath and Beyond, Walrgeen’s, and 30 other independent retailers throughout metro-Detroit. My activities include day-to-day operations, business and new product development, overseeing production, account maintenance and expansion, along with product marketing and merchandising. I can't describe how fortunate I feel to be in this position. I enjoy every aspect of what I do and am very thankful for the opportunities that come my way as I shoot to make our business grow.

I was drawn to Detroit by people who I met who were doing incredible things, and by a sense that this was a city where young creative doers were embraced and could find plenty of ways to be engaged, challenged, and useful. I have a pretty non-traditional background. Since graduating in 2006, I've led a staff of 80 at a start-up non-profit; managed product marketing for Google's email service for schools; wrangled with international donors at a local NGO in Cambodia; organized briefings on sustainable ag topics for congressional committee staff; and processed chickens on a small bio-intensive farm off the coast of Washington.

I didn't move for a job. I actually have no ties to Michigan at all, but really, I was drawn by inspiration and then had some really lucky turns of fate that allow me to support myself doing work that I love. First, though I hadn't formally applied, my advisor at MSU took a chance on me after we met a conference in Detroit, and helped to arrange a paid graduate student position. Then over the summer, shortly after arriving, with the support of friends and a whole lot of elbow grease, I started a little project called Neighborhood Noodle. Since then, I've been continually humbled by a community of entrepreneurs, activists, and plain-old Detroit lovers who have welcomed and supported me and my small fledgling business in a way that makes this feel more like a small town than a big city.  This is a place on a cusp and as a young person, my thoughts and actions seem to matter. I'm still a newcomer and I have a lot to learn about Detroit, especially its vibrant, sometimes heartbreaking, history, but I'm excited to learn and to eventually play a role in the new chapter that's being written here every day.

I facilitate the selection and recruitment of candidates for all professional positions within Domino’s Pizza’s World Resource Center. This includes reviewing and screening applicants, interviewing, and building relationships with local organizations, diversity organizations, colleges, special interest groups and other sources for possible candidates.