Purpose

When my dessert company went out of business, I honestly believed my time in the food service industry was done. Then, over the six months between the time I closed the doors and the time I successfully sold the company to new owners who wished to continue on the mission of providing high-quality gelato and sorbet to The Ozarks and beyond, things slowly began to steer me back onto my culinary course. It began while I was trying to sell my equipment and building, only to have my eventual buyers express interest through a mutual friend. Naturally, I had come to care a great deal about gelato and was thrilled that the dream might live on. As negotiations were conducted, I found myself watching videos about confections, having never taken that class. When I realized I already owned CIA Chef Instructor Peter Greweling's book on the subject, one of many cookbooks friends and family had given me as gifts over the years, I made every major variety of candy in the book as a way of sealing a gap in my knowledge and rebuilding my confidence, giving the results away in tins as Christmas gifts. With my mojo back and company resurrecting, I was pleased with how things were going.

During negotiations, the new owners asked if they could hire me as a consultant. I thought they just wanted my gelato expertise, but, on the date of the sale, they told me they wanted to get into all areas of dessert and had the investors to do it. This being the case, they wanted to keep me on as a paid consultant, since I was such an expert on baking and pastry arts. Compared to them, this assessment was correct, but I knew the amount of work it had taken to truly gain expertise in gelato and that I could not claim that level of expertise in any other area of dessert. Oh, I knew how to make most types of dessert well enough to impress civilians. Pies are the dessert item with which I most struggle, especially my personal culinary archnemesis the lemon merengue, the custard of which frustrates my every attempt to make it set right. If these guys were banking on me to be their permanent advisor in the dessert business, I'd need to up my game as much as possible, including pie making and a the rest of it. That was when a CIA education became more than the fantastical pipe dream that I had traditionally considered it to be. Now it was a necessity to become the best pastry chef I could possibly be because others were counting upon me being just that chef.

After I complete my degree in baking and pastry arts at the CIA, I will return to consulting for the new owners of my former company. It will be a few years before they are ready to enter the broader world of desserts, having to rebuild the distribution and business connections that atrophied in the six months the company was not operating. In the meantime, my mission as a consultant is to teach them all I can about gelato and sorbet in general and about how my former company operates in general. With more financial backing and a stronger business background than I had, I am quite certain I'll be able to advise them towards the end of building a successful gelato business. When I go away to CIA for two years, I'll have given them the tools they need to proceed on their own. By the time I graduate and return, it will be time to start launching further business ventures and I will be quite well-prepared to take my lifelong appointment as their consultant on such ventures. Obviously, there's only so much to advise them on past a certain point. From there, they see me becoming a flavor developer in charge of a test kitchen of some description. They also see me as someone who would train and instruct new employees in the techniques I've learned and the knowledge I have. So in a strange way, I am going to culinary school to learn enough to become a chef instructor of sorts myself.

-Frank