Experience and Skills

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• My professional skills, work experience, and knowledge are specialized in culinary arts. 

• My perspective and ability to apply my knowledge make me a great consultant/problem solver. 

• High Standards, for cleanliness, quality, professionalism, attention to detail,  fair and honest treatment of coworkers and customers. I take pride in my professional integrity and will not compromise on health for monetary gain. 

• Sustainability, I work hard to be as sustainable as possible with my work and my skills allow me to treat sustainability as a fun challenge rather than a restriction. I've always focused on reducing waste, and reusing what we have before ordering new stock.

• Inventory management plays the biggest factor when it comes to sustainability and food waste in my experience. I have even created inventory systems at workplaces to increase efficiency and reduce waste. Inventory management is on the same level as cleaning for me.  

• Work habits/professionalism/cleanliness, I keep my station as clean and organized as possible, I am often first in and last out, I always step up when it matters, wash my hands religiously, adept at supporting the team where they need me most. 

• High adaptability,  is a necessity to being a great chef and consultant, thinking on your feet, using what you have, and strong communication skills are essential traits I have in spades and use often.  

• Compound/transferable skills perspective, this is one of my strongest and most useful skills. It enables me to perform a wide variety of tasks by thinking critically about the base concepts. For example, I was able to butcher a whole cow, half a pig, 2 lambs, and a goat in one week by myself in a refrigerated cold room, with no official whole-animal butchery training by focusing on 1 main skill. Separating muscle from bone and applying my previous knowledge from butchering poultry and fish. The main challenge was the anatomy, I had a base knowledge, without practical experience, and had an 80% cut yield compared to 95% by the end of my time as a butcher.  My base skill and knowledge level set the standard high from the start. 

• Food product yield analysis. When you account for the weight of the bones about 30%, fat/inedible trim about 10-15%, ground meat 20-40% (depending on the customer), and cuts 15-30%(depending on the customer), from an animal that weighs 857-pounds, you can expect to yield an average of 192 pounds of cuts. These cuts are roasts, steaks, organs, and specialty cuts. 

• Labor yield analysis, practically speaking the amount of product gained with increased expertise was minimal compared to the speed increase. Making the overall output significantly faster. In this example, there was a greater skill efficiency yield over source product yield. If the source product was a broth that needed to simmer for a set amount of time focusing on skill efficiency would not help the client workflow, instead delegating the project to support staff or changing the prep of the stock to be done alongside shared ingredients would be a better option. 

• Time management and awareness, some products require your full attention (butchery) while others can run parallel (stock). Knowing what processes are required I can make a workflow/prep list with the client that prioritizes background items, fearful or curveball items first, items that can only be made to order or don't hold well (ex apples will oxides) third, and the remaining items are second.

• Menu planning/design is one of my favorite things to do as it impacts every other element of the business. I love how resourceful I can be by crafting this box that is on the menu and then thinking outside of it. Each restriction is a line on the box that defines what limits are placed on the food and when you need help overcoming those limits I can almost always find a solution. Alternatively, I can strengthen the box and improve the menu design, order, portions, and any other tweaks to improve efficiency.

• Restaurant costing, I strongly prefer to standardize recipes/product yields, even with estimates, and then use that as a template for food costing. This way I can pick out pain points early and address them with the client. For example, if a recipe is profitable from a pure food cost perspective but the labor is too expensive. I excel at finding these little and big errors to help you get accurate bookkeeping, inventory management, and staff management.

• Culinary Fundamentals, My specialty, I focus on learning fundamental concepts and techniques in order to execute a broad and high level of cuisine. For example, instead of learning how to cook salmon, I learned how to cook fish. This means my cooking, timing, knowledge/feel for the ingredients, and communication are strong but my finer and more specialized skills can be lacking at times such as intricate plating. However with my high adaptability once a skill clicks, I rapidly increase my proficiency with it. 

• Culinary Teaching, I've always been a teacher, once I find a connection in someone with cooking I can help use that as a medium for teaching. I explain my thoughts on culinary education and teaching more here. 

• Team Management, when it comes to managing a team I feel the best way to set standards is to lead by example. This means you stay late to clean, if an employee is having a rough day give them a break when appropriate, have clear and defined responsibilities, and keep them consistent. These are the basics that I've seen along with not getting paid appropriately. Getting these basics down

• Investment in tools, I've invested more money and time than I care to admit in tools. They allow me to perform at a higher level and always be prepared for any situation. The most important tool is how calm I am in stressful situations and problem-solving of course.

Other skills I have at the same personal standard with less professional experience 

• Videography, filming, editing, planning, uploading, production process, coordination 

• Writing, video scripts, articles, letters, creative writing, menu descriptions, team communications 

• Automotive, general maintenance, knowledge, repair, and troubleshooting 

• Electronics, purchasing, troubleshooting, repair (hardware and software), PC assembly, basic I.T. 

• Website design, you are looking at it, critique and design for mobile and desktop