Culinary Agents CEO Alice Cheng On Hospitality Hiring Trends
Update: 2025-03-17
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Today’s guest is Alice Cheng, the founder and CEO of Culinary Agents—the hiring platform for the hospitality industry. Think LinkedIn, but for back of house and front of house folks.
Alice joins host Kerry Diamond to share insights on today’s hottest restaurant jobs, what cities are booming, and why communication skills often outweigh kitchen chops when it comes to hiring. Plus, they dive into her unconventional career journey—from studying at the Fashion Institute of Technology to working as a temp at IBM to becoming a respected entrepreneur and founder in the hospitality world.
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Visit cherrybombe.com for subscriptions and show transcripts.
More on Alice: Instagram, Culinary Agents, website
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Transcript
00:00:00
(upbeat music)
00:00:02
- Hi everyone, you are listening to Radio Cherry Bomb and to Umure Host, Carrie Diamond.
00:00:10
Coming to you from Newstan Studios at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City.
00:00:15
Today's guest is Alice Cheng, the founder and CEO of Culinary Agents, the hospitality hiring platform.
00:00:22
Alice joins me to talk about the hottest restaurant jobs, what cities are bustling, and why restaurant employers prize communication skills over food skills when it comes to hiring.
00:00:33
Surprising, right?
00:00:34
And of course, we talk about Alice's career path, from fashion institute of technology student to IBM temp, to respected entrepreneur and founder.
00:00:43
Stay tuned for my chat with Alice Cheng.
00:00:46
Some housekeeping, our Jubilee conference is less than a month away.
00:00:50
It's our big annual event and it's taking place on Saturday, April 12th at the glass house in New York City.
00:00:57
It's a beautiful day of community, connection, food, and drink.
00:01:00
This is our 14th Jubilee, which I cannot believe.
00:01:04
We've done 12 in-person Jubilies and we did two virtual ones and the very first one took place back in 2014.
00:01:11
Since then, we've celebrated and networked with thousands of women and culinary creatives from around the US and around the world.
00:01:18
For more information and tickets, visit cherrybomb.com.
00:01:22
If you are an official bomb squad member, be sure to check your inbox for special member pricing on Jubilee tickets.
00:01:28
If you're New York City on Thursday, March 27th, join us at Alex Mill at Rockefeller Center from 6 to 8 p.m.
00:01:36
for a fun night with the Alex Mill team and team cherry bomb.
00:01:39
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00:01:42
Enter for a chance to win Jubilee tickets and an Alex Mill gift card and enjoy treats from some of our favorite local bakers.
00:01:49
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00:01:55
Everybody is welcome, just come on by.
00:01:57
For all the details on our Alex Mill event, visit cherrybomb.com.
00:02:02
Now, let's check in with today's guest.
00:02:05
Alex Chang, welcome to Radio Cherry Bomb.
00:02:07
- Thank you for having me, I'm so excited to be here.
00:02:10
- We're going to talk about your life and career, but first, I would like to get some advice for folks interested in restaurant or hospitality careers.
00:02:18
Culinary agents helps folks find work in restaurants, hotels, events, and catering, and specialty stores.
00:02:24
So if you're looking for a job in a food lab at Unilever or a cookbook editor job at Clarkson Potter, Culinary agents is not the place to go.
00:02:32
- Well, it depends.
00:02:33
- Oh, tell me more.
00:02:34
- Yeah, what we found over the years, this is going to be our 13th year anniversary, is that really businesses who are looking for anyone that has hospitality or culinary or beverage types of skills,
00:02:47
looked at us as a place to put their openings.
00:02:50
We've got almost 2.3 million users now across the US, and so businesses that are looking to ramp up their customer service, and we're seeing a lot of lifestyle brands that are looking to get more into food and beverage.
00:03:01
So there really are more unique positions getting posted, but the majority are restaurant and food and beverage and hospitality related.
00:03:10
- Good to know, how many people are employed in the hospitality industry in the US today?
00:03:15
- We're still waiting for the 2004 numbers.
00:03:16
I think the last that I saw was roughly 16.8 million, or so, that was 2023.
00:03:23
It's about the pre-COVID levels.
00:03:26
- It is.
00:03:26
- Yeah.
00:03:27
Yeah, now 2024, we saw things kind of start leveling out, normalizing in 2023, definitely had the spike.
00:03:34
So it's kind of interesting.
00:03:35
We're waiting to see what's coming out, but early predictions that I've seen and heard, as said that 2025, it's going to surpass pre-COVID levels.
00:03:43
- To what do you attribute that?
00:03:44
- I kind of say 2024 is a normalization, where restaurants kind of started focusing more on growth versus just recovery.
00:03:51
A lot of the projects that were delayed, a lot of new projects, different ways that businesses are collaborating and looking at projects.
00:03:58
Cities that have more opportunity now for various reasons and talent that have relocated there.
00:04:03
So you're seeing different metro areas kind of grow at a faster pace.
00:04:08
And you're seeing kind of, as I mentioned, more of these collaboration of lifestyles, whether it's hotels that are intentionally seeking collaborations with restrooms and that causes a growth and expansion into different cities.
00:04:18
So lots of different things, very exciting.
00:04:20
And then non-traditional businesses that are looking for more hospitality-related services to incorporate into their offerings.
00:04:28
- You mentioned some cities are doing better than others right now.
00:04:31
What are the hottest cities right now in terms of restaurants and hiring?
00:04:35
- I always put the caveat as a culinary agent's data, and we are larger and stronger in certain metro areas and others, but top 10 for us are New York, New York, of course, New York City,
00:04:45
Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, Boston, and Atlanta are top 10.
00:04:53
- So if you were just starting out today or restarting your career, where would you move?
00:04:59
- That is a tough meet personally.
00:05:01
Well, my advice to others would be, if you are considering moving to another area or you're open to relocation, I think it's worth taking a step back and thinking about where you want your career to take you,
00:05:14
who do you want to work with, what businesses excite you, what do you want to learn?
00:05:18
And I think a lot of that has also to be coupled with where you and your life, what are your priorities?
00:05:23
I think one of the things that became very apparent post-COVID is that people's priorities shift in.
00:05:30
And if you remain in this industry and you realize that this is a career path, you realize that there are a lot of different ways and directions you could go, but also, what do you need?
00:05:38
If, you know, finding a job for financial reasons is your top, top, top priority.
00:05:42
Okay, great, you know, this industry is great for that.
00:05:45
Look for those types of employers and opportunities.
00:05:48
If you're looking for a longer term, career and you want to learn from certain individuals or you want to gain some experiences, seek out how you can get those.
00:05:58
And if you're willing to relocate, you will find that opportunities in a variety of different metro areas are both lucrative and can be very rewarding.
00:06:07
- We're gonna talk more about that because you mentioned lucrative.
00:06:10
That wasn't always a word associated with kitchen jobs.
00:06:13
- Yeah.
00:06:14
- And career pathing is something that's very important to culinary agents.
00:06:17
I noticed that from digging around your website, you have this really great feature that you've got folks like Avery, Ruzika, you're even on there and it shows people's career paths and it's so interesting to see that.
00:06:29
- Yeah, and, well, I could talk about this for the entire show, you know, from the very beginning when we started, it became really obvious that, you know, when you showed people how they got to where they were and advice,
00:06:40
that would not only inspire people, it would motivate them and it would give them sometimes new hope that they can think about things differently or they could have a longer term career and or the skills that they were learning now and the time and effort they were putting in now could absolutely benefit them in a variety of different ways later on.
00:06:57
We've always known that this industry just offers so many different types of opportunities.
00:07:02
It's also a place where people can stop by, do it on the side or make it their long term with a hospitality career paths.
00:07:10
We always had a section within culinary agents that showed people's career timelines and advice and kind of called it virtual mentorship and shared it freely and people really loved that content.
00:07:20
And late last year, we decided that that platform needed to shine on its own.
00:07:25
So we actually created hospitalitycareer paths.com and coupled it with data from culinary agents around pay and benefits.
00:07:33
Think of it as a career platform to help people just search fine data, understand earning potential required skills.
00:07:41
I really just have the tools that they need to map out their career paths or at least see what their potential is so they can make decisions for themselves.
00:07:49
You mentioned opportunities.
00:07:51
What are the most in-demand jobs?
00:07:53
Well, right now, based upon culinary agents data we're ramping up for spring hiring.
00:07:58
Positions for back-of-house, for example, have always been pretty consistently in line cooks, two chef, dishwasher, or the top three closely followed by prep cook and executive chef.
00:08:08
Given the name culinary agents, we definitely started focused on back-of-house, but front-of-house really is half of our audience in our talent pool.
00:08:16
And so for front-of-house, server, host, and general manager tend to continuously be the top three, but restaurant-specific roles perform very well on the site.
00:08:27
Has that changed over the years or have those been the consistent top jobs?
00:08:31
I would say different permutations of it, so if you want to call it a shift to party, you want to call it a prep cook, or they're different words, and that's why we're unique in the way we map things,
00:08:42
and we match things.
00:08:43
And those nuances get folded into our algorithms because we're dedicated to this industry.
00:08:49
You mentioned back-of-house and front-of-house culinary agents to the survey last year on the most requested skills for back-of-house and front-of-house jobs.
00:08:56
What did you find?
00:08:58
Well, first, it wasn't really a survey.
00:09:00
We actually gathered our own data and surveyed ourselves, if you will, and aggregated it, because we A thought it would be revealing.
00:09:07
And B, I think we've been talking for a long time, but we're seeing not just this industry focus on more skills-based hiring and helping people understand where there's skills that you need to obtain in order to progress in your career or to get that job that you want.
00:09:22
And again, in the spirit of sharing information and making sure people have what they need to get to the next step.
00:09:28
Back-of-house, the top skill that people requested from a business environment was communication, actually.
00:09:34
Communication, second was cleanings, and organizational skills, closely followed by things like teamwork and basic standing for long periods of time, believe it or not, is a skill that people put in job descriptions and then food prep customer service time management.
00:09:48
Communication was number one.
00:09:49
Number one.
00:09:50
Number one for back-of-house.
00:09:51
Why do you think that is?
00:09:53
I mean, anyone who's watched the bear knows or who's worked back-of-house.
00:09:56
Yeah, I mean, and I think communication comes in many different forms.
00:10:01
It's probably because of a variety of things.
00:10:04
You need to work in high-pressure environments, in dangerous environments, in order to have good teaming and kind of get all on the same page.
00:10:13
You need to be able to communicate.
00:10:15
How important is college or culinary school when it comes to a career in the restaurant industry?
00:10:20
I feel like this question has been a long-divated question from 10, 15, 20 years ago.
00:10:25
You've come up on the podcast quite often.
00:10:27
Yeah, and you think that the answer remains to be relatively the same.
00:10:32
It depends on the position.
00:10:33
If you say back-of-house and you talk to chefs and not a chef by trade, I love to cook though.
00:10:38
A lot of them will say, you know, get some experience.
00:10:41
And culinary school definitely will give you foundation and it's great and you can also build a network as well.
00:10:48
However, before some people I've heard say, before you make that commitment, go work in a kitchen or do something, you know, get some experience and see if that's something you really want to do and something you really enjoy and love.
00:10:59
I've heard that once that happens, sometimes you just keep cooking.
00:11:03
You know, a lot of kitchens will value experience, working experience, as well as culinary school and race versa.
00:11:11
So I think with that, it depends.
00:11:13
I think the focus is more on, is this something you really want to do before you spend time and money and energy to dedicate to it?
00:11:19
And then the next question is your personal situation.
00:11:22
If culinary school is not in the cards for you and you know it's something that you loving you want to do, find a kitchen, work for someone, work for a team, get in there and it goes back to also being intentional with finding an employer or people that you want to learn from and just going for it.
00:11:40
Front of house, you know, I think it has different approaches.
00:11:43
You definitely have seen successful folks come out from Cornell and in a lot of schools it have hospitality programs.
00:11:50
More schools have also started including hospitality programs in the curriculum.
00:11:54
I can't personally say whether or not school is the ultimate deciding factor as to if you're successful or not.
00:12:01
I think it definitely comes down to the individual, their work ethic, their ability to communicate and build that career for themselves.
00:12:08
So in that I think can be applied to many other industries as well.
00:12:13
Are the higher end restaurants looking for culinary school?
00:12:16
You know, I think it depends.
00:12:18
I think definitely culinary school can be a feeder, you know, relationships and career affairs, etc.
00:12:23
Coming out of there, there's an expectation that a certain level of learning has been applied and sometimes that is a predetermination of that person's going to be able to catch on and be able to be successful in that kitchen early on.
00:12:38
So it's really at the benefit of both sides.
00:12:41
You know, you don't want the individual to not be prepared coming in.
00:12:45
That could potentially hinder the development and the progress of other people in the kitchen so because everyone's working so closely, it could have a ripple effect.
00:12:53
I think more enhanced kitchens factor that in.
00:12:56
It's like, what is the impact on the broader team?
00:12:59
And if an individual seemingly has already, you know, a good baseline of skills and understanding that the assumption is that they'll come in and be able to pick up things a little quicker.
00:13:11
If you want to make money in this industry, where should you work and what should you do?
00:13:15
This is a loaded question.
00:13:17
You know, as I came out of my mouth, I was like, yeah, it's not that simple a question.
00:13:20
But people want to know that.
00:13:21
Yeah, you know, that has kept some people out of careers in hospitality and restaurants thinking they'll never make money.
00:13:28
Absolutely, and I don't think I know.
00:13:29
I know that's why we wanted to intentionally break out hospitality career paths and put this data in the hands of talent and businesses, right?
00:13:39
Because businesses are constantly asking as well because they believe or not also want to be competitive and they want to do what's best for candidates.
00:13:45
Well, so I'm going to say it depends initially.
00:13:48
It depends on what you want to do.
00:13:51
If you're looking at, for example, front of house, it also depends on where you are in your life.
00:13:56
Again, one of the, I think, complex, wonderful things about this industry is that it's really there's something for everyone.
00:14:02
If your situation is you're here for now because it's a flexible workplace and you can make money and all you want to focus on is making money, then typically depending on where you are, you find the busy restaurant that has the regulars and get a serving position or a tip to position that you have the potential for upside or you work in an organization that has,
00:14:24
you know, potential bonus structure or ways that you can make more, dare I say, quickly, but have the upside that some other positions may not.
00:14:33
If you know that this is a long term for you or you've been it for a while and you've determined to kind of build your career, you want to open a restaurant, you want to work for a larger corporation and be a leader,
00:14:44
et cetera, then you need to work back and figure out how you get there.
00:14:49
There's a little bit of this understanding that one has to have with themselves that you put in the work now and you can reap the benefits later.
00:14:56
- Didn't Thomas Keller start out as a dishwasher?
00:14:59
- Yeah, and many people started out as, you know, I just interviewed Gavin Case and caught up with him last weekend and he started out at Subway, making sandwiches.
00:15:07
You know, I started at IBM in the mail room.
00:15:09
There is something to be said about putting in the time when you are, and you don't want to say younger when you're starting out, no matter what age you're in because that time is going to benefit you down the road.
00:15:23
Oftentimes when you look at leaders and they're able to do simple things whether it's spend some extra time with their family, go see their center daughters in a soccer game.
00:15:34
You know, it's easy to say, well, you know, they're the owner, they're the so-and-so, of course they can go.
00:15:39
But it took them a lot to get there and they paid their dues most of the time if not all of the time.
00:15:45
And so my kind of long-winded indirect way for answering that question is if your goal is to make money now in this industry.
00:15:54
The jobs to look for the ones that have upside and that you have the ability to make more than just whatever the hourly wages and finding a busy restaurant and crushing it as an individual,
00:16:07
working really hard and really working that job is a path to that.
00:16:12
If you're looking for longer-term success and you're like, how do I make money in this career, there are many ways to do that.
00:16:19
And you're seeing, you know, we gave a lot of examples of leaders that once you get to a certain point, more opportunities open up.
00:16:27
And I think consistently what we hear is along the way the journey, right, you work hard, you're a nice person, you build your network, you give back and those things come back to you tenfold.
00:16:39
You mentioned bonuses.
00:16:41
In the past, it was really rare for restaurants to offer health insurance or benefit packages or bonuses of any kind.
00:16:47
But I understand that's changing for the better.
00:16:50
Do you have to work for a big restaurant group to get benefits or are smaller independent restaurants offering them to today?
00:16:57
Yeah, one of the trends we saw when we started looking at data from 2019 to 2023 was that more independent restaurants and smaller restaurant groups were offering benefits.
00:17:07
Now, it may not be the full benefits package.
00:17:10
What we saw was just this intention to offer more.
00:17:13
And if it was certain benefits, maybe it was, you know, after a certain number of days because benefits are very expensive to offer, especially for a small business.
00:17:22
If they couldn't offer things, they were offering other perks, whether it be flexible time, additional pay time off, sick days, here and there kind of offering what they could.
00:17:33
That was something that we hadn't seen a very conscious effort in in the past.
00:17:38
Maybe it was happening, it wasn't getting reported to us.
00:17:40
And we intentionally put benefits sections into culinary agents for jobs.
00:17:45
Because that's a way an employer can set themselves apart.
00:17:48
If you're not a huge employer, and you can't offer these things, like, what can you offer?
00:17:52
How can you set yourself apart?
00:17:54
Because not everyone's looking to work for, you know, those big employers and not everyone has the top priority to have benefits, right?
00:18:02
So it's more of what can you offer and what you're doing and a lot of people recognize the effort.
00:18:07
And they'll make decisions for themselves based upon what they need and what their priority is.
00:18:13
You launched culinary agents in October 2012.
00:18:16
What is the biggest change you've seen in the 12, almost 13 years you've been in business?
00:18:21
Wow.
00:18:22
So many changes.
00:18:23
I'd like to say that the biggest changes we are seeing many more intentional career folks in the industry,
00:18:34
the level of professionalism across many different positions, even across the conversations that individuals have talking about how their parents love to go out to restaurants and they're so proud that,
00:18:48
you know, someone so works at this place.
00:18:50
You feel like those simple conversations really are indicators of just, I think, the overall food seems shaping more of lifestyle in culture and understanding.
00:19:00
And the more of that that we have and the more data that's available, the more people can make decisions for themselves as to whether this is for them or not and be able to kind of explain it to those who they may or may not need to explain it to.
00:19:14
So just a professional evolution of the industry.
00:19:17
Oh, that's great to hear.
00:19:18
What are some of the pivots that the company has had to make in response to current events, economic conditions, the pandemic, etc.
00:19:27
Well, exactly, exactly.
00:19:28
Well, I am so proud to say we've actually never pivoted as a company.
00:19:34
We've never changed our mission.
00:19:35
We've always been here to support the hospitality industry to help people in their careers.
00:19:41
And it started out as, you know, more of a job board that evolved into a full-blown applicant shocking and job marketing platform for businesses and a tool for talent for finding jobs and communicating with employers and discovering careers.
00:19:56
As far as that from beginning to now, we are still, you know, full-force focus.
00:20:01
Along the way, of course, we've had to continue to kind of evolve based upon the needs of the industry.
00:20:06
The most obvious one would be the pandemic where we immediately shifted to just focusing on resources to help people, everyone, we were getting questions from every direction and, as you know,
00:20:16
at that time, information was like dribbling down in different directions and everyone was kind of in weight mode.
00:20:23
But we knew that the industry would need us in many different ways on the other side of it.
00:20:29
So we were also simultaneously thinking about what are the things that could help the industry get back as quickly as possible?
00:20:36
'Cause we knew that everyone would be reopening it basically at the same time.
00:20:40
Well, we just-- - I don't know.
00:20:41
I wasn't full on-- I mean, New York, it was so tough here in New York.
00:20:43
I was in full on panic mode for a long time.
00:20:46
- Yes, I am a strong believer of willing it to happen.
00:20:49
I was like, we will open, everyone will open.
00:20:53
I couldn't tell you when that would be.
00:20:55
But they weren't gonna keep everyone closed forever.
00:20:58
And so, you know, the thinking was, if and when that happens, what are businesses going to need?
00:21:04
Because they're all gonna need it kind of at the same time.
00:21:07
Even though it varied by city, the city, like New York City, was once information got communicated, everybody started planning on.
00:21:15
And, of course, there were things that were still happening during the pandemic.
00:21:18
So, very proud of the team.
00:21:20
We shifted, we mobilized, and we were there for everyone to help them back.
00:21:25
And in 2022, '23, we definitely saw a big spike as everyone was trying to reopen and figure out what their kind of new normal kind of hate saying that.
00:21:33
But those are two words that kind of-- - It doesn't fly.
00:21:36
- Yeah, exactly.
00:21:36
And then in 2024 is really when we saw people shift their thinking to focusing on growth rather than just survival and recovery.
00:21:44
And, you know, obviously, I don't wanna just paint rainbows and unicorns that there are a lot of tough decisions that were made.
00:21:51
There are businesses that needed to reconset or close on their partnerships that never realized or projects that got changed.
00:21:58
And it seemed a lot of those kind of normalized in 2024 and the focus really was like, what's next?
00:22:05
- The restaurant industry in general has been a welcoming place to immigrants.
00:22:08
You know that.
00:22:09
Those here legally and illegally.
00:22:12
What do you think the effect will be of ice raids and anti-immigration sentiment in the White House?
00:22:17
I'm curious how this will impact restaurants.
00:22:20
Are executives talking-- I know you're very close to a lot of people in the industry.
00:22:23
Are they talking to you about this?
00:22:25
- Yeah, you know, this is definitely a big, big, heavy topic.
00:22:30
You know, immigrants are such a huge part of the hospitality working population in industry.
00:22:38
Everyone says they're the backbone of the restaurant industry, but I think even that underestimates their role.
00:22:43
- Absolutely, and it goes beyond that.
00:22:44
And I think where the ripple effects that are going to be felt by everyone more, you know, more aggressively are, you know, in the agricultural sector and other parts.
00:22:55
So I think that ripple effect is also going to affect restaurants as well.
00:22:58
You know, I think it remains to be seen.
00:23:00
I think businesses have always been very cognizant about how to make sure they're following the practices and their laws and everything and protecting themselves and their teams.
00:23:10
I think as roles and regulations and laws kind of change and evolve, it's kind of unpredictable right now, there will be people-- everyone will feel the effects of this and the ripple effects of this,
00:23:21
unfortunately.
00:23:22
All right, I want to talk about you and your career.
00:23:25
What was your first restaurant job?
00:23:27
- My first food-related job was at everything yogurt.
00:23:30
In the food court at the nannuent moment.
00:23:33
- Oh my god, everything yogurt.
00:23:34
I remember everything yogurt.
00:23:36
They don't exist anymore.
00:23:37
- They don't do that.
00:23:37
- No, they don't.
00:23:38
Everything yogurt.
00:23:39
I was so excited when I perfected my swirl.
00:23:41
It's like a technical twist of the wrist.
00:23:44
But yeah, that was $5 and 15 cents an hour.
00:23:48
- It's amazing that you remember that.
00:23:51
- Yeah.
00:23:52
- And it was a food court.
00:23:53
Food court in the nannuent mall.
00:23:54
And I worked there for about a year, I would say, when I was 14, 15, whenever I got my work permit.
00:24:00
- Yeah, you were like me.
00:24:01
The second you could get your work papers, got those and I just start getting jobs left and right.
00:24:06
- That's right.
00:24:07
- How about restaurants?
00:24:08
'Cause you did go on to work in restaurants.
00:24:09
- I did, I did.
00:24:10
I did restaurants and retail.
00:24:12
I was working three or four jobs simultaneously.
00:24:14
My next food and beverage job was at La Masonette, which is a restaurant in the Pro River Hilton, which was a kind of privately owned Hilton.
00:24:23
That was up in a hill in Pro River.
00:24:25
They worked in the restaurant.
00:24:26
I was on brunch duty every Sunday.
00:24:30
Clocking in at five a.m.
00:24:31
- You did brunch.
00:24:32
- Oh, five a.m.
00:24:33
I did brunch and events.
00:24:35
Every holiday, I helped out.
00:24:37
I was on the busing and the hostess side.
00:24:39
I'm cashier and kind of helped out with serving and food prep when there were no shows.
00:24:44
Got to do a little bit of everything and I loved that.
00:24:47
And I simultaneously worked with a catering company.
00:24:49
I was a home waitress.
00:24:51
So the catering company would get their orders and they would say, would you like, you know, a server to come to your house?
00:24:56
And I did that.
00:24:57
That was very lucrative actually.
00:24:59
So they would kind of deploy me.
00:25:00
I would do two or three parties a weekend and, you know, you're in high school and you kind of, you're playing softball against somebody and now you're working there in a graduation party.
00:25:08
You're like, uh, but it was great.
00:25:11
It was great.
00:25:12
I loved it.
00:25:13
I enjoyed making my own money.
00:25:16
I loved serving.
00:25:17
I liked that rush of just making people happy while they were enjoying themselves.
00:25:21
- You made money in a built character.
00:25:23
- That's right.
00:25:24
- You were going to be a professional musician, but wound up at FIT, the Fashion Institute of Technology here in New York City.
00:25:30
I actually finished my degree at FIT.
00:25:33
What kind of musician and why the Pivot to Fashion?
00:25:36
- I started violin when I was three.
00:25:38
My parents were both musically inclined but neither of them pursued music.
00:25:42
So they kind of put that on me.
00:25:44
I played violin for a while then I started the piano and then actually my mom was really big on me becoming a musician.
00:25:51
So I kind of didn't love violin or piano but I kept on doing it and she passed when I was 10.
00:25:57
I chose to switch to flute because that was an instrument that I liked and I wanted to continue with music and because of my training I actually picked that up pretty quickly and was going to be doing that for the longer term.
00:26:11
I kind of got to a later stages.
00:26:13
I did all the all-state competitions and everything and it was great and I was teaching and I was like this is just not for me.
00:26:21
I was going to go on a scholarship somewhere and I decided very late that wasn't for me and I said I'm just going to move to Manhattan and work because I wanted to get started.
00:26:30
I've always been kind of a worker and I wanted to get into advertising.
00:26:34
FIT is a SUNY and they had a communications program.
00:26:39
So I actually got into the communications program and FIT and needed to pay rent.
00:26:43
So I got a temp job in the mail room at IBM.
00:26:46
- Okay, we've got a lot to unpack.
00:26:48
So okay, so first things she said, SUNY State University of New York, the great SUNY system which we both benefited from.
00:26:54
But I just want to say I'm so sorry lost your mom at such a young age.
00:26:57
- Thank you.
00:26:58
Was it hard for you to move away from pursuing music professionally because you knew that was one of hard dreams?
00:27:03
- Yeah, it was a combination of, I've never been a great test taker and like a studious person.
00:27:11
And so somewhere along the line decided that, well this would be a great way for me to continue and get into a great school, which was another strong push from both my parents.
00:27:20
You know, they immigrated here and we didn't have much and they said you have to have a good education and however you get there is up to you, right?
00:27:29
So I was like, oh great, I can get into a great school, via scholarship, playing the flute and piccolo but I didn't want to play the flute and piccolo.
00:27:38
And I think it really hit me when I was doing these auditions at all these great schools and I was looking at the requirements.
00:27:44
And I got pretty far with one of the schools and they're like, well, you have to major in flute performance and minor in flute theory and like music theory.
00:27:52
And you have to be in the marching band, you know, which is your round and I'm like, I don't want to do this.
00:27:59
And you know, I think that's one of the things that I often say to other people is like, you had to take a step back and say, where do you see yourself five years from now?
00:28:05
What do you actually want to do?
00:28:07
And it's okay to be like, I don't know, but I feel like in that I don't know, you usually know what you don't want to do.
00:28:13
And so for me, I actually felt really strongly about being an advertising and I wanted to work in that.
00:28:20
I felt that starting a school with a music scholarship would have set me back and I would have had to start over.
00:28:25
And I've always been a very impatient person.
00:28:27
So I was like, no, I'd rather go faster.
00:28:29
And I graduated college three years while I was working full-time at IBM, you know, continued my path down IBM because it was teaching me more than school was.
00:28:39
- So was FIT more about communications and advertising versus fashion?
00:28:43
- Yeah, yeah.
00:28:44
'Cause you are a fashion girl, everybody who meets you knows you are a fashion girl.
00:28:49
- Yeah, you know, it's definitely something that I enjoy.
00:28:51
Just like cooking and food.
00:28:53
The communications portion of the show is definitely what drew me more into it and the fact that all the major advertising firms were here and back then I really wanted to be close to them and see how I could get my foot in the door.
00:29:05
- So IBM is not the first thing people think of when they think of advertising and communications, right?
00:29:10
But you got a job in the mail room.
00:29:12
- Yeah.
00:29:12
- And that was to pay the bills.
00:29:14
But you stayed for almost 13 years.
00:29:17
- I did, I did.
00:29:18
So I really wanted to work at Ogville, you may there.
00:29:20
I tried to get my foot in the door there and I couldn't, the HR person there gave me some really sound direct advice and was basically like, you're up against Harvard grads who are willing to make this very low salary because they're subsidized and,
00:29:35
you know, by the parents or whatever, you know, you're not a Harvard grad.
00:29:40
So try elsewhere.
00:29:41
And I said thank you and I moved on and at that time IBM was one of Ogville, may there's biggest clients.
00:29:48
And so I said, let me just get them on my resume and then go back and say, well, I have client knowledge, I have unique, whatever.
00:29:55
And maybe that'll help me get in.
00:29:57
Getting the mail room, temp job was to get my foot in the door and was the only thing available and I needed to fit into my school schedule 'cause I was on a school full time.
00:30:05
After a couple of months, I got actually offered a full time job as an assistant as a secretary.
00:30:09
I was running that mail.
00:30:11
I will tell you, I was running that mail up and down the aisles and people noticed.
00:30:15
I was helping out wherever I could, all the assistants, you know, back then were actually putting together binders for proposals.
00:30:22
The manager of the assistants took notice and ordered me a job.
00:30:26
And I went full time on 57th and Madison covering the sports, marketing, and advertising division.
00:30:33
So I supported the executives and that was awesome because I got to see all the projects of that time, I'm gonna date myself at that time.
00:30:41
It was ebus and this was like 1999.
00:30:43
And so I was seeing all these companies trying to figure out how to figure out the internet, how to get their businesses online.
00:30:50
What is e-commerce?
00:30:51
How do you set that up?
00:30:53
And so it just opened my eyes up to technology enabling, you know, transformation of huge industries already.
00:31:00
And that led me one thing to another.
00:31:02
You know, you work hard, you pay your dues.
00:31:04
I got noticed and I got pulled into a startup within the company called Digital Media, which was focused on the future of unstructured content.
00:31:12
And that really, that took me to the West Coast.
00:31:14
That took me working with all these different startups, Netflix included.
00:31:18
And here we are.
00:31:20
- So interesting.
00:31:21
Now I have a better understanding of why you are so interested in career pathing.
00:31:24
- Yes.
00:31:25
- Yeah, you are.
00:31:26
- That was a good example.
00:31:27
- I'm gonna double tap into that because that has a lot to do with culinary agents is that while I was at IBM, because of the way I started, I was an anomaly for them.
00:31:36
I left there one of the youngest executives worldwide after 13 years, which was very rare because back then, it was known that you spent 20, 30 plus years and you navigated your way and you relied on others to pluck you out and say you're ready for this next thing.
00:31:52
They started to struggle with recruiting young talent 'cause it was kind of at that time where the millennials were like, I don't wanna stay.
00:31:58
I wanna jump around and stuff like that.
00:32:00
And so I was very intentional with forging my own path within the company.
00:32:05
And I spent a lot of time mentoring others, not just young, but people that were kind of struggling through navigating it.
00:32:11
One of my mentors there, one thing he told me early on was find the person that has the job that you want and figure out how they got there.
00:32:20
Work your way back, figure out what experiences and skills they needed to get there, work on yourself.
00:32:26
And I was like, okay, write that down.
00:32:29
- Yeah, you really carved your own path within the company.
00:32:34
- Yeah, I knew that I really wanted operations experience.
00:32:38
I really wanted sales experience, like direct sales experience.
00:32:42
I wasn't a technical person by trade.
00:32:44
I really wanted to understand how to be a technical liaison, which is what ended up being, when I was at Netflix, working with clients, understand what their business goals and objectives and what they wanted to do.
00:32:55
And then taking that information and gathering the right technical and consulting resources to bring to the table.
00:33:02
And that enabled me to be able to build culinary agents initially by just some PowerPoints and some instructional bullets in being able to do that.
00:33:13
When did you have the idea for culinary agents?
00:33:16
- I had the idea probably six to seven years before I actually started it.
00:33:22
I was here working at IBM, doing my thing.
00:33:25
One of my best friends who I met the days when I was working in retail, he was doing his, I think, his externship at the time at Le Cirque all day.
00:33:34
The bus would drop him off at the mall and he would do inventory at the non-Republic at night.
00:33:39
And we became friends and we would also, he became like my eating buddy because I would save up all my money and then we'd go eat somewhere.
00:33:45
I naturally started helping him and some of his friends with resume writing and just opportunities.
00:33:51
I had the thought I was like, oh, I'm kind of need something more than this.
00:33:55
And then when I transferred out West and LinkedIn came onto the scene, I was like, this is brilliant.
00:33:59
And I used LinkedIn on the professional side at IBM and it was one of their early users.
00:34:05
And so I saw it evolve.
00:34:07
I became friendly with hospitality folks on the West Coast as well.
00:34:09
I feel like you just, I gravitate to, I'd love the people, the industry and I realized that everyone was kind of complaining about the same thing.
00:34:16
The talent we're on Craigslist post shift, kind of just scrolling through garbage and stuff that was all mishmash together.
00:34:25
And businesses just dreaded having to post on there and receiving like a ton of emails that didn't make sense.
00:34:32
And I said, there needs to be something that's more like LinkedIn meets match.com for jobs, but really specific to this industry 'cause there's so many nuances.
00:34:38
And at the time, I was like, oh, somebody else will figure it out.
00:34:42
And then I kept on doing my thing.
00:34:44
I went back East, I took a global role, traveled for about three years to many different countries.
00:34:51
You know, I was talking again to my friends and they're like, no, it's still not here.
00:34:54
You should just build it.
00:34:56
Did you start working on it before you left IBM?
00:34:58
I don't know if you're allowed to say.
00:34:59
(laughing)
00:35:01
IBM people cover your ears.
00:35:02
Yes, yes, I did.
00:35:05
Yeah, I did.
00:35:06
But, you know, I will say back then, first of all, I was working like 80 to 100 hours for IBM.
00:35:12
So I have no qualms saying that I spent the little time that I had for myself working on this.
00:35:17
But I will say back then, also there was no Wi-Fi on airplanes, especially long haul flights.
00:35:23
And I traveled a lot.
00:35:25
And so you're on a 17 hour flight, 20 hour flight, what are you gonna do?
00:35:29
And I'd be there on my doing PowerPoint, drawing notes and stuff like that.
00:35:34
Only so many movies you can watch.
00:35:35
Yeah, exactly.
00:35:37
Yeah, I didn't have a backup plan.
00:35:40
Like I didn't have a safety net, so I had to be working.
00:35:43
And I spent all of my personal money to build culinary agents, including cashing out my 401k.
00:35:49
Oh my God, we have so much in common.
00:35:51
SUNY kids work in the second we could happy making our own money.
00:35:55
And I did the same.
00:35:56
I fully broke into my 401k's to do chair bomb.
00:35:59
You do what you need to do.
00:36:00
And like I said, things pay off.
00:36:03
Things work itself out.
00:36:06
That is true.
00:36:07
You only raised money once in 2015.
00:36:09
I'm curious how that experience was.
00:36:12
I did raise my series A in 2015.
00:36:14
That was the last time I raised money.
00:36:16
When I started out, after I kind of burned through my own stuff, you have to prove that there's something here.
00:36:22
You need something, obviously, to pitch to investors and raised a small friends and family to get me to a point where at a working, it was working.
00:36:30
And I had customers.
00:36:31
We were working with some of our initial groups-- Danielle Balloude, Danny Meyer, Thomas Keller, so fortunate, and those who clearly were feeling-- I would say more of the brunt of needing to sift through hundreds,
00:36:44
thousands of resumes from a tool like Craigslist and still not getting really what they were looking for.
00:36:50
And it was working.
00:36:51
But we clearly needed outside capital.
00:36:54
And so I did that smile and dial.
00:36:56
I went to conferences and smile and dial and never heard that.
00:37:00
I think it took about 100 meetings to raise my first seed round, official seed round.
00:37:06
And-- So humbling.
00:37:08
Yeah.
00:37:09
And things are different now, which I'm glad.
00:37:11
But I'm also glad of how things worked out for us.
00:37:15
After that, we raised a little seed extension and then in A.
00:37:19
It's interesting.
00:37:19
That could be a whole other conversation fundraising, as you very well know.
00:37:23
Fundraising as a female founder and female founder minority has other complexities.
00:37:29
But regardless, fundraising is difficult.
00:37:31
It doesn't matter.
00:37:32
And we were fortunate.
00:37:33
You need one.
00:37:34
You need one.
00:37:36
Can you say who some of your investors are?
00:37:38
Yeah, RRE, which is a very well-respected work fintech-focused fund, led our seed round back in the day.
00:37:45
And female founder's fund was also in my first official seed round, and there's still one or portfolio today.
00:37:52
It's really that extra kind of confirmation, validation, if you will, from institutional money that really gives you kind of that extra nudge.
00:38:02
But then that kind of sets the stage for the next phase.
00:38:05
And if you get into the venture cycle, traditionally, you raise money, you grow at all costs.
00:38:12
You raise more money at a higher valuation.
00:38:14
And so on and so forth until you have some sort of an exit.
00:38:17
So in the beginning, it's a very intense-- it's always intense.
00:38:20
But it's on top of trying to build the company and build your team and service customers and build the product.
00:38:26
It's a lot.
00:38:27
I'm preaching to the choir.
00:38:29
At some point, we reached a decision where we were up against people raising money that were in hospitality, but they were in delivery, and they were in a totally,
00:38:40
totally different area.
00:38:41
But we were fighting for the same dollar from the same investors.
00:38:44
And investors who were wanting to get into-- I'm doing air quotes, food tech-- were primarily interested in delivery companies and that whole space,
00:38:54
which is totally understandable, versus a tool that was focused on HR and recruiting and helping people with careers in hospitality.
00:39:04
And I had many different things said to me over the years.
00:39:08
And everything made me stronger and more determined.
00:39:11
We're very proud of where we are today.
00:39:13
It's definitely-- we were fortunate to be able to focus double down on the company, make decisions that businesses make to have a sustainable business growing forward and investing back in ourselves and growing.
00:39:25
And this is going to be a really big year for us.
00:39:28
So tell us what's next for culinary agents.
00:39:31
Well, I've mentioned that we launched HospitalityCrewPas.com in November of last year, which was very exciting.
00:39:37
Next month-- and you've heard it here first.
00:39:40
I haven't told anybody yet.
00:39:41
Next month, we'll be launching our podcast.
00:39:43
Oh, exciting.
00:39:45
Are you hosting it?
00:39:45
I am.
00:39:46
Very cool.
00:39:47
And we're going to have to have you on.
00:39:47
It's called hospitality on the rise, focused on career paths.
00:39:52
So we just have leaders from the industry come and talk about themselves, which is great.
00:39:57
I'm just there to prompt them how they got to where they are, advice that they learned along the way, and really, really fortifying these examples of how people have done it.
00:40:06
And no two paths are identical.
00:40:09
And if you want to make it and you determine, the building blocks are kind of similar across the way, no matter what path.
00:40:16
Right.
00:40:17
Today, culinary agents has been referred to as the LinkedIn of culinary professionals.
00:40:21
How can folks interact with your platform?
00:40:24
culinaryagents.com.
00:40:26
It is free to create your profile.
00:40:29
If you're looking for a job, if you are looking for just information data, you want to do some research.
00:40:34
You want to connect with employers.
00:40:36
If you are hiring, you can create your free business profile, build up your employer brand, and post jobs, and have an applicant tracking system for free,
00:40:47
and only pay if you need to advertise.
00:40:49
So we have really spent the better part of last year rounding out a lot of our technical product stuff.
00:40:56
I don't want to say boring stuff.
00:40:57
I mean, it's super exciting to me, but may not be as exciting for other people.
00:41:00
And that was really important because we wanted to really make the tool available to everyone, not just businesses who had the budgets, businesses, who may not need certain things.
00:41:11
So it's a flexible system that really is for everyone.
00:41:14
And now we're doubling down on the people side on sharing these stories and making sure that the professionalism continues to develop and grow, and that the information gets shared with the aspiring and existing workers that there's a lot of different things for you.
00:41:31
If you decide that this industry is not for you, that's also OK.
00:41:35
Just know that whatever time and effort you've put into it, the skills that you've gained, they can apply to so many other industries.
00:41:42
So it's not for nothing.
00:41:44
And that's something that I found talking to thousands and thousands of talent over the years, is that-- I mean, it's tough.
00:41:51
And sometimes when you're in the grind, and you don't have time to lift your head up or you have that time, you don't want to do anymore.
00:41:58
It's easy to kind of get stuck a little bit.
00:42:00
And I think the thing that is obvious is that this industry is-- it's like the feeder of the working population in America.
00:42:08
So many people have spent some time in this industry in some way, shape, or form, whether that time was a little bit or a lot, the skills that you've gained,
00:42:18
whether it's communication, problem solving, cooking, whatever, can be applied to other industries.
00:42:24
And that is more true now than ever.
00:42:26
When I look at resumes, if I see that someone has food service experience, I will put that on the good pile because it says a lot about people.
00:42:35
Absolutely.
00:42:36
And their communication skills and their work ethic, all those things.
00:42:39
But I also think what you said is a good reminder that at the end of the day, this industry is all about people.
00:42:44
We might think it's about food and who's serving the best food, but it's really about people.
00:42:48
Absolutely.
00:42:50
OK, we've run out of time.
00:42:51
So we're just going to do one speed round question.
00:42:53
If you had to be trapped on a desert island with one food celebrity, who would it be, and why?
00:43:04
I know.
00:43:05
I know.
00:43:06
Good answer, good answer.
00:43:08
I think she just has this positive-- when you look at her, you just want to smile.
00:43:15
I definitely spent my fair share of watching her work back in the day.
00:43:21
I feel like she's just had that real energy, this hospitality kind of running through her veins, and just finds a joy in, at least that's-- I don't know her personally.
00:43:33
Maybe one day I'll meet her, but that's what I get.
00:43:35
And I feel like you can't take that.
00:43:38
And she hustled when she had the big book, "Cantessa."
00:43:40
Yes, yes.
00:43:41
Did you read her bio?
00:43:43
Not yet.
00:43:43
Not yet.
00:43:44
Or listen to it.
00:43:45
She narrates it.
00:43:45
Oh, perfect.
00:43:46
Even better.
00:43:47
Well, Ina's the bomb, and so are you, Alice.
00:43:49
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
00:43:51
Thank you for having me.
00:43:53
That's it for today's show.
00:43:54
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out past shows with superstars like Ina Garten and Caroline Chambers.
00:44:01
You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
00:44:04
Our theme song is by the band, Tra Lala.
00:44:07
Joseph Hazen is the studio engineer at Newstand Studios.
00:44:10
Our producers are Catherine Baker and Jenna Sadiu.
00:44:13
And our editorial coordinator is Sophie Kies.
00:44:16
Thanks for listening, everybody.
00:44:17
You're the bomb.
00:44:19
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