Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / How Rick Smilow Acquired Cooking School With a Cold Call and Grew The Institute of Culinary Education to a National Institution

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How Rick Smilow Acquired Cooking School With a Cold Call and Grew The Institute of Culinary Education to a National Institution · The Inspired Stories Podcast

• 0:04
  Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
• 0:08
  where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
• 0:11
  their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
• 0:14
  adversity. My name is Anthony Kotaspodi,
• 0:16
  and today's guest is Rick Smilo. Rick is the CEO and Chairman of
• 0:21
  the Institute of Culinary Education, better known as ICE.
• 0:26
  For more than 50 years, ICE has trained aspiring chefs and
• 0:29
  hospitality pros through hands on programs and culinary arts,
• 0:34
  pastry and baking, restaurant management and even health
• 0:37
  focused cooking. With campuses in both New York
• 0:41
  City and Los Angeles and flexible online options, the
• 0:45
  school now counts over 19,000 alumni working in kitchens
• 0:50
  around the world. Under Rick's guidance, ICE has
• 0:53
  been named Best Culinary School in America by USA TODAY and has
• 0:58
  seen faculty and graduates collect James Beard Awards.
• 1:02
  He himself serves on the board of Daniel Blude's The Next
• 1:06
  Restaurant Group, City Harvest, and the Careers Through Culinary
• 1:10
  Arts program, showing his commitment to industry
• 1:13
  excellence and food rescue efforts.
• 1:16
  Today we'll hear how he grew A vocational school into a global
• 1:20
  culinary community. But before we get into all that
• 1:24
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  To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at
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  AD MEC benefits.com. All right, back to our guest
• 2:09
  today, Chairman and CEO of Institute of Culinary Education,
• 2:13
  Rick Smilo. Thanks for making the time to
• 2:15
  Share your story today. Well, it's a pleasure to be
• 2:17
  here. So Rick, before we get into ICE,
• 2:22
  you've got an interesting work history.
• 2:24
  You started your career back in late 70s and early 80s and
• 2:28
  something that many people aren't familiar with today,
• 2:30
  print magazines, and you were on the sales and distribution side
• 2:33
  of things. Talk about how that work laid a
• 2:37
  foundation for you going forward.
• 2:40
  Well, yeah, to to put it in an overall concept that, you know,
• 2:43
  everybody thinks that I was a a chef or a restaurateur and
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  that's that's not the case. I would consider myself a a
• 2:51
  marketing guy. And when I went to Business
• 2:53
  School, my focus was on marketing and I always wanted to
• 2:57
  eventually become an entrepreneur.
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  But the first, yeah, my first job out of college was in, was
• 3:03
  in the magazine business, but not on the editorial side.
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  It was in advertising space sales back when there was no
• 3:11
  such thing as Internet advertising or social media
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  advertising. And I, I would, you know,
• 3:18
  there's a, a, a general adage. It's, it's something my late
• 3:23
  father said. It's like, it's always good to
• 3:25
  be in sales. When you, when you, when you
• 3:27
  spend time in sales early in your career, you learn how to
• 3:31
  listen to people, you learn how to be persuasive.
• 3:34
  And I, I think those skills serve someone forever.
• 3:39
  But a little bit of the to add to it, you say, well, why
• 3:43
  magazines? I think from an early age I
• 3:47
  recognized that I liked what we call content as a product, but I
• 3:52
  wanted to be on the business side of it.
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  And clearly magazines, you know, in the 70s and 80s and 90s and
• 4:00
  to this day are repositories of content.
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  And in a similar related way, a culinary school is a repository
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  of content. So the linkage between what I do
• 4:12
  now isn't so much that I was in advertising sales, but that they
• 4:16
  were both content businesses. OK, interesting.
• 4:20
  Let's continue to connect the dots because after that you went
• 4:23
  to MBA school and then you worked under the Nabisco Brands
• 4:27
  umbrella as a product manager for Fleischmann's, which among
• 4:31
  other things, made margarine, right?
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  Right, that was. Continue to connect the dots
• 4:37
  here. What What did you pick up in
• 4:38
  terms of work, knowledge and experience here?
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  I I picked up the idea that I hope I or nobody else I ever
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  meet or like has to go to a margarine tasting.
• 4:53
  OK, say more about that. Not a big fan.
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  I had I had gone to Northwestern Business School, Kellogg Kellogg
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  Business School at the time. It had a real reputation and and
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  sort of pipeline into the big Consumer Packaged Goods
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  companies and Nabisco, which was a freestanding company at the
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  time was one of those. And I I thought it would be good
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  for myself to have sort of a classic Consumer Packaged Goods
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  marketing job. And I mean, those sort of jobs
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  still exist. An interesting thing about that
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  is, is that as is, you know, if you're in the product management
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  team on Fleischmann's margarine, you know, you're not thinking
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  about Oreos or Fig Newtons or Jello pudding.
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  It's just that product. And you think about the product
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  from all sides. And in that way, it in a way is,
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  is good training for being an an entrepreneur.
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  You know, you're thinking about, you know, the packaging, how it
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  tastes, the advertising, the, you know, merchandising coupons,
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  you know, the, the distribution channels.
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  You don't, you're not in control of all of those things.
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  But it, it, it, it just has a particular product focus that I
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  think is good, good training for anything and, and including
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  being an entrepreneur. So not a fan of margarine that
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  you gained some good work experience there that I'm going
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  to guess you were able to leverage as you started your own
• 6:27
  pet food manufacturing. Company so and you know you can
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  at that point in my life, I, I was very my idea of of products
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  were physical products that you could hold in your hand.
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  I didn't think of services or education as a product as as I
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  now do. And yeah, I, I started a company
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  called Wagging Tail Limited and I was trying to be, to put it in
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  names you'd be more familiar with the Ben and Jerry's of dog
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  and cat snacks. I was also inspired by, you
• 7:02
  know, these brands that are, we don't think of them at all as
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  innovative anymore, But back, you know, in the late 80s and
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  90s, they were in things like Celestial seasonings tea and
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  smart food and Snapple, which were had sort of a, you know,
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  between the different flavors and the packaging.
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  They had a little bit more of a, a lifestyle type positioning and
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  to younger people today that wouldn't make any sense, but at
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  the time it did. So I was trying to do that with
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  pet snacks and IA good friend of mine joined me as a partner in
• 7:42
  the business and we did a lot of things right.
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  But we just the way I described is we picked the wrong products
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  because dog snacks dogs eat a lot and dog snacks are often
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  bought in bulk and cats don't eat very much.
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  And the of our of our two lines, the cat snacks did better.
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  And you know, at, at the point we were able to sell the
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  company, not for any great multiple or success, but it was
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  maybe the, the, the, the product called Jackie's cat snacks.
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  If there's anyone out there listening who remembers that
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  brand, I'll be please send me an e-mail.
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  But maybe we were in 2000 supermarkets, which sounds
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  pretty good, you know, and it was the, the, the better stop
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  and shops or Vons or Ralph's or Jewel, whatever city you're in.
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  The problem is that a loyal user would buy about a box a month
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  for $2.50, of which we made $0.30.
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  So even though I was a Kellogg MBA, maybe I hadn't done the
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  math. And you know, you, you when you
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  when a loyal customer is spending that little and you
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  compare that to Ben and Jerry's or Snapple or Smart Food, you
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  know it. It was just hard to make it much
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  of A business. And we were competing at the
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  time with cat snack products from Ralston, Purina, Quaker
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  Oats and Heinz. So it was, it was a big really.
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  Yeah, it was. It was amazing that we got as
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  far as we did it, but it was a, it was just a bad idea.
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  Do you think it was a bad idea or do you think it was ahead of
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  its time? Like I mean people loved and
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  doted on their pets back then but they do so a lot more now.
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  Like do you think that idea would have had more legs today?
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  Maybe, I don't know, I, I think the underlying math of being a,
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  you know, a a very small business, a start up in that
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  space wouldn't have worked out well.
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  I did get, you know, and the products were made by Co
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  Packers, you know, who would make smaller brands for, for
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  companies. And I remember getting the
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  advice from, you know, the owner of one of the Co Packers who, if
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  he was alive now would probably be 110 and he was giving me, you
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  know, grandfatherly advice. He said, Rick, you know, your
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  ideas. Interesting.
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  I admire entrepreneurs, but I think you should think about
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  main meal, pet food and higher quality.
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  And I've, I've heard of these brands called Science Diet and
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  IMS that are just just, you know, they're catching steam out
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  West and maybe, maybe there's more potential there.
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  And it, it just seemed more difficult and, you know, bulky
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  products. And so I, I really didn't go in
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  that direction. And of course, that's where in
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  terms of the pet food market, that's where the growth was.
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  I mean, it was, you know, there was a time when everything was
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  bought in it in, in old, old school, well, in supermarkets or
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  old school pet supply stores anyway.
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  But enough about pet food. Enough about pet food.
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  How did we get from pet food to you acquiring ICE What where did
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  the idea come about so the. What I actually acquired in 1995
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  was what I call the predecessor school.
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  It was called Peter Kump's New York Cooking School.
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  It was in the Upper East Side in New York City and it was started
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  by a gentleman named Peter Kump. You know, he started as a one
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  kitchen, I mean started in his apartment.
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  Then they moved to a a real space.
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  He was, is also well known. He was the, you know, the
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  founding, really the founding president of the James Beard
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  Foundation. He was friendly with Julia Child
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  and James Beard. And you know, the, this is in
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  the late 80s, you know, before I was ever involved, you could say
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  the culinary world was a lot smaller than and all of those
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  names I just mentioned where, you know, people were friendly
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  with one another. But anyway, the, the, the story
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  of how I got to be interested in that is, is pretty interesting.
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  So I in this pets, I moved from being a corporate person to an
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  entrepreneur. And after we sold the pet snack
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  business, I was looking for a way to stay an entrepreneur, but
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  by finding a small business to buy or maybe finding a family
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  business, someone else's family where there was no succession
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  plan. And AT and, and I was, you know,
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  looking at looking at deals, but small deals.
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  And at one point something that came across the radar was,
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  believe it or not, the Barbizon modelling schools, which I don't
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  even know if any exists anymore, and it was run as a franchise
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  business. They tended to be, you know, and
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  these were essentially after school programs for teenagers,
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  mostly girls. There was, you know, they use
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  modeling as, as the hook, but it was really about teaching poise
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  and manners and self-confidence and, and, and you know, it, it
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  was in, it was a, if you think of it that way, it was a service
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  and an education business. And I spent a few months, you
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  know, leaning into that and decided it wasn't for me.
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  But it sort of. That opened your mind to this
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  idea of like. Education, yeah, to the and so I
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  was working with a series of brokers and.
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  And I said, you know, I had never mentioned this before, but
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  could you do a search of education businesses within a,
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  you know, 30 mile radius, you know, under a certain size and
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  see what you come up with and then make cold calls.
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  And, you know, I wasn't in the room when this happened, but one
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  day there was a call, you know. Hi, I'm Rich Demichael from the
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  Woodbridge Group, and we have a client that might be interested
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  in investing in or buying, you know, your school and.
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  And the phone call was taken by the general manager of Peter
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  Kump's New York Cooking School. And he said, yes, there might be
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  interest because Mr. Kump himself was having a relapse of
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  cancer and there was no succession plan.
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  And, you know, ever since then I've, and personally, I've had a
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  soft spot for cold calls, you know, where as you know, the
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  normal person hangs up after 2 seconds.
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  I give them at least 7 or 8 seconds because I see how it
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  worked out for me. And, you know, at the, and it
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  all happened very, very quickly. And part of the equation in in
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  my mind, I mean, I didn't know anything about cooking schools
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  or schools or education or, or didn't know that much about, you
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  know, the restaurant business. But I figured the way to make it
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  grow was through product development and marketing and
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  branding. And therefore I could add value.
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  And, and I always have been, you know, no foodies don't like the
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  phrase foodie, but I am a foodie.
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  And it's not just enjoying food, but the, you know, the cultural
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  aspects, the historic aspects, the geographic aspects, the
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  social aspects. So really I and, and the school
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  was a real school, but it, it was small, it was sort of
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  breaking even. It had a a professional program
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  that wasn't very professional but well thought of if you can.
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  OK. Was well respected, but.
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  Yeah, yeah, it it was, you know, and.
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  There were areas for improvement, room for.
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  Improvement. Yeah.
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  And there were a lot of things. It was sort of like a bourgeois
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  trade school, you know, where it was a trade school where 2/3 of
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  the students had already been to college.
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  But it, you know, as far as cooking and cooking
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  fundamentals, it, it was well regarded.
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  And by the way, Peter Kumpet started it as a recreational
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  cooking school. And the when I say it was
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  professional, it was, he had loyal students who wanted to
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  take, you know, more and more classes and, and have a
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  progressive sequence. And so he gave them some sort of
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  credential. It, you know, wasn't accredited.
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  And that way I, I, but I, I, you know, Someone Like You might ask
• 16:24
  me a question on a interview like this, you know, what advice
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  would you give to other would be entrepreneurs?
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  And I would never advise someone to do what I did, which is to
• 16:35
  jump into a business they know nothing about.
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  But you know that I, I couldn't wait the time timing was, was
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  everything. It would have gone in some other
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  direction. And it, you know, building the
• 16:50
  business has been a huge financial commitment.
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  But at the time, at that starting point, it wasn't that
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  big. And yeah, you know.
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  So, so help us understand kind of what it looked like when you
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  took over. You said most of the students
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  had already been to some sort of college, started out as like
• 17:08
  recreational cooking, but people wanted this progression.
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  And so were people just looking, to most of them at the time
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  anyways, looking to get better at cooking at home, or were they
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  wanting to turn this into a career or enhance a career in
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  culinary that they already had? By 1995 when I got there, it, it
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  was it. I would say it was mostly for
• 17:33
  career, but his his recreational classes and some of the ones we
• 17:37
  still have today. There's a very well known course
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  called Techniques of Fine Cooking, Level 1.
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  It's five lessons. Then there was a level 2, then a
• 17:46
  34567 and all the sudden you know people are taking 50
• 17:50
  lessons. And it was extremely French, but
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  in it was teaching, well, frankly, it was it was teaching
• 18:02
  a lot of the fundamental techniques that a, that a good
• 18:05
  chef, whether it was a new American or a French chef in New
• 18:08
  York City would want you to know.
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  And in that regard, it, it was training for professional
• 18:13
  cooking. But a lot of the things that go
• 18:17
  along with the professional training school, we weren't
• 18:20
  doing yet. They weren't doing yet.
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  And So what was your initial vision as you came in in 1995?
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  How are you going to get this from breaking even to turning a
• 18:29
  profit? Well, first I had to learn the
• 18:34
  business versus learning it before I bought it.
• 18:37
  So there's that, that timing thing and sort of deciding
• 18:40
  whether there was more potential on the recreational side or the
• 18:44
  career side. And if you think about it
• 18:48
  recreational, you know, you're, your possibility could be
• 18:53
  millions and millions and millions of people in a country
• 18:55
  of 350 million people on the career side, you know, it's,
• 18:59
  it's more serious. There's only so many people who
• 19:02
  want to be chefs or pastry chefs or restaurateurs.
• 19:05
  But I think I, I came, we, I came to the conclusion that you,
• 19:10
  if you had a serious, well regarded career school, you
• 19:15
  could put things underneath that that could do well.
• 19:22
  But if you tried to go the other way, it it, you know the
• 19:26
  recreational school wouldn't get the prestige of a of a career
• 19:29
  school. So if you started as a career
• 19:32
  school, well, sorry, if you wanted to, you could also offer
• 19:35
  those recreational classes because.
• 19:37
  Of the half and procedure we, we, we did, but we've, I mean
• 19:40
  we've it's it's as we've grown in other ways, we've cut back on
• 19:45
  the recreational classes, but we were, you know, for sure the
• 19:49
  largest place of hands on recreational classes per year.
• 19:54
  You know, a lot of cooking classes.
• 19:56
  I mean, in, in whether wherever someone is listening to this,
• 20:02
  there might be a cooking class at their local williams-sonoma.
• 20:06
  And what that class is is it's a demonstration class.
• 20:09
  You know, you're sitting, you're watching, maybe you're called up
• 20:11
  and you, you help the chef and you taste something.
• 20:14
  But you know, to us, you know, cooking school has always been
• 20:18
  a. You know, fully hands on and you
• 20:20
  know, 3-4 hour classes and you know, instead of, you know, if
• 20:25
  there's 16 students in the class, there's six ranges, not
• 20:28
  one range. So you know, the one of the, so
• 20:33
  the ways. So I pretty quickly determined
• 20:37
  that the way to grow was on the, the career side.
• 20:39
  And that meant doing things like having a, a real externship
• 20:45
  program, getting accredited financial aid, a, a uniform, a
• 20:52
  UU policy where, you know, just like if you were working in a
• 20:57
  professional kitchen, you'd be wearing a uniform.
• 20:59
  We back, you know, when I got there, the, you know, there,
• 21:06
  there weren't as many classes and fewer classes for days.
• 21:09
  Every every class ended with eating what you had cooked and
• 21:13
  some wine. Do you?
• 21:15
  I mean, how many other trade schools have every class that
• 21:18
  sounds? Like a pretty good deal.
• 21:19
  That's a class I'd want to take. No wonder it was popular.
• 21:24
  So yeah, in and again, it's it's it's pretty.
• 21:30
  If. If you think of us as a as a
• 21:33
  sophisticated or fancy trade school, for a trade school to
• 21:38
  grow out of a recreational school in in any field is pretty
• 21:42
  pretty unusual. I mean, maybe maybe in massage
• 21:47
  therapy or something like that. So what was the biggest
• 21:52
  challenge in making that transition?
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  Was it the accreditation? No, the biggest challenge was
• 22:03
  first of all, it's a very place based business.
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  So at some point you need, you know, you need more kitchens to
• 22:09
  have a bigger business and kitchens are expensive to build.
• 22:12
  And then you know, there are other schools and you, you know,
• 22:15
  the, the facility needs to be attractive and aspirational.
• 22:24
  It you know, as education goes, culinary schools are, are
• 22:30
  expensive to run. I mean, every school you could
• 22:32
  think of, whether it's a, you know, 3rd grade class or a
• 22:37
  college English class, you know, you need a, you need a teacher,
• 22:40
  you need an instructor and you need a space.
• 22:42
  But in the case of a culinary school, you have all this
• 22:44
  equipment, you have all these utilities, you have all the, the
• 22:47
  food and ingredients and inherently your students make a
• 22:51
  mess. So you got to clean it up.
• 22:53
  So no wonder you know culinary schools cost more.
• 22:57
  So how are you funding all of this?
• 23:01
  A combination of loan family loans and some savings and and
• 23:06
  bank loans. Some of the, you know, we moved
• 23:11
  several times and you know, when you sign a new lease for
• 23:17
  substantial space, there's a, you know, what's it called?
• 23:20
  A tenant work letter, You know, some amount of money from the
• 23:24
  landlord, but it's, it's been a, you know, it's, I would have to
• 23:30
  say to the extent that culinary schools are a place based
• 23:34
  business, it's, it's expensive to grow, but those are also
• 23:38
  barriers to entry to other people, let alone the rent and
• 23:42
  all of that. So at what point?
• 23:45
  Actually, let me ask this a slightly different way.
• 23:47
  Was there a big inflection point where you felt like, oh this,
• 23:52
  this is finally working? Well, there was, you know, the
• 24:00
  department of it's when we got Title 4 funding from the US
• 24:04
  Department of Education, just like every other college.
• 24:08
  What does that mean? What is Title 4?
• 24:09
  Well, it's, it's, it's federal student loans.
• 24:12
  And you know, you can use those federal student loans to go to
• 24:15
  University of Chicago or Bridgeport Community College or,
• 24:19
  you know, Apex, Apex trade school if, or trade schools that
• 24:22
  are, that are big enough to sort of manage all that.
• 24:26
  And, you know, it's a source of, of lower interest loans and, or
• 24:31
  grants. And that sort of puts you in the
• 24:33
  bigger league. And it does, you know, there's
• 24:37
  and of course, as you do that you can only be part of the
• 24:42
  federal student loan system if you've been accredited.
• 24:45
  And you can only be accredited if you're approved by your
• 24:48
  state. And all of that comes with a
• 24:50
  level of regulation and compliance that most people
• 24:58
  would be surprised. You'd think, oh, a cooking
• 25:00
  school, you know what, what do they have to comply with?
• 25:03
  Well, you'd, you'd be surprised. And it's all because people can
• 25:06
  get, if they want and qualify and choose to take them federal
• 25:11
  student loans. And some of the rules are a
• 25:15
  little it, it, it's one of those government cases where they
• 25:19
  paint with a very wide brush. And, and it, it, it's broadly
• 25:27
  speaking, in that, you know, in the name of consumer protection.
• 25:31
  But it makes things harder, like, like changing our prices,
• 25:36
  you know, if you think about it. So if we, if we had a class
• 25:39
  beginning soon and somebody came along who couldn't afford the
• 25:43
  school and, you know, we don't, we're not like a huge
• 25:47
  institution with lots of scholarships from endowments.
• 25:50
  You know, we can't give a break to somebody at the last minute.
• 25:55
  An airline can do it, a hotel can do it, a restaurant can do
• 25:58
  it. Even at colleges, think about
• 26:00
  it. You, you talk to 50 people who
• 26:03
  go to the certain college and they paid 50 different prices
• 26:06
  for all sorts of reasons that are not particularly bad, but at
• 26:10
  least there's that flexibility in, in a typical, you know,
• 26:17
  licensed vocational school like ours, you're just not allowed to
• 26:20
  do that. And I, I, if I, if I had a, if
• 26:25
  we were, if I was lobbying to Department of Education, well,
• 26:27
  there's no Department of Education left.
• 26:30
  You know, this is something I'd point out is if there was more
• 26:32
  dynamic pricing, we could lower our price for some people and
• 26:37
  provide, you know, when it made sense and provide more
• 26:41
  opportunity, but we're not allowed to.
• 26:43
  So you're saying that colleges and universities have the legal
• 26:47
  flexibility to be able to adjust their prices?
• 26:50
  Vocational institutes are bound by different rules.
• 26:53
  That's pretty much exactly the case.
• 26:55
  You might think of it as you've heard the expression the ivory
• 26:58
  tower. Well, things are different at
• 27:00
  the top of the ivory tower than the bottom of the ivory tower.
• 27:04
  OK, interesting. I had no idea.
• 27:06
  Yeah, I mean, very, very few people think of it that way.
• 27:10
  There's also another oddity in U.S. financial aid in that it's
• 27:16
  it's almost easier to get more money to go to school longer
• 27:22
  than it is to get money to go to school shorter amount of time.
• 27:26
  So it encourages schools to make their programs longer when it
• 27:31
  might not even be necessary. I mean, I if if you're talking
• 27:35
  about, you know, training to be a brain surgeon, I think that
• 27:38
  training should go on a long time other fields.
• 27:42
  But yeah, this is this is a lot about Department of Education
• 27:48
  regulations. Yeah, so.
• 27:51
  Did it the I, you know, I had the natural sunshine on me.
• 27:54
  It's it's got is is am I still light enough or should I?
• 27:57
  Well, one side of your face is is light, and then we've got a
• 28:00
  dramatic effect on the other side if you.
• 28:02
  Let's that's as as you're. Playing with the lighting.
• 28:13
  I'll kind of move into my next question because I'm curious,
• 28:16
  because you're a marketing guy, right?
• 28:18
  You got the MBA. What were some of the big
• 28:21
  marketing growth levers that you were able to pull?
• 28:23
  So you go through the accreditation process, right?
• 28:25
  You get the ability to be able to, you know, accept student
• 28:29
  loans, but how did you get the word out?
• 28:32
  How did people know that IICE was a thing and and and come to
• 28:36
  you guys? Well, you know the the the hold
• 28:41
  on a second here. The central part of it is it
• 28:45
  really goes back to creating a, a great school and having good
• 28:51
  products and a strong brand. It's there's word of mouth and
• 28:55
  reputation really plays a big part.
• 28:58
  And, you know, as, as, as you may know, we're, we're, we're a
• 29:03
  big culinary school with lots of different programs, but this is
• 29:07
  all we do. We're, we're, we're focused in
• 29:09
  this field. You know, there's other larger,
• 29:13
  often publicly traded trade school companies where, you
• 29:18
  know, they have automotive technology and, you know,
• 29:24
  medical reporting and, and culinary and that, you know,
• 29:27
  that sort of combination. And in those scenarios that, you
• 29:33
  know, the, the leadership, the ownership is not going to be as
• 29:35
  focused in the culinary field as say, I am in, in what we do.
• 29:41
  So that's part of it. But to, you know, to talk about
• 29:44
  the, the tools, you know, the, in the earlier years there was
• 29:50
  TV advertising, you know, sometimes those late night
• 29:53
  commercials, print advertising. I mean, in all the years I've
• 29:58
  been doing this, the, the idea of digital advertising has
• 30:06
  certainly developed and changed so much.
• 30:08
  I mean, it's, it's changed the whole world of marketing and,
• 30:12
  and 1st digital advertising and search engine optimization.
• 30:19
  And then somewhere along the way, social media has come
• 30:21
  along. And of course, that's a, a, you
• 30:24
  know, huge driver of, of, for gaining awareness and, and
• 30:32
  reputation. And, you know, as, as, as you
• 30:36
  may know personally or for some of your other, other guests,
• 30:38
  it's, it's really gotten quite complicated.
• 30:41
  You know, we spend, you know, X millions of dollars on that.
• 30:45
  And you know, how you spend that and getting the most for that
• 30:49
  is, is very complicated. You know, the big companies in
• 30:55
  that space, you know, Google and Meta, they, they work with you,
• 30:59
  but they also want to grow. And you know, there's the whole,
• 31:06
  you know, in, in so much of life now, we all, you know, you hear
• 31:09
  people talk about the algorithms.
• 31:11
  Well, in, in, in school advertising and, and how we
• 31:16
  spend our money. Algorithms matter.
• 31:18
  And you know, there's things we could most of it we can't
• 31:20
  control. And you know, my marketing team
• 31:24
  tries to, we figure it out. We work with outside
• 31:27
  consultants. And eight months later, the
• 31:30
  rules of the road have changed. You got to stay on your toes
• 31:32
  with this for sure. Talk to us, Rick, a little bit
• 31:35
  about the programs that you offer and the kinds of folks
• 31:39
  that you're seeing come through the program.
• 31:43
  Yeah, well, the. First of the, you know, the, the
• 31:47
  core is culinary arts. We also have pastry and baking.
• 31:51
  We have a health centered culinary arts.
• 31:53
  We have restaurant and culinary management and then we have we
• 31:57
  have hospitality management. And then there's shorter, more
• 32:01
  specialized programs still at a professional level in bread
• 32:05
  baking, cake decorating and sommelier training.
• 32:09
  And for all those programs, the main credential is a diploma.
• 32:15
  And interestingly, that's something that you can earn in
• 32:18
  about 7 or 8 months. And that's going to be a
• 32:21
  surprise to a lot of, you know, a lot of the, some of the, you
• 32:27
  know, there aren't as many culinary schools in America as
• 32:29
  there used to be. But some of the ones that are
• 32:33
  that are out there and many of the ones that existed in the
• 32:36
  past, they really stressed associate's degrees, which can
• 32:39
  take a generally take two years. Now we also, we have two
• 32:43
  campuses, you know, we're in New York City and in the Los Angeles
• 32:47
  area, actually in Pasadena. We have a campus in California.
• 32:50
  We are licensed to offer an associate's degree.
• 32:54
  And somebody could get through that in about 15 or 16 months,
• 32:59
  less than two years. And then both again in
• 33:02
  California and New York, you could go through a diploma in
• 33:05
  seven or eight months. We also now we have joined the
• 33:08
  game of online degrees also run out of our California location.
• 33:14
  You know, people always ask, well, can you really learn
• 33:18
  cooking, you know, online? And it is more, it's
• 33:23
  challenging, I would say it here's one way of looking at it.
• 33:29
  It cost half as much as being on campus, but you learn 65% as
• 33:33
  much. So, you know, the math is pretty
• 33:35
  good. And what you have, you know, we,
• 33:38
  it's, we have A to the best of our ability ability.
• 33:42
  We've applied the same series of sequential foundational
• 33:47
  techniques over 52 weeks that we would, you know, online that
• 33:52
  someone would do if they were on campus.
• 33:55
  And it is true clearly that, you know, there's no chef instructor
• 34:00
  there to taste what you've made. But the, the, the discipline of
• 34:05
  feedback is much more than you would think from video and, and,
• 34:10
  and photos and description. And you know what?
• 34:16
  A good chef instructor can tell a lot by looking and hearing,
• 34:20
  even if they haven't tasted, you know, is it exactly?
• 34:23
  Is it is it as good as being on campus?
• 34:27
  No. But if for whatever reason you
• 34:29
  can't get there, it it, it's a reasonable substitute.
• 34:34
  So. Speaking specifically of the in
• 34:38
  person programs, where there it's the 7th, 8th month program
• 34:41
  or the 15 month program when people graduate, what are they
• 34:45
  prepared to do? What does that line them up for?
• 34:49
  Well, you're you're. Prepared to get a, an entry
• 34:53
  level job in the kitchen of a very good restaurant.
• 34:57
  And, and typically that there's different stations in a kitchen.
• 35:02
  They may call it Gardenmonjet, which would be making appetizers
• 35:06
  or salads. Sometimes it's, it could be a, a
• 35:11
  junior line cook in, in a there. You know, there's a lot of
• 35:16
  French terminology in, in kitchens, even if there's no
• 35:20
  French people. And if you were to go to if you
• 35:25
  if you were to go to the kitchen at Thomas Keller's French
• 35:28
  Laundry or Daniel Balud's restaurant, Danielle, there's a
• 35:33
  position called comi COMMIS, but that's a word you've never heard
• 35:38
  of. And that's sort of like entry
• 35:41
  level gotten some good training. Must be serious position.
• 35:49
  So, so that's the answer. And, you know, and on the pastry
• 35:52
  and baking side, it could be, you know, as an assistant
• 35:57
  assistant pastry chef, pastry departments are obviously
• 36:01
  smaller. And some people, you know, it's
• 36:06
  interesting. If you were, Can I talk about
• 36:08
  what people's ambitions are? Yeah, I assume that people are.
• 36:12
  Coming in, they want to be a chef for the rest of their life.
• 36:17
  In half the case that is that is true and half the case it's not.
• 36:21
  I think if you were to, you know, go talk to our students
• 36:24
  right now or the same thing at the Culinary Institute of
• 36:26
  America and ask what people want to be doing in, in five years,
• 36:31
  maybe half would say restaurant chef.
• 36:33
  But for other people, it's being a personal personal chef or a
• 36:36
  caterer or, you know, moving with their significant other to
• 36:41
  an island and opening a bed and breakfast.
• 36:44
  It could be, I've met people who like selling things and they've,
• 36:49
  you know, maybe they sold computer equipment and now
• 36:51
  they'd like to sell pastry and baking equipment to hotels and
• 36:55
  country clubs. You know, there's the whole food
• 36:58
  media realm. I mean, realistically there's
• 37:01
  only, there's a limited number of jobs there.
• 37:04
  But at our school, we just have had a, a, a tremendous track.
• 37:12
  Record of of. People sort of launching these
• 37:16
  alternative careers. We've we've one of my more
• 37:22
  interesting examples. Is a guy named.
• 37:26
  Doctor Nate Woods and he went to was going to Wayne State Medical
• 37:31
  School in Michigan, took a year off, moved to New York, went
• 37:35
  through our culinary arts program, went back to medical
• 37:38
  school. And now he is a on staff on
• 37:42
  faculty at Yale Medical School teaching culinary nutrition to,
• 37:47
  you know, future doctors and, you know, his SO culinary school
• 37:51
  training in the middle of medical school.
• 37:54
  We've had people who've started nonprofits.
• 37:58
  There's a guy named Andrew Riggy who started the New York City
• 38:01
  Hospitality Alliance. He's you know, New York's
• 38:04
  incoming mayor Mandami has asked Andrew to be on a, you know, an
• 38:09
  advisory committee for restaurants and and nightlife.
• 38:13
  So there's, you know, and something, you know, and there's
• 38:18
  other people who work in test kitchens.
• 38:21
  I can think of a graduate who works for McCormick Spice
• 38:25
  Company, you know, developing recipes using their spices.
• 38:29
  So all of that is, is far afield from, you know, from being a
• 38:34
  restaurant chef. Interesting.
• 38:37
  So you guys, you started out in New York.
• 38:39
  Obviously that's where it was based when you first acquired
• 38:41
  the business and started to grow it.
• 38:43
  You've already referenced the second location that you have
• 38:46
  out in Pasadena. Why do a second location?
• 38:50
  You talked about how expensive it is to open up a physical
• 38:53
  locations. Yeah, because I because we found
• 38:56
  a way to do. Do it inexpensively.
• 38:58
  All right, let's hear. About that, no, I would I would
• 39:00
  say the. The, the, the part of me that's
• 39:06
  just solely ambitious, I, I wanted something more than New
• 39:09
  York. I wanted it to be more of a
• 39:12
  national business. And you know, certainly having
• 39:17
  the biggest culinary school in the two biggest cities in
• 39:20
  America, you know, makes me feel like we have a national
• 39:22
  business. But the specific is there was a
• 39:27
  a big going back 1520 years ago, a company called Career
• 39:33
  Education Corp, a public corporation that had a culinary
• 39:36
  school division and they operated all of the Le Cordon
• 39:40
  Blue culinary schools or Le Cordon Blue College of Culinary
• 39:44
  Arts. And it it it's it's a longer
• 39:48
  story that your. Listeners don't want to.
• 39:51
  Hear right now but that type of business and the way they were
• 39:57
  set up and their relationship with the government at some time
• 40:00
  at some point stopped working so they decided to get out of the
• 40:03
  culinary education business they we were interested in they had
• 40:08
  16 locations in 16 cities it was much too big to buy and they.
• 40:15
  We entertained buying one or two of their locations.
• 40:18
  They decided for certain reasons they didn't want to sell any of
• 40:23
  them and they were going to close them out on an orderly
• 40:27
  basis. And so it's a stay in the good
• 40:30
  graces of the Department of Education.
• 40:32
  Well, through that process, we were familiar with all of their
• 40:35
  leases and in Pasadena they had a lot of time left on the lease.
• 40:41
  They were planning on paying the lease, but not using the space.
• 40:46
  And so we, we approach them with a win, win, you know, situation.
• 40:51
  Could you if, if, if you would give us a discount on the lease
• 40:57
  and some incentive, we would, we would legally assume it from
• 41:01
  you. And you know, that was, that was
• 41:03
  a good idea right from the start.
• 41:04
  And it, it needed a little refurbishment, but basically it
• 41:08
  was, was already built. And so whereas and we had just
• 41:13
  finished are huge, very expensive build out of where we
• 41:17
  are in New York City. And I almost feel like if, if
• 41:21
  whatever that number is, if that cost 100% for just two or 3%
• 41:25
  more, we got another campus. And again, it was sort of like
• 41:32
  the situation of me acquiring Peter comes New York Cooking
• 41:36
  School to begin with, is that it's when the opportunity came
• 41:39
  up, but you couldn't wait very long.
• 41:41
  It would have gone away. And to replicate what we were
• 41:44
  able to take over, you know, would have cost infinitely more.
• 41:50
  Yeah, timing was. Critical here, just like it was
• 41:53
  when you first purchased the business.
• 41:55
  And so how quickly were you able to staff it up and then fill it
• 41:59
  up with students? Well, you know, we were looking
• 42:04
  at some of their other locations 1st and I mean at the same time
• 42:09
  and one of the considerations of which we, you know, we could
• 42:13
  only pick one city and, and we were also evaluating who did we
• 42:20
  meet there that was working there.
• 42:22
  That was soon knew they were going to be unemployed cause the
• 42:25
  school was closing would be interested in working with us
• 42:29
  and that we liked and were simpatico.
• 42:31
  And in Pasadena, you know, it was I guess sort of the sun, the
• 42:36
  moon and the stars line. You know, there was a good
• 42:38
  facility with a good lease and and a motivated seller of the
• 42:42
  lease. The man who was the campus
• 42:44
  president there was very interest.
• 42:48
  Frankly, he saw us working with us as a way for him to keep the
• 42:51
  job that he liked. And it also was interesting
• 42:56
  because I mean it years prior to when I'm this is all happening
• 43:02
  around 2018 years prior, that school was just huge.
• 43:07
  It was, it had more space and and leases than we took over.
• 43:10
  But he was familiar with two or 300 over the coming years.
• 43:15
  There's literally hundreds of people who've applied to work
• 43:18
  for us there who once worked where he worked, not necessarily
• 43:21
  for him, but he knew of them. So he could he, he could do a
• 43:26
  first level of it's an easy filter for him, yeah.
• 43:31
  It's an easy filter, you know it's.
• 43:32
  Like, you know, like you know, I remember that was my Co worker
• 43:36
  in 2003. Did I like her?
• 43:38
  You know, so what's the future? Of ICE look like more campuses,
• 43:44
  more programs kind of stay in the course.
• 43:49
  Well, the, you know, one of the, the, the challenges for us and
• 43:55
  the other culinary schools in America and, and the restaurant
• 43:58
  trade is that increasingly young Americans are not attracted to
• 44:05
  working in service businesses. And there's, you know, and, and
• 44:08
  the restaurant part of it has a, you know, a, a, you know, there,
• 44:16
  there's a reputation about how hard it is.
• 44:18
  And then there's also. You know the comparison to
• 44:24
  other. Things someone could do, maybe
• 44:26
  jobs and careers they don't even want.
• 44:29
  But it seems easier and so. I mean and and all of this.
• 44:36
  Is tough for the restaurant trade and you, you, I'm sure I
• 44:39
  know you interview a lot of, you know, restauranteurs and
• 44:43
  restaurant owners and I'm sure they all talk about staffing as
• 44:47
  an issue. And you know, yes, there are.
• 44:52
  You know, we we haven't mentioned the word entrepreneur
• 44:54
  yet. From the point of view of that,
• 44:56
  you know, so many of our students have entrepreneurial
• 45:02
  dreams and aspirations and you know, it's it starting anything
• 45:07
  is difficult. I'm so let me just I don't know
• 45:11
  if you hear my phone beeping. I just gotta turn it off Hold
• 45:14
  on. Sounds like a little drummer boy
• 45:17
  over there. Yeah, yeah.
• 45:18
  Which is appropriate as we record this on December 22nd,
• 45:22
  right? Right.
• 45:24
  So, but you know, for everyone who wants to be an entrepreneur,
• 45:30
  you need people who are going to work for those entrepreneurs.
• 45:33
  And, you know, overall enrollment in in culinary school
• 45:39
  is is is flat and. And you know the?
• 45:46
  When, when I, when obviously with 30 years experience, I have
• 45:50
  a pretty good perspective on all of this.
• 45:54
  And, you know, the idea that, you know, we should go out and,
• 45:57
  you know, open 5 or 6 more, you know, doesn't, does, doesn't
• 46:03
  necessarily seem like, like a good idea.
• 46:05
  But one of the specific things is we, you know, the associate,
• 46:09
  I was talking before about the value that we bring because our
• 46:14
  programs are faster and, and our diploma oriented.
• 46:20
  But for people who haven't gone to college, getting an
• 46:24
  associate's degree, you know, does have higher value.
• 46:28
  And for reasons that are bureaucratic and hard to explain
• 46:32
  in New York State, it is very hard for us or for any other
• 46:36
  trade school at this point to get the credentials to offer an
• 46:39
  associate's degree. But we that is something we're
• 46:43
  working on and and that would be a a good source of growth and it
• 46:48
  and it would be great. It would draw people to our
• 46:51
  school and other schools and then into the restaurant field
• 46:55
  and would would be a good thing. But that's that's my Albany
• 47:02
  problem. Yeah, I get it.
• 47:04
  You know, plus, yeah, coming out of COVID, a lot of people left
• 47:07
  the service industry, haven't come back.
• 47:10
  It's made staffing tough. Like you said, people, some
• 47:13
  people aren't interested in being in the field.
• 47:14
  But for those folks who do come through your schools, Rick, I
• 47:19
  wonder what help are they getting in terms of job
• 47:23
  placement? Do you have relationships with,
• 47:26
  you know, a lot of the restaurants out there that are
• 47:29
  looking for folks well in most of our programs?
• 47:32
  An externship is is required and you know, we just, we have a
• 47:36
  fantastic relationship with, you know, the biggest and best
• 47:39
  restaurant groups in New York and other parts of the country.
• 47:44
  And then in Los Angeles, about half the time the externship
• 47:50
  turns into a, a job offer when it doesn't it, it's for all, you
• 47:55
  know, maybe there's, there's just no space or no opening.
• 47:58
  But, you know, in New York City, you know, the restaurants of,
• 48:01
  of, of, of Eric Repair and Danny Meyer and Tom Colicchio and Jean
• 48:06
  George Vongoric. And, you know, we, we all, we,
• 48:08
  we have people in them all the time.
• 48:12
  And you know that, you know, we don't, we don't have any
• 48:17
  advertised advertisements to say this, but you could say, you
• 48:21
  know, we, we get our people into some really good doors and I
• 48:25
  mean the kitchen door. And that would be hard, hard to
• 48:28
  do on your own. And there is a real, you know.
• 48:34
  Whether it's Chicago, new. York, Atlanta.
• 48:38
  You know the the bigger chef. Driven restaurants.
• 48:44
  That are. Focus on on good.
• 48:48
  Food and a high level experience generally have people running
• 48:52
  them who have kitchens where you will get good training and and
• 48:58
  that training can you know so if.
• 49:02
  You think of it this way. If you, if you can, if, let's
• 49:06
  say your, your local paper has a star system, if you're right out
• 49:12
  of culinary school and you can get an entry level job at a
• 49:14
  three star restaurant, you know, you're going to be at the bottom
• 49:17
  of the totem pole. But the habits you're going to
• 49:19
  learn, the things you're going to see, the quality of the
• 49:21
  ingredients will be really informative when you get your
• 49:24
  second job, you know, at a two star restaurant.
• 49:28
  And then when you get, you know, become a sous chef or a chef's
• 49:31
  de cuisine at a one star restaurant, you're going to have
• 49:34
  that, that training that you got in in the better places.
• 49:38
  And it's a that's sort of a a. System.
• 49:43
  And A and a way of, of job development that exists all over
• 49:47
  America and all over the world in a sense.
• 49:50
  And it's, you know, do you have to go to culinary school to get
• 49:54
  in those kitchens? You don't.
• 49:56
  But it, it would be hard otherwise.
• 50:00
  And yeah, that and and it's also when you begin to do that you
• 50:06
  also. Meet people.
• 50:07
  Like yourself, you become part of a community.
• 50:10
  We have 20,000 alumni at this point and many of them, you
• 50:14
  know, I mean, there's people who have, you know, you know, met.
• 50:20
  At. I mean, I, I can think of one
• 50:23
  couple. They were both, you know,
• 50:26
  junior, junior people working at Thomas Keller's per SE in New
• 50:29
  York. They met there, started dating,
• 50:31
  went off working at other places, got married and now they
• 50:36
  have 3 or 4 restaurants of their own doing well, children, good
• 50:41
  marriage. And, you know, they met being,
• 50:44
  you know, junior employees at at a great restaurant and they're
• 50:50
  it's interesting there. Our tagline is.
• 50:57
  Is Find Your Culinary Voice, which was suggested to us by a
• 51:02
  marketing agency probably about 20 years ago.
• 51:06
  And when I first heard it, I thought it was sort of corny.
• 51:10
  And then pretty quickly I realized it.
• 51:12
  It fits so well because that's what people want to do, and we
• 51:17
  find that so. Many of our.
• 51:21
  Students have some cultural or ethnic background, you know, be
• 51:27
  it Swedish or Turkish or Japanese or Korean, and somehow
• 51:34
  so often whence once they get to be executive chefs or chef
• 51:39
  owners, they they express. That in.
• 51:43
  Their in their cooking. So for example this couple I was
• 51:46
  talking about they have they had a restaurant that was highly
• 51:51
  regarded called Uncle Boone's Kitchen.
• 51:53
  Now they have a place called Thai Diner in New York City,
• 51:57
  very popular. It's not fancy, but and the food
• 52:01
  is, you would recognize it as Thai.
• 52:04
  But the sauce, you know that these two chefs have worked in
• 52:09
  in a classic in a kitchen where people were classically trained
• 52:12
  and they understand how to make sauces in a, in a French way.
• 52:16
  And you taste this Thai food and it's it's just better.
• 52:22
  And they, you know, couldn't have, I mean, and Anne is yes, I
• 52:28
  didn't, I missed that point. Anne's cultural background is
• 52:31
  Thai, her husband is is American.
• 52:35
  Could be, you know, they have another a smaller restaurant or
• 52:39
  they have in the past that focused on roast beef
• 52:42
  sandwiches. So there's nothing to say about
• 52:44
  that but this idea. Of people.
• 52:46
  Finding their their culinary voice is is really interesting
• 52:51
  and you know, you see it play out time and time again, you
• 52:54
  know, and you were talking about.
• 52:55
  This idea of community and I know you've given back through
• 52:58
  organizations like City Harvest and Join Israel.
• 53:02
  How have you seen work with these types of groups affect
• 53:06
  positive change that you're talking about?
• 53:08
  Yeah, let me. I'm gonna put on a light in the
• 53:11
  room. In another light.
• 53:14
  This is funny. I mean, I had I had the shade
• 53:16
  closed because this it was there was too much sunshine.
• 53:18
  Sure. Sure.
• 53:19
  Yeah. Go ahead.
• 53:20
  Yeah. For, for folks who are just
• 53:21
  listening to the audio and the video component of this we're
• 53:25
  filming later in the day and the sun has been setting and so it's
• 53:29
  presenting, you know, all kinds of shadows for Rick, who still
• 53:33
  looks handsome as can be but so so, so talk about city harvest
• 53:38
  join Israel the idea of, you know, the, the community aspect
• 53:42
  of what you like to get involved with well, overall.
• 53:46
  I, I like the idea of, of, of giving back and doing what I can
• 53:49
  do to make the world a better place.
• 53:53
  You know, you, you mentioned those two charities.
• 53:55
  There's, there's some other ones too.
• 53:56
  And, and, and I, I did want to share my philosophy about, you
• 54:01
  know, where to give, whether it's your time, your brain or
• 54:04
  your money. And so.
• 54:07
  City harvest is. Is a is New York City's primary
• 54:11
  and largest food relief agency. So since the schools in New York
• 54:15
  City and you know, our market is our market is national, but you
• 54:19
  know, we certainly you know, the the biggest majority of the
• 54:22
  people are already in the New York area and City Harvest, you
• 54:26
  know, for years, well predating me always look to the restaurant
• 54:31
  community. For support.
• 54:36
  And, and some visibility, I was initially on like a, a culinary
• 54:41
  industry Advisory Council and then moved up to the regular
• 54:45
  board. But the, the, what I wanted to
• 54:49
  share was, you know, while, while I, you know, said I'd like
• 54:56
  to make the world a better place, I admit when I wake up in
• 54:59
  the morning, that's not on my To Do List most days.
• 55:03
  And it's hard to do. And that's true of most people.
• 55:06
  But I, I know people that I've been introduced to or that maybe
• 55:11
  used to work for me who have decided to become, you know,
• 55:15
  full time professional, do gooders.
• 55:18
  I, I call them, you know, 8 like angels.
• 55:20
  And, you know, there's there's big time angels like Mother
• 55:24
  Teresa and Jose Andres, and then there's the angels you don't
• 55:26
  know. And.
• 55:30
  And and. My thought is that all of us,
• 55:33
  when we can, should support the angels, the little angels that
• 55:38
  we know because other people don't.
• 55:41
  They have their own angels. You know, it's like when I asked
• 55:44
  some of my friends to make a donation to some of these
• 55:46
  charities. They say maybe, but it's going
• 55:48
  to be very small. They're not, you know, they
• 55:50
  don't know that Angel. They're not think they have
• 55:53
  their own angels. And it's, it's almost like
• 55:57
  investing in. Venture.
• 55:58
  Capital or you know, in venture capital, it's better to make a
• 56:01
  lot of it. I mean, venture capitalists make
• 56:03
  a lot of investments, not just one.
• 56:05
  And you know, they, they pick them for various reasons.
• 56:07
  So, you know, for example, there's a charity I support
• 56:14
  called Streets International, and it was started by a a man
• 56:19
  who used to teach restaurant management at the school.
• 56:21
  And he and his significant other move to Vietnam and started a
• 56:28
  culinary and hospitality training program for sort of 17
• 56:34
  to 21 year olds from backgrounds where they would probably never
• 56:39
  have a career. But if they learn, you know,
• 56:42
  some front of house hospitality skills, some culinary skills and
• 56:46
  some rudimentary English, you know they can work in the
• 56:50
  burgeoning Taurus trade in Vietnam forever.
• 56:54
  And I. You know, I know.
• 56:57
  This guy, I admire what he's doing.
• 57:01
  He it's, it's an, it's a quite an entrepreneurial feat that he
• 57:04
  got this off the ground. You can imagine the local people
• 57:08
  in Hawaiian Vietnam saying, you know, you want to do what with
• 57:10
  these young people? And you know, I because I
• 57:16
  appreciate him and know him, I feel like I should support him
• 57:19
  because 99.9% of the world is never going to know him or
• 57:24
  appreciate him the way that I do.
• 57:26
  And if everybody looks in their life and does the same sort of
• 57:29
  thing, then we can do a lot of good.
• 57:32
  I love that. You know, Rick, I think I've
• 57:34
  just got one more question for you today.
• 57:36
  But before I ask it, I want to do 3 quick things.
• 57:39
  First of all, anybody who wants to get in touch with Rick, two
• 57:43
  options. First of all, for the institute,
• 57:45
  you can just go to ice.edu. Very short, easy to remember
• 57:49
  ice.edu for the Institute of Culinary Education.
• 57:53
  And if you want to get in touch with Rick directly, he's given
• 57:56
  us his e-mail address that we can share.
• 57:58
  RSMILOWR Smilow at ice.edu and we'll have links to both of
• 58:05
  those things in the show notes. Also, as a reminder, if you want
• 58:08
  to get more employees, access to therapists, doctors and
• 58:13
  prescription medications that I don't know, Can you believe it,
• 58:16
  like actually puts more money into the company's pocket, reach
• 58:20
  out to us at Add back benefits.com.
• 58:23
  And if you're enjoying the show today, a quick comment or review
• 58:26
  on your favorite podcast app goes a long way.
• 58:29
  It means more than you might think.
• 58:30
  So thank you. So last question for you, Rick.
• 58:33
  We've talked about some of your UPS, some of your downs, but I'd
• 58:36
  be interested. In exploring.
• 58:38
  A big, serious challenge that you've overcome in your life,
• 58:41
  how you navigated that and what you learn coming through it.
• 58:48
  You know, it's, it's, it's not the most profound answer, but
• 58:52
  it, it was about you. And within New York City, we've
• 58:55
  had three different homes. And as I, I think I alluded to
• 58:58
  before, it's a very place based business.
• 59:01
  I mean, our facility now we have like 9 restaurant kitchens in a,
• 59:05
  in a, in what would be the equivalent of AI mean it's, it's
• 59:08
  sort of a nice New York City office building.
• 59:10
  It's all very expensive to build.
• 59:13
  So we had a location on 23rd St. and the lease was coming up and
• 59:20
  we, when, you know, hired A broker to go with us to
• 59:29
  negotiate a renewal and did all the research and all of that.
• 59:32
  And we go to the landlord and, and the first thing he says, you
• 59:36
  know, like, hello, gentlemen, and you know, how are you?
• 59:40
  I, let me make this meeting very short.
• 59:44
  We like you guys, but we don't want to talk about a renewal.
• 59:47
  I have other ideas for the space.
• 59:50
  Look around like, you know, could you repeat that?
• 59:55
  And he repeats and I say, but you know, David, this is, this
• 59:58
  is going to be really hard. It's a hard business to move.
• 1:00:01
  It's going to. You know, it's gonna and this is
• 1:00:05
  at a was a point in New York City's chronology when a lot of
• 1:00:09
  building going on and very expensive, not that it's ever
• 1:00:12
  not been expensive. And he says, well, you know,
• 1:00:15
  you'll you you know, I know, I know that, Rick, but you're a
• 1:00:18
  smart guy and you'll figure it out.
• 1:00:20
  And in the end you'll be better, you know.
• 1:00:22
  But I sort of muttered her like, if this isn't the end and it, it
• 1:00:28
  was living through that and, and the whole combination of finding
• 1:00:33
  where to move to, you know, finding, you know, designing
• 1:00:36
  something we felt good about then being able to pay for it.
• 1:00:41
  And, you know, these are, if you're building in Manhattan,
• 1:00:46
  it's probably going to be in some mixed-use buildings.
• 1:00:48
  So there's all sorts of complications.
• 1:00:50
  It's a lot of union construction and it's in, you didn't ask me
• 1:00:56
  this, but a lot of, for a lot of business owners, they would say
• 1:01:00
  the the toughest thing was the pandemic and, you know, working
• 1:01:04
  through it and whether it was keeping.
• 1:01:07
  Employees or keeping the. Business open we were able to
• 1:01:11
  reopen on a limited basis after six months in the pandemic and
• 1:01:15
  you know on a voluntary basis, you know and and a lot of our
• 1:01:20
  students keep in mind they're you know they weren't living in
• 1:01:24
  dormitories they were living wherever they lived they would
• 1:01:27
  travel there A lot of them are sort of in the 20 to 30 year old
• 1:01:30
  range. They weren't 17 or 18 year olds
• 1:01:33
  with their, you know, and I mean, where colleges were
• 1:01:37
  closed, we were able to open and, and we had all sorts of
• 1:01:41
  protocol and people were tested and you know, Thermo, you know,
• 1:01:46
  Forehead readers, but. I realized when we were doing.
• 1:01:51
  That everyone in the world, you know, business and consumer, but
• 1:01:55
  every business was going through the same thing.
• 1:01:57
  So you had a lot of company and all of that.
• 1:02:00
  But when you have a big place based business and you know you
• 1:02:05
  you're going to lose your lease, it's only your problem.
• 1:02:08
  There's, I mean, there's my, there was my key team to go
• 1:02:11
  through within my family. But I, I, I sort of uniquely
• 1:02:17
  remember during the pandemic thinking, oh, this isn't as bad
• 1:02:22
  as or as expensive as what we had to do before.
• 1:02:25
  And anyway, I'm not alone in this.
• 1:02:27
  Everybody's going through this with the non lease renewal.
• 1:02:32
  Yeah, you're on an island by yourself for the most part.
• 1:02:35
  I've I mean I, I. I've always, you know, I have a
• 1:02:37
  lot of resilience I'm good at. I don't know that I'm good at
• 1:02:44
  figuring. Things out quickly, but
• 1:02:46
  eventually figuring them out and what if and what if and should
• 1:02:49
  we try this and eventually work to a solution?
• 1:02:56
  But that was it was it was a real it was a quite a shocker
• 1:03:01
  when when the meeting. So what was the solution?
• 1:03:04
  How? Did you work through it?
• 1:03:11
  I mean if you found. A new location.
• 1:03:13
  Coming up with with a with. A with a, a plan and you know
• 1:03:17
  what we thought we could afford and of course it ends up costing
• 1:03:21
  much more and then you got to deal with that.
• 1:03:23
  But that, you know, by the time that you figure out it's going
• 1:03:27
  to cost a lot more, you've already begun.
• 1:03:29
  And yeah, just so you know, a lot, lot of hard work and
• 1:03:34
  resilience and borrowing and. But that was that.
• 1:03:41
  Was that was hard any bigger picture?
• 1:03:43
  Lessons that now that you kind of look in the rearview mirror
• 1:03:46
  that are, I don't know you're able to apply to today or kind
• 1:03:51
  of pushed you in a different direction that you wouldn't have
• 1:03:54
  gone in had you not gone through this hardship.
• 1:04:00
  No, I don't. I don't.
• 1:04:01
  I don't think so. I.
• 1:04:02
  Mean in, in an ideal world, you know, you, if you have a place
• 1:04:05
  based business, it's nice to own the space, but you know, in, in
• 1:04:10
  and, and we, we did have to think of, you know, I mean, for
• 1:04:13
  those of you that are familiar with the New York City
• 1:04:16
  geography, when we had to move, we thought about, well, what
• 1:04:19
  about Jersey City or Hoboken and New Jersey or what about
• 1:04:23
  Brooklyn section? And, and those would have been
• 1:04:27
  easier, certainly less expensive solutions, but they're, they're
• 1:04:32
  not as easy to the thing about Manhattan and New York City
• 1:04:37
  transportation is sort of all lines, you know, roads, but
• 1:04:40
  train lines and subway lines sort of converge in Manhattan.
• 1:04:44
  And it just, we said, you know, to keep our and, and we had a,
• 1:04:50
  we had a, a real, we had a major competitor at the time who we've
• 1:04:54
  since subsumed or acquired, which we haven't even talked
• 1:05:00
  about, but it there. Was just a real.
• 1:05:04
  We got to figure out how to stay in the Manhattan part of New
• 1:05:07
  York City. It was sort of keeping up with
• 1:05:09
  the Joneses. To some degree.
• 1:05:13
  Keeping up with the. Joneses.
• 1:05:14
  Or. Got to be where your clientele
• 1:05:18
  is. Yeah, and how they can get.
• 1:05:20
  There, I mean, frankly, you know, most of our students do
• 1:05:26
  not live in Manhattan. And so if they live in New
• 1:05:31
  Jersey or Brooklyn or Bronx or Westchester, they will cross a
• 1:05:34
  bridge somehow, whether it's by subway or commuter train or car.
• 1:05:40
  And sort of everyone is the thought was everyone, anyone
• 1:05:44
  will cross one bridge or tunnel to go to school, but almost no
• 1:05:48
  one will cross 2. So if you were in.
• 1:05:52
  Jersey and your students were in Brooklyn.
• 1:05:54
  They're not coming. Or vice versa, exactly and so.
• 1:05:57
  Real quick, how how did? That happen the acquisition or
• 1:06:01
  what was the other words you? Well, it was.
• 1:06:03
  It was called the. French Culinary Institute, which
• 1:06:06
  then they eventually changed their name to the Internet
• 1:06:08
  National Culinary Center. And you know, when I began all
• 1:06:11
  this, they were a bigger, more prominent school.
• 1:06:13
  Then we sort of got even in terms of all that.
• 1:06:17
  Then they were for sale, but nobody, they always wanted too
• 1:06:24
  much money. You know, we were interested and
• 1:06:27
  then they would lower the price and no one was interested and we
• 1:06:30
  were still in the lower range. What what they didn't count on
• 1:06:33
  was the pandemic. They went, it went into it in a,
• 1:06:38
  in a weaker state and, and just didn't have the, the staying
• 1:06:43
  powder power. And then, you know, we were
• 1:06:45
  always there as, as sort of the buyer of last resort.
• 1:06:48
  So we were able to really, we made a, a licensing arrangement
• 1:06:56
  with them where we would pay them over time on, on our, our
• 1:07:00
  growth because of them, but we didn't have to take their assets
• 1:07:05
  or assume their lease, you know, we own.
• 1:07:09
  So this is, this is, I'm not the only story like this, but this
• 1:07:14
  is a case where the pandemic led to a, you know, merger and
• 1:07:19
  acquisition activity that wouldn't have happened without
• 1:07:21
  the pandemic. So the pandemic was, there's
• 1:07:24
  another reason why the pandemic wasn't so bad for the Institute
• 1:07:27
  of Culinary Education and all these things, I mean.
• 1:07:34
  I mean, I'm telling you've been. Hearing some anecdotes and
• 1:07:37
  stories over 30 years, you know, you can't predict any of this
• 1:07:41
  stuff. And you know, over 30 years, a
• 1:07:45
  lot of a lot of things happen and you know, being being
• 1:07:53
  committed to the business, proud of the business has, has been a
• 1:07:57
  key part of it. I have a a partner in the
• 1:08:00
  business who you know he's the day-to-day president of it.
• 1:08:05
  And if you would ask him, well, what initially like going back
• 1:08:09
  to 14 years? Ago and if you asked.
• 1:08:15
  Him, well, you know, what was your impression of of Rick after
• 1:08:20
  the first meeting? He said, well, he seemed very
• 1:08:23
  committed and proud of the business and I like that.
• 1:08:26
  So there's, there's a good lesson there.
• 1:08:29
  I love it, Rick. Smilo from Institute of Culinary
• 1:08:31
  Education, I want to be the first to thank you for sharing
• 1:08:34
  both your time and your story with us today.
• 1:08:37
  I really appreciate you, Rick. All right, well, it's it's.
• 1:08:40
  It's been a pleasure and I don't know how many emails I'm going
• 1:08:45
  to get. If, if there's anyone who took a
• 1:08:46
  class at Peter Kump's New York cooking school, that would be a
• 1:08:50
  or even with Peter Kump himself, that would be amazing.
• 1:08:53
  I I only know of a couple people in the world I could point to
• 1:08:56
  who did that. Maybe get some reunions here,
• 1:09:00
  yes? All.
• 1:09:02
  Right, folks, that's a wrap on another.
• 1:09:03
  Episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
• 1:09:06
  I appreciate that. Thanks for learning with us
• 1:09:07
  today.