Say Yes First: The Story Behind a Profitable Virtual Corporate Event Biz with Jennifer Clair

Aug 10

Imagine this, Chef…

You get an email from your dream corporate client asking if you’d be able to teach an online cooking class for their team.One catch: they need 40 ingredient kits. And you don't provide them...at least for now.You can either tell them, sorry, we don’t offer kits. Or, you can say yes…then figure it out.

That’s exactly what our guest has done time after time in her career, including at the start of the pandemic when she took the leap online.

In this episode, we're chatting with Jennifer Clair, culinary instructor and founder of Home Cooking New York, a recreational cooking school for home cooks in New York City.

Jennifer is the former Food Editor at Martha Stewart Living and author of "Six Basic Cooking Techniques: Culinary Essentials for the Home Cook", a cookbook based on her best-selling cooking class. She also hosts Kitchen Radio, a cooking podcast that follows her into her guest’s home kitchens while they cook a dish together.

Jennifer’s fearless approach to building and growing her business is admirable and as you hear her talk about how she navigated the pandemic, you can’t help but feel inspired and energized to take charge of your business and all of the opportunities ahead of you.

Links from this episode

Check out Jennifer's business, Home Cooking New York
Sign up for my FREE Culinary Roadmap and learn how to start a flexible and fulfilling online business.
Say hello to Cynthia on Instagram → @culinarycynthia!

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[00:00:00] Jennifer Clair: Every time you say yes to something, you create goodwill, you create a connection with another human being or another company or another group. And building a business is all about that.
[00:00:12] Cynthia Samanian: Imagine this. You get an email from a well-known tech company, asking if you'd be able to teach an online cooking class for their team of 40. You think to yourself? Perfect. I got this. But then they ask you if you can ship ingredient kits. Uh, oh, this is a problem because you don't have kids now. There are two ways you could move forward.
[00:01:10] Cynthia Samanian: You could either tell them, sorry, I don't offer kits, but I'll send you a grocery list. Or you could say yes, and then figure it out. Now that's exactly what our guest has done time after time in her career, including at the start of the pandemic, when she took the leap online. Today's conversation is with Jennifer Clair, culinary instructor and founder of Home Cooking New York, a recreational cooking school for home cooks based in New York City.
[00:01:38] Cynthia Samanian: She's the former food editor at Martha Stewart Living. And she's the author of Six Basic Cooking Techniques: Culinary Essentials For the Home Cook. She's also the host of Kitchen Radio, a cooking podcast that follows her into her guests' home kitchens while they cook a dish together. Jennifer's fearless approach to building and growing her culinary business is so admirable. And as you hear her talk about how she navigated the pandemic, trust me, you can't help but feel inspired and energized to take charge of your business and all of the opportunities ahead of you. I can't wait for you to listen.
[00:02:22] Cynthia Samanian: Welcome to the podcast, Jennifer! I'm so excited to have you on the show today.
[00:02:26] Jennifer Clair: Thank you I'm so excited to be here.
[00:02:28] Cynthia Samanian: Now before we get into all of the incredible things that you're doing at Home Cooking New York, I want to go to the very beginning. How did you get into the culinary space?
[00:02:37] Jennifer Clair: Well I mean It just started with an undying love for all things food. I grew up in the seventies and eighties and I didn't have an idea of what my career was gonna be and I went to college and I got my liberal arts four year BA um still I think when I graduated the age of 22 I still did not know what I was gonna be you know directing myself towards. But I did know that I was always interested in food in general. Before it was cool to have a pop-up restaurant, I had a little pop-up restaurant in high school with a friend of mine and we printed out menus and invited our friends and anything about food always stuck in my brain. It was the kind of information that I just never let go of and I loved to eat. My mother was a great cook. You know I went off to college got my history degree and only when I was starting to look for jobs that I realized that that was kind of the only common denominator in sort of all of my varied interests that sort of sustained me. My first job and my last job that wasn't in the food world was my first year out of college I was a third grade teacher in Brooklyn mostly because I had no idea what I was gonna do with myself. But then I got this incredible opportunity through a web of friends of friends. My aunt's next door neighbor in Providence, Rhode Island was Joan Nathan's mother. So Joan Nathan is a cookbook author who lives in Washington DC and I was moving to Washington DC after my one year of being a teacher. Joan Nathan was looking for an assistant, she was ramping up her business and needed someone to sort of just help her on the back end. And that was my first food job, being the assistant to Joan. I was doing lots of editing and recipe development and going to the Library of Congress and doing research. It was fascinating. But on top of that I was also picking up kids from soccer practice and taking grandma to her various activities, so I was sort of the family's assistant. And I say that because oftentimes people will be frustrated that their first jobs blur the lines of you know who you're actually working for when you work for a person. You know people who work for themselves are not just their own business. Their business and their family are completely intertwined especially if they work at home.
[00:04:54] Cynthia Samanian: Yes I'm feeling that to my core.
[00:04:58] Jennifer Clair: Right. So I I actually did not take offense to it at all. I kind of became part of the family and I loved it. So that was a year and a half and I got a little peek into what a life would look like if I were to pursue a career in food. Certainly at that time when there was no food media or anything no Food Network, no understanding of a career in food outside of being a chef in a restaurant or being a caterer. Those were kind of the only two avenues available to anyone who wanted a career in food. At least the obvious ones. And those were never appealing to me, but working for Joan I saw all the different things you can do. She was a cooking teacher, she wrote for the New York Times, she wrote for magazines. She was hired to give lectures. So she had a really really vast way of being involved in food.
[00:05:44] Cynthia Samanian: You're totally right. I think that unless you were exposed to or surrounded by people who were working in food outside of like you said restaurants are catering, that's kind of all you think there is. I know I had that same journey myself where I thought oh it would be great to go to culinary school but I actually don't want to open a restaurant.
[00:06:05] Jennifer Clair: So it was really eye opening and I I loved it. She ended up going away with her family for three months, so during that time I had to find another job so I started looking for work in the food world and there was a little uh bed and breakfast down the street called the Tabard Inn. And I went in applying for like a waitressing job and because I had worked for Joan they're like We have this job opening as a catering manager here. And I was thinking my God I I couldn't believe that they wanted to hire me for this catering manager job I was still like 23 or 24. It was a pretty special place. It's still around and it was run by all women. Like even the director of you know physical plan was a woman. So I got the job and I got thrown into event planning and creating menus for people and running these events. And I really loved it and just being in a food environment, so I was working with the kitchen at this in n and I realized this was where I wanted to be. I I was actually making money. I was in food. So I realized that this was a viable career. At the time I applied to get a scholarship to go to cooking school. I had no money. I just graduated from a very expensive college and so I could not you know burden my parents with any more asks for my education. So I applied to the James Beard Foundation and literally surprised nobody more than me, I got a full scholarship to go to a cooking school of my choice.
[00:07:27] Cynthia Samanian: Wow, that's incredible.
[00:07:30] Jennifer Clair: It was pretty it was a kinda thing where only a 20 year old brain can cooperate like this where I applied for this scholarship and then so much time elapsed between when I applied and when I got this scholarship, probably eight months, that I had forgotten I had applied for this scholarship. And they called to say you know congratulations, I had gotten this scholarship and I had to move to New York City because I had chosen a program at the Peter Kump's New York Cooking School which is now the Institute of Culinary Education. And and that was sort of like you know I could go on and on but basically that's what jump started my actual career in this.
[00:08:04] Jennifer Clair: I chose this program at Peter Kump's because it was gonna allow me to do an externship not in a restaurant kitchen. That was actually a brand new thing for schools to allow you to do your externship at a food magazine you know or at a at a television network that was doing food productions. So I did my externship at Saveur magazine. I was a research editor so I was basically calling and fact checking articles about donuts and Kansas City barbecue. I got to see the sort of editorial nature of a magazine and that really appealed to me because it was it was kind of like being back in college and studying and learning and writing and editing, but it was all about food.
[00:08:42] Jennifer Clair: So I was there for my externship which was three months and then I never wanted to leave. They did offer me a job and the pay was I don't know $18,000. And I was I was so in debt at this point I've been living on someone's couch to go to school and I just needed a job that paid, so I applied to a cookbook. There are many publishing houses that had a cookbook division, so I applied to one and I I got a job as an assistant editor at William Morrow which were running all kinds of cookbooks at the time like Emeril Lagasse's cookbooks, Lydia Bastianich, and it was great. That was a year of my life where I learned a ton about editing and writing a really good recipe. And that was great for a year but then I was kind of realizing it wasn't the part of food that I liked. I wasn't creating anything. certainly wasn't in a kitchen, I was stuck in a giant high-rise building in Midtown Manhattan.
[00:09:34] Jennifer Clair: So I started looking for jobs that would get me back into a kitchen and like three out of the 17 people who were in my cooking school graduating class all went on to Martha Stewart Living's test kitchen. So I got wind of a job that was coming up for a cookbook editor there. Somebody who would be a food editor and a books editor, someone who was basically in charge of the production of these cookbooks and and creating synergy between the kitchen and the the book staff. And I was like my God that's like right up my alley. So I applied for that job. I feel like I remember waiting almost six months to get this job back and forth and back and forth. It was like interminable. But I got it and I was there for four years and that was a pretty dreamy job.
[00:10:18] Cynthia Samanian: As I was learning more about your background and doing my own research, you have so many incredible experiences along your culinary path but there's Martha. Right?
[00:10:29] Jennifer Clair: And I was there in the heyday, before she got arrested.
[00:10:33] Cynthia Samanian: I remember growing up every Saturday morning we would watch Martha Stewart Living and it was the highlight of my weekends with my mom. And we you know of course had her magazines and we kept the old ones that had those tried and tested Thanksgiving turkey recipes, to this day my mom still has a stash from the nineties. It seems like kind of the golden time to be there.
[00:10:58] Jennifer Clair: It was the golden time and there was unlimited budgets. It was kind of this glorious four years. The fact that I was the age that I was which was my late twenties and I was surrounded by all of these incredibly creative people who were so good at their crafts and people were just brimming with ideas and it was the kind of place where you you know ideas were supported. And uh she had so many outlets too. She had the TV show like you're talking about and the magazine and the beginning of the Internet and a radio show and a Martha by Mail. So I loved it, loved it, loved it. I was in the test kitchen I was writing it was a beautiful thing.
[00:11:36] Jennifer Clair: But then fast forward four years, 2002 I got laid off. Because they started needing to shrink their staff because ad sales weren't you know keeping up with everything that they needed to do. Um and I was definitely devastated for 10 minutes when I got laid off but it did not I'd also been there for four years and I was not a very good employee. I just didn't always see authority as being where the buck stops.
[00:12:02] Cynthia Samanian: Right.
[00:12:03] Jennifer Clair: So I left there and I started trying to figure out what to do. People in my position typically went into food styling but I never liked food styling. It was part of my job but I was never very good at it because I was not interested in how food looked. I was interested in how food tasted or how you wrote a recipe. So I started applying for jobs to teach cooking classes at different little cooking schools and big cooking schools in New York City. And I started working at a couple and the main one was at the New School University in New York had a culinary arts program and they hired me and I started teaching and it was kind of almost instantly an aha moment where I was like whoa I love this because there's all these people here now. It's it's kind of everything I was doing before but I was sitting behind a computer and sitting in a test kitchen. But you weren't talking to your public. You got no feedback from your public, you know this was pre-social media, so there was no instant feedback. And I was a great teacher simply because of the personality I was you know born with but also I just have so much enthusiasm for food, I have a lot of knowledge, and so it just became a perfect vehicle for me. I was also getting this extra energy from these live people in front of me which is an aspect of my career that I didn't think I needed, but it became clear that I absolutely needed it. I am a people person.
[00:13:25] Cynthia Samanian: You said it was an aha moment once you started doing it but in your head were you thinking I'll try this out until something else comes along. Was this more of like a temporary job?
[00:13:35] Jennifer Clair: Well at the time I was doing a couple of things. I was also working for the Wall Street J ournal which was another super cushy cushy job. They had tons of money at the time and they were starting a new section of the paper called pursuits And it was all about you know food and stuff. And I got hired to be their recipe editor. And I was doing private teaching. I was doing teaching at classes, so I never sort of sat down and thought I'm just trying this out for now. And so I just kept moving along. I had enough money coming in from those sources that I didn't feel like I had to make a decision.
[00:14:06] Jennifer Clair: Then as I was teaching my cooking school had a great career services department and so every week we would get this giant list of all of the jobs for people with culinary degrees. So I just basically went through it every week because I was like I love food, I'm in food, I have this degree and here's what's available. And one of them was a guy looking to give his wife for her 30th birthday a private cooking class in their home kitchen in the Upper East Side. And she loves food and they wanted to choose the menu and they wanted a chef to come in. And I got this job and that was the beginning of the business I have today, Home Cooking New York.
[00:14:43] Jennifer Clair: It started out just like applying for this job, going into someone's house and realizing how fun and satisfying it was to teach people in their own homes as opposed to in a cooking school environment. I was meeting different people. The intimacy level was much different.
[00:14:56] Jennifer Clair: I made a little Yahoo Geocities website I called it Home Cooking, because that's exactly what I was doing. I was going to people's homes and cooking with them. And I wish I could tell you for the life of me how it turned into the business it turned into in those early days but it did. Enough word of mouth, I don't, maybe people were finding me online but it was just me at the time so all I needed was like three or four nights a week covered and also supplemented by these cooking school jobs that I had and I was sort of in business and it was so fun and it grew because I grew. I got married. I got pregnant. And then at a certain point, there was too much work for me so it turned into a business I say because all of a sudden I had to hire other chefs to show up to teach the classes. And so that was my first foray into having staff and trying to figure out you know how to grow. The business itself did that for almost seven years exclusively. Just private classes in people's homes because we didn't have a brick and mortar school, because it was New York City and you know getting a commercial lease was tantamount to impossible.
[00:16:05] Cynthia Samanian: Yeah I'm gonna ask you something. Do you think that that model would work today?
[00:16:10] Jennifer Clair: If we've moved on far enough from the pandemic where people aren't freaked out by people coming into their homes, it was a business model that I had no idea why nobody else duplicated. I had almost no competition and this was in New York City. And this business required zero overhead. I didn't have to maintain anything. I just had to have a website. And anytime I couldn't do something people would say you know can you recommend anyone else who's doing this And I'm like I'm sure there's so many chefs out there who would do what I do but they didn't run it as a business, so you couldn't find them if you search on the Internet for this. So I do think there is so much opportunity for this and I still am scratching my head why more people don't do it
[00:16:53] Cynthia Samanian: Yeah especially because of the overhead cost being so low, which we're gonna fast forward a bit. You you did eventually find a brick and mortar space. Right?
[00:17:04] Jennifer Clair: Yeah. I'm two stores down from the border of Soho and Chinatown but my my building is firmly in Chinatown and the reason I could even open it there is because it has a diner in the bottom. Trying to find a commercial space where I could open up a cooking school in a building that was friendly to food was very difficult. So it took a long time to find a building that was you know there's class A buildings, class B buildings I'm I'm almost sure I'm a class C building. There's no fancy lobby, you know it's steel double doors but um the only options for food spaces are restaurant level spaces and in New York City that's like $30,000 a month. That's untenable for a cooking school so I was looking for a second story building. So I opened up a public school in 2008, so that was 14 years ago. So my journey to where I am now, where I've been for seven years was insane. Like I had six different addresses because I was, you know, I was scrappy.
[00:18:11] Cynthia Samanian: Scrappy I know that word very well.
[00:18:13] Jennifer Clair: You have to be scrappy. Before I had signed my own lease, I was jumping from place to place. And they all lasted a year and I kept finding a home and luckily when you have a cooking school in the Internet age all I had to do was keep updating the address on my website as to where people would show up for these classes and it still looked like I was some sort of a business. But I did get myself a small business loan. I felt comfortable enough with the amount of classes we were teaching that I went and got what I thought was like the biggest loan ever. $45,000, which of course was a joke it's it's like most of it went to the deposit. The security deposit for this place was $25,000. But I did build out a kitchen in this space and that is kind of you know how we got our legs started and I have only just paid off that small business loan.
[00:19:06] Cynthia Samanian: $45k I mean that is a life changing amount of money to have access to when you are starting out and you don't have savings or something else that you can tap into. So our listeners are like you, in the culinary space either looking to teach online or are teaching online, and so I want to talk to you about your virtual cooking classes at Home Cooking New York. Of course we could do a whole episode just on the pandemic and the pivot that you had to make from going from in person to teaching online, but I know you have so much experience in kind of what has happened since uh having to go online and I would love to spend some time talking with you about that. Maybe we could start first with kind of how you thought about your business once you had to make that pivot online. Were you thinking of public classes or were you going straight to corporate? Where was your head at back in 2020?
[00:20:03] Jennifer Clair: We started just focusing on uh public classes, because you know we didn't know what the corporate response was gonna be to the pandemic. We just knew that we had classes filled with people that were coming to our school and then within a week we were shut and all those people were home. So it was so obvious that I wanted to sort of just reopen our school but just in a virtual sense. So the public classes were the focus and then we started getting desperate calls from event planners who had to cancel you know months and years worth of events that they had planned for their clients and they needed plan B and so they were looking for these options. So I ended up teaming up with so many people that I never had contact with just as running a brick and mortar school because it didn't matter where these event planners lived, whether they're from Florida or California or London.
[00:20:56] Cynthia Samanian: How do they find you?
[00:20:57] Jennifer Clair: The Internet. So you know you just google cooking classes and we switched so fast into virtual teaching. Um it's where my strength is, I love business building and you know I hadn't really done much business building in the last couple of years before the pandemic cuz we were at a really nice place. So when we had to shut down and I had you know this this feeling of I mean I was wanted to protect my teachers because I had these people out of work so I did everything I could to keep us all employed. Um and when there's a fire under me I I do my best work. I basically got our virtual classes up and running, I got the word out to everybody, I I pretended I was like I was starting a new business So I was sending out press releases to everybody I possibly could. We got a nice write up in the New York Times, which was fantastic and still to this day people say oh I found you in the New York Times and I was like wow that's from two years ago but it doesn't matter.
[00:21:53] Cynthia Samanian: When did you announce your virtual classes?
[00:21:56] Jennifer Clair: Within three weeks.
[00:21:59] Cynthia Samanian: So you had a feeling this was going to be a longer thing, like we weren't just going to have a month or two of no in-person.
[00:22:06] Jennifer Clair: I mean I didn't know right away. I was also like foolishly telling people we'll be rebooking you know your class for March probably you know end of April.
[00:22:16] Cynthia Samanian: Right.
[00:22:16] Jennifer Clair: Then yeah I mean I guess I was just watching all the writing on the wall. So the business took off. And I I ended up making more money that year than I had before because I now had more avenues. I was charging much less, so like in New York it's a hundred dollars a class. Virtual class started out being like $40 and then it went up to $50. So everything was cheaper but we had so many more students and I was running like 15 classes a week because I had six instructors home in their different apartments and so we could be teaching constantly. For our business it was incredible. There was no barrier. No barrier. Like the kitchen was a barrier because there's only one class can happen at a time. New York City is a barrier. You have to be physically there. So all of a sudden the barriers were gone and we were teaching public classes and these corporate events which were like I mean everybody knows who listens to your podcast, they're the money makers. The virtual classes, they're nice but my overhead basically everything was paid by these these corporate classes where it was like one lump sum you know just dropped in our laps.
[00:23:20] Jennifer Clair: And everybody kept asking about ingredient kits. That became another business that we started and I kept saying no because I just my brain couldn't handle it. I was home with my kids and my husband and we were figuring out the pandemic and was like I can't also send you groceries like are you insane?
[00:23:34] Cynthia Samanian: You're like, I can't even go to the grocery store for my own food.
[00:23:36] Jennifer Clair: Yeah, right exactly. But once somebody plants a seed in my head, it just takes a while. Like it just it was there I didn't even know it was sort of percolating but then all of a sudden I saw or I got wind of this place that was like a food importer and they were shipping out care packages to people because people didn't wanna go to the grocery store. So it's like you call them and they'll make in a lovely kit with like the best mozzarella and balsamic vinegar and Parmesan cheese and like I just connected it and I was like maybe I don't have to ship my own ingredient kits. Maybe somebody else will do it.
[00:24:10] Cynthia Samanian: Ok, yeah I was gonna ask you about that Jennifer, because that is one thing that a lot of my students ask me and they're like well you know these companies want the ingredients so should I do that as well and I would love your thoughts on this because where you were in your business is very different than where my listeners or students in my program are just starting out. So, what did you need to be able to say yes we can do kits, because you didn't fulfill them yourself, right?
[00:24:41] Jennifer Clair: No. Well I did in the beginning. So like basically the way that I operate is I always say yes and then I figure it out. The answer is yes you definitely can ship ingredients. You just have to figure out what that ingredient kit is. The issue is not waiting for the client to be like I need you to send me this kit. We wanna do a pizza class, we wanna do this class. The only way to get on top of this was we told them what we could offer. So I figured out what are non-perishable items that I can get and make a beautiful kit and make sure that they're beautifully sourced and the packaging is nice. Like I wanted to make sure that I could get chocolate chips that were in red packaging or green something pretty I didn't wanna just like Nestle Tollhouse chips. So I did tons of research about ingredients. There's places called Stock Up Express where you can just buy bulk wholesale items. You don't have to be a wholesaler. So I figured out how to make a cookie kit and then I base the recipes around it. So I have eight kits that I can make personally because they're all nonperishable items. I don't have to deal with any bubble wrap. I don't have to deal with any you know ice packs, none of that. Um so we do a falafel class. Like not every ingredient's going could be get sent. Like they're gonna have to have an egg They're gonna have to have you know anything fresh, but I make sure that it's very very doable and there's not a big ask. Like the most I ask people to get is some butter or an egg.
[00:26:03] Cynthia Samanian: Yeah, I love that tip. You tell them what's possible.
[00:26:06] Jennifer Clair: Yeah and so I created a webpage called ingredient kits I took pictures of what they look like, I listed all the ingredients in there and then I was like yes of course we can send you ingredients. Here are our options. And so I do fulfill most of them now because things have slowed down. At the height of the pandemic when we had way too much business for me to do it all, that's when I started subcontracting out. And it's not hard with a little bit of Googling to find food purveyors like small little food shops. Everyone has an online mail order business now, so let them worry about how to pack everything in the cold packs and pay for the FedEx. You know obviously when I when I co-op Um I had two people that I work with Um at the time I thought I needed someone on each coast so I had someone in San Francisco and someone in Brooklyn. Now it doesn't matter but I get much less money off these ingredient kits than I if I send it myself I can make like $35 a kit which is substantial especially if I'm sending out you know 40 kits.
[00:27:12] Cynthia Samanian: Profit.
[00:27:13] Jennifer Clair: That's profit. So like the you know the smallest profit I make is $15 a kit if I pay somebody else to do it but that's still money, and it's not as much but I wouldn't have gotten that corporate job anyways if I wasn't gonna be able to send these kits because that's what corporate clients are looking for. The full picture. They don't wanna give this as a gift to their employees or as a way to get clients wooed or as a thank you or you know all the different reasons. It's a gift to somebody. So to then ask them to go get groceries on top of it that's not really a gift. And that's why we do more corporate classes now because we offer the full package.
[00:27:52] Cynthia Samanian: That's so so helpful and I really appreciate you sharing that because I think most people think that ingredient kits have to truly include every single ingredient and what you've shared is that your recipe selection is so important. Choose something that most of the items are non-perishable so that like you said they only need butter or an egg or something that they hopefully already have at home.
[00:28:17] Jennifer Clair: Mm-hmm so it's not a big ask. And also, you will always find somebody to collaborate with. I mean everybody, every business is trying to do this and so many people ship food already don't reinvent the wheel. That's what took the longest amount of time was creating these relationships with with other companies to ship the ingredient kits like so much back and forth but it was worth it a million fold because now I can say yes to anything without worrying about personally fulfilling it. Actually the second most impossible thing that took so much time but is ultimately worth it is shipping. Figuring out shipping. The box size. Should I do it with UPS or USPS or FedEx and like what's the best rate and how do you even go about calculating shipping costs? If anybody ever wants to call me I'm very happy to talk through it.
[00:29:07] Cynthia Samanian: Be careful you're gonna get a lot of phone calls.
[00:29:10] Jennifer Clair: Well that's fine cause I feel like I have an answer to all these things that took many months. But like there's FedEx one rate and everybody's eligible for it but not everybody knows about it because you have to have a FedEx rep. Um so that took me a very circuitous amount of time to figure out, but yes happy to share it because it's it's key.
[00:29:30] Cynthia Samanian: So I wanna know how has your corporate business evolved or grown since things have started to slow down with the pandemic? How has that business changed for you?
[00:29:41] Jennifer Clair: It's definitely slowed down for sure. I mean the business that I run is both in person and virtual so I have the benefit of the fact that at the exact same time that virtual corporate events slowed down, they started ramping up in person. So I have been able to ride that wave. I don't know if it was just you know obviously it was it was abundant during the pandemic, but I know that it's sustainable so I'm just looking at what it used to be. I still have you know probably two corporate events a week still. So that's still good income because that's income I didn't have you know before the pandemic and we're still operating in person. But there are so many companies that always operated remotely anyways, so this whole boom of the virtual experience isn't going anywhere just because people are going back to work. There's still companies that have satellite offices or have clients that are in one state and you know and employees in another. So I think that it's sustainable to build a virtual corporate class business. You know, it's not gonna be the abundance it used to be but it's there. It's viable. And there's so many third party booking platforms right now that have come out of the pandemic. So our classes, we don't just sell direct. You know we are also on something called Class Bento. We work with something called Cater to Me. Like, there's just all these third party booking platforms like just search for virtual cooking experiences and see all the companies that don't actually provide these experiences, they're just placeholders, they're like Airbnb.
[00:31:16] Cynthia Samanian: Yeah they need you and they need other instructors.
[00:31:18] Jennifer Clair: Yeah, so making sure that you are listed on every possible platform that sells your kind of experience has helped. It's kind of like your quiet marketing costs. Like I don't pay for any advertising but what I pay in marketing or advertising is basically coming out of the percentage that I pay to these third party platforms to book these events which is usually between 20 and 25%.
[00:31:44] Cynthia Samanian: Yeah. And in your head you're thinking well I wouldn't have gotten that client anyways if I wasn't on that platform, so yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So I would love to hear you talk about how this hybrid model is working for you because I think that you know there are some people who are going all in online and then there are people who are thinking of having a mix of both in person and online cooking classes and wondering okay should I do both? Does it help to have both uh especially as we're kind of in this time of uncertainty.
[00:32:16] Jennifer Clair: Right, well as long as people are thinking like your options are doing it virtually or going to someone's place because both of those models are no overhead. Like opening up your own space, that's a whole another business model and not what I necessarily recommend doing without really thinking it through. Um it's already something I have and so I'm sustaining it but the overhead model of doing private classes in people's homes or at their location or virtual is zero. No overhead. So there's no reason not to offer both in person at their site and virtual. Like why wouldn't you? It's just more opportunity for you to make money and you're not putting any money out to do it. It's just another tab on your website.
[00:33:01] Jennifer Clair: And I always feel like people feel worried about offering something until they're totally sure of it. I guess that's a personality thing. For me, that is how I grow. I always say yes to everything and then I figure out how to do it, but not everybody feels comfortable with that. But offering on your website that you offer you know in person classes you know in someone's home. Just know that when you offer it you don't have to say yes to anything. You can say this is what I offer, this is the price or the price range, and here are the menu options and it's all a negotiation. So it's worth putting it up there because it takes people so long to sort of notice something so even if you think oh tomorrow I'm gonna start offering in person and virtual, it's gonna take months for people to like who come to your site or for Google to be able to search with those keywords in mind. and I know that this is true because anytime we offer a new class at the school like I come up with a new idea like summer pasta workshop, no one's gonna register for that class for months because it's new and people can sniff out a new thing. And I don't know how because I've been operating for so many years and like menus come and go, but I have seen that it's best to like put an idea up on your website and let it gain traction. Don't wait until you're a hundred percent ready and then launch it because nobody cares. Nobody knows and like it's it's all about sort of building awareness online and in people's minds. I think about how I shop too online and I'm sure you're like this too. Like it's not like oh I want a pair of red shoes I go online I search for red shoes I buy them. No it's like I see them, I close my browser, I think about it, I look again. It takes a while to get comfortable with a decision to buy something and I think it's true with classes.
[00:34:49] Cynthia Samanian: Yes absolutely and this is something that I just experienced. I have two alums who I'm working with really closely on their corporate class experience and we had them do a lot of outreach and let their network know that they were doing this and they both were like no one bought. And I was like yeah of course they're not gonna buy because people don't buy until they actually need something. Right. And so it's just about planting the seed. Exactly.
[00:35:15] Jennifer Clair: Plant the seed. Don't wait because you're wasting time. Plant the seed right away. We're thinking about doing this. We're so excited about it. Here's what's coming up and then you yeah you do have to sit back and you can't like be like well that was a bust because it takes people forever. But I always say don't waste time agonizing. You know it's you're in business. You have to see what people want. Like you can't force what you want on your customers. You have to give them your menu of things that you would like to do and let them chew it over.
[00:35:47] Cynthia Samanian: Yes in my program I talk a lot this idea of taking imperfect action. There are so many perfectionists and I think even more so in the culinary world but at the end of the day like what you think is perfect in your head could totally flop in the marketplace.
[00:36:03] Jennifer Clair: I operate so imperfectly. I run a great cooking school. I love it, but the way that I have to motivate myself is we I was just having this conversation with one of my teachers, we wanna offer a donut workshop in person. People love donuts. I mean we have never offered one I don't know why. And I have to figure out like the kinds of donuts we're gonna offer and you know we have to do some recipe testing and I realized that the only way I was gonna actually do it is if I booked it. So I put it on our calendar for July And I was like well there's my end date. I'm putting it out there, people are already registering for it. And now I have deliver some donuts by mid-July but that's how I motivate myself. When I work for myself it's like I have to have all these little tricks about like how to keep me moving forward. I did that with the ramen workshop. We're starting a ramen DIY ramen workshop with homemade noodles at the end of this month at our New York City school and I had never made ramen before but now you know we're almost getting up there and I just distributed all the recipes to my instructor so they could start playing with them at home. But like it took me way more tries to find a ramen noodle that worked but it was so fun to have this deadline that I enforced. So I love that imperfect whatever you just called it.
[00:37:21] Cynthia Samanian: Yeah imperfect action and that's actually what I have my students do is before they go down the path of all of the nitty gritty and the tech, I ask them what are you teaching and when and put it on the calendar. I don't care if it's a month from now, two months from now, three months from now, when it's on the calendar it feels real. And even more like you said taking it a step further when you publicize it and when you tell people it's happening, oh then it's really real.
[00:37:44] Jennifer Clair: Right. And the most thrilling thing is that first registration for a class that doesn't even exist and I was like whoops OK it's time to start recipe testing.
[00:37:55] Cynthia Samanian: That's such a great trick. And we need things like that because especially I mean you have employees and so you have people around you but especially solopreneurs, we make the rules and no one is gonna call us out on it. So we have to find a way to stay motivated but also be willing to take those steps even when we don't feel ready and we feel like it's scary and we don't know how we're gonna figure it out. You will. You'll have to.
[00:38:20] Jennifer Clair: Sometimes I don't even know until I talk to somebody like you about how I run my business, I'm not thinking about what I do to run this business until I start articulating it. It does feel like a big game of monopoly but it works somehow.
[00:38:34] Cynthia Samanian: Yeah it sounds like it's working really really well. So, you're such a wealth of information and if you could kind of sum up one piece of advice, one thing that you would want to share with our listeners who are culinary business owners who want to teach online, what would be that big piece of advice you'd wanna give them?
[00:38:53] Jennifer Clair: Just say yes to everything because if I can track in my own career all the things that came out of saying yes to something that seemed unrelated you know to what my goal was, um then I sort of see the thread. Because every time you say yes to something, you create goodwill, you create a connection with another human being or another company or another group. And building a business is all about that. It's like networking and especially if you are working in a virtual medium where you are doing it from home. You're not physically around people. You're not going to networking events at a bar or at a local club. You know all your connections are so vital because a) it's no fun to run a business alone and if anyone wants to teach cooking classes I'm assuming they all come from a similar interest in connecting with other human beings. And so every opportunity to connect even if it doesn't make sense financially, like obviously you can't say yes to some things because there's a cost attached, but if if something isn't gonna cost you much or it's something you're trying out and take the money out of the equation and just say yes to things that will again connect you with people you wouldn't necessarily connect with if you were waiting for them to pay you for something.
[00:40:14] Jennifer Clair: What I love about having my own business is the opportunity to say yes to whatever I want to. You know I don't say yes to a hundred percent of everything but my favorite word in the world is connection because it's why I get up every day and do what I do. My personal life is driven by connection, but so is my business life. Like this wouldn't be any fun without all the people. You cannot possibly know where connections will lead you so it's best just to accumulate as many as you can.
[00:40:41] Cynthia Samanian: That's great advice and if I think back on my own career, I see that as well. The things you say yes to at the time you may not know why you should be doing it exactly. It's not always crystal clear but those connections do come around and it's fun to look back and think about that and then also know that in your present like that's happening right now. And in five years you'll look back and say wow that interview I did with Jennifer who who knew would turn into whatever it may be.
[00:41:10] Jennifer Clair: The butterfly effect. It's it's so true And it's it's rare that you ever look back on something and be like I shouldn't have made that connection. That's almost never the case. know it's always a a missed opportunity and never a regret.
[00:41:22] Cynthia Samanian: Right. Or you learn what you don't like just going back to earlier jobs that you had. You only knew that you didn't want to do certain things because you said yes to them and realized nope this is not it.
[00:41:35] Jennifer Clair: Yeah that's a good thing to remember because some people do talk themselves out of saying yes because they're like well last time I did it, this is what happened. And you're right. Every negative experience is a learning experience. Never a waste.
[00:41:46] Cynthia Samanian: Yes. In the kitchen. In business. In life. Yeah Well thank you so much Jennifer for your time today. If our listeners want to connect with you, learn more about you and Home Cooking New York, where should they go?
[00:41:59] Jennifer Clair: I think my website has everything, every way to get in touch with me. And I'm very open about everything we offer. You can see all the ingredient kits we offer and you can look at them for inspiration. My website is homecookingny.com.
[00:42:13] Cynthia Samanian: Great Thank you so much We'll be sure to put the link in the show notes so people can find you.
[00:42:17] Jennifer Clair: Terrific. Thank you Cynthia. I'm a big fan of your podcast so it's fun to be be on the other end. No matter how long you're in business, there's always something to glean so I do love listening to all of your guests.
[00:42:30] Cynthia Samanian: Ah, I'm totally uh flattered and honored. Thank you so much Jennifer!
[00:42:34] Cynthia Samanian: All right, chefs, that's it for today's show. Let me know! What was your biggest takeaway from this episode? I would absolutely love to hear from you on Instagram, so send me a message @culinarycynthia. I'm also coming out with a brand new free training to help you figure out how to take the next step in teaching online. To learn more, send me a DM with the word start and I'll send you a link to sign up for the training.
[00:43:01] Cynthia Samanian: And finally, if you're a fan of this podcast, if you've enjoyed every episode you've heard, don't be shy! Leave a rating and review wherever you're listening in. It goes such a long way in making sure that this podcast gets into the ears of chefs like you.
[00:43:17] Cynthia Samanian: In fact, I want to give a shout out to Ellen Allard, who is not only a listener of this podcast, but also an alum of Culinary Creator Business School. Here's what she says. I listen when I'm doing my daily three mile walk, but I pause it regularly to go to my Notes app and leave a golden nugget that has been shared on the podcast. So much of the information here applies not just to the business of cooking classes. There's so much value here for anyone who has a business.
[00:43:43] Cynthia Samanian: Thank you, Ellen, for letting us know that you are loving this podcast and spreading the word. I'll see you back here next week for another episode of the CCBS podcast. Talk soon!