Focused Quality Systems

Can a weekend cooking school have a quality system?

Posted by Ed - 23/03/09 at 08:03 pm

It did and the Cooking School was Cookery At The Cove (1975-1984) Jack Schneider was the founder and I was his partner. See Bon Appetit April 1979 -A candied pineapple dipped in chocolate was on the cover. the Cove was the featured cooking school and those pre-Food Network days, this was one of the highest levels a cooking school could achieve.

Quality Systems come in all sizes and shapes. My first quality system  was at the Cove and it consisted of:

1. Jack’s Vision Statement: I want this to be the best cooking school in the world.

2. The end result was defined and measured: “They come as strangers and leave as hugging friends.”

3. It was powered by continuous improvement which grew it into the Fantasy Island of cooking schools with people flying into Sea Ranch and greeted with iced sparkling wine, fresh cut wild flowers and soft classical music.  At it’s height Julia Child was our guest cooking instructor for three sessions.

There was no quality manual just checklists so we didn’t forget anything, the remote corner store had only one of everything. The passion of the owner and the like minded staff  focused to meet every guest’s need. “Oh you don’t drink wine, we will get what you want for the weekend”.  Guest’s cook but never washed a dish.

The grand dinner had 8-10 courses with the same number of wines and separate silverware and dishes for each course.  As the evening progressed to flaming dessert the dishes were carefully removed to end with a clean dining room just in time for the show.

Yes, the staff who served became the stars that performed.

The guests left after Sunday Brunch at Jack’s ocean side house and after a few hours break our continuous improvement session occurred at a dinner where we tested new recipes. We reviewed the weekend from the signup to the completion. Only two questions were asked ‘what happened’ and ‘what could we do to make it better’.

That experience was the beginning of my quality career, not a bad training program. What do you think?

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 8:04 pm and is filed under How to ..., Success Stories. The entry is tagged under You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.