Greene County CTC students earn trip to national culinary competition
Three Greene County culinary students are heading to the land of crab cakes for a national competition.
Greene County Career & Technology Center students Eleanor Turner, Alivia Minor and Jessie Cooke earned a trip to the National ProStart Student Invitational, which will be held May 2-4 in Baltimore, Md.
In February, they won the management division in Pennsylvania’s 11th annual state competition, hosted by the Pennsylvania Restaurant & Lodging Association.
Students were tasked with coming up with a concept for a restaurant — type of food, freestanding or food truck — and then fleshing it out with a five-year business plan. That means creating blueprints for the facility, performing a SWOT analysis — strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats — and developing a marketing campaign.
“The goal is for judges to want to invest in your business … so you have to make yourself marketable along with your product, and it has to be interesting,” Turner said.
Their product: a gluten-free bakery serving cookies, breads and cupcakes. They would also ship gluten-free foods to other restaurants.
It’d be a women-owned business, an angle that extended to the gluten-free line-up, Turner said: Women make up 60% to 70% of those diagnosed with celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder that attacks gluten.
At the competition, the students give their five-minute presentation to about 10 different rounds of judges, all versed in a different facet of the food industry, from marketing to cost analysis.
“It’s super-fun because they’re all industry professionals,” Turner said. “They know exactly what they’re looking for and what you’re talking about, so they’re not lost or confused. They understand exactly what you’re saying. It’s just a really interesting, invigorating competition.”
Some groups can rely too heavily on one person to carry the load, said instructor Dan Wagner. But all three students are all “power players,” he said.
Early in the project, the students had a few questions, which Wagner answered by drawing a couple of items on the board. But after that, he was hands-off, he said.
“It’s a great team,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll see another team like it in my career.”
Ahead of May’s national competition, the students will tweak their pitch based on the improvements suggested by judges — impressively few, Wagner pointed out. More emphasis on being a women-owned bakery, for one. And an eagle-eyed judge spotted the lack of a scaling table in the kitchen.
Winning nationals would be nice, the students said. But more importantly, they get a chance to meet other like-minded students, and see concepts that can spark ideas of their own.
“It’s just important to learn, and really grasp everyone’s ideas, and just take in the whole experience,” Minor said.
After the school year, Turner will be going on to the Culinary Institute of America. Minor will attend Westmoreland Community College, and later plans to open a small bakery or a sandwich shop.
With this year’s competition, she already has a head start. It’s made her more passionate about pursuing a business, Minor said.
More than that, it’s taught her how to carry herself as a person.
“Whether I’m going to open a business or not, it’s super-important in the whole field,” she said. “You need professionalism, you need hospitality. It’s just all important, and it goes together.”