WAUKESHA – A Waukesha-based chef with an worldwide background will acquire her cooking class product nationally through franchising rights.
Chef’s Pam Kitchen, alone a a sort of culinary generation of Pam Dennis, announced it has embarked on its hard work to discover new partners to increase a cooking-course thought that commenced in downtown Waukesha in 2019 and speedily grew domestically, even versus the headwinds of a pandemic.
In a March 1 news release, the company mentioned franchise partners will “gain from a versatile design and can select the sorts of lessons they give, the situations they host, and whether or not they will rent the space out.”
For Dennis, it truly is simply just the following phase in her culinary commitment.
“Cooking is my passion, and to share my like of cooking with our potential generations,” Dennis reported in an email. “My Mother gave that enjoy for cooking to our loved ones and I want to carry that on by supplying a Chef Pam’s Kitchen in lots of areas. I might like to see everyone get pleasure from these culinary experiences.”
Italian, Albanian and Wisconsin food items have all motivated Chef Pam’s cooking
Dennis has prolonged absorbed cuisine with an international taste. Her father, an Albanian, taught her mom, a Boston-spot lady who liked to make foods from scratch, how to put together such Balkan and Albanian favorites as baklava and shish kebab.
In addition, Dennis, a retired U.S. Navy captain who labored 24 yrs as a Navy nurse, was when stationed in her early services many years in the port town of Pozzuoli in southern Italy. There, she also learned from an older girl, Anna, who she named her “Italian mother” and who expanded her European cuisine information. The fact that her husband’s grandmother was also Italian additional to her appreciation of pasta dishes and sauces.
In a 2019 interview, she said even her introduction to Wisconsin decades afterwards additional to her cooking tastes. “Fish fry on Friday evenings became a great way to satisfy neighbors and get a crispy fish supper, a minimal reminiscent, much too, of again property in New England with our fish and chips,” Dennis claimed.
Irrespective of the pandemic, Chef Pam’s small business model promptly expanded
With a cooking want in tow and her Navy occupation winding down, Dennis well prepared her next vocation.
Subsequent a 13-month deployment to Landstuhl Regional Health-related Center in Germany in 2006, she considered how to use her G.I. Invoice advantages, which turned particularly handy the 12 months right after her 2009 retirement. When generally working as a nurse, she enrolled in the culinary arts program at Waukesha County Technical University, at some point graduating with an associate’s diploma in December 2017.
Minimal additional than a calendar year later, she opened Chef Pam’s Kitchen, a pretty modest operation in 860 square ft of space at 290 W. Most important St. in downtown Waukesha. The acceptance of her organization product speedily became evident. Even with class cancellations tied to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the business did additional than return. It expanded, increasing to the level the place she quintupled the operation, opening up in spacious quarters following door at 280 W. Principal St. early in 2021.
In addition to incorporating 4 further commercial kitchens, Chef Pam’s Kitchen area created much larger class and dining locations and formulated a new retail marketplace, in which groups as significant as 99 folks can hold private gatherings.
Intrigued in franchising? Here’s what to be expecting
So the enterprise — now regarded for its all-ages cooking lessons, area chef pop-up functions, wintertime farmers marketplace, supper club meetups and professional kitchen area rentals — will see how many others are intrigued in what has verified to be a domestically thriving business design.
The company said the Chef Pam’s Kitchen franchise design will include “an comprehensive” support plan that incorporates instruction, operational techniques, advertising and marketing strategies and funding tips for franchisees for as lengthy as they retain their franchises.
“Our franchise companions can expect a extremely arms-on help system,” Dennis explained. “We will be there for them from the pretty initial moment they signal, offering assistance, remaining obtainable, instruction them, connecting them with vendors, sharing internet marketing strategies. … The listing goes on and on.”
That help could also incorporate visits from Dennis or her corporation even following they open up, giving extra instruction and details, she extra.
“Our purpose listed here is to aid our franchisees sense snug in operations and internet marketing, leaving no problem unanswered and giving obtainable solutions when they need them,” Dennis said.
Contact Jim Riccioli at (262) 446-6635 or[email protected]. Stick to him on Twitter at@jariccioli.