Young Chefs Academy Franchise
Last weekend my daughter was invited to a friends birthday party held on a local bakery franchisee’s premises. This company is fairly high profile and well regarded about town, but I didn’t know that they hosted kid’s birthday parties, so I was anxious to see how it all turned out.
It was a drop-off party. In other words, parents not required, so I didn’t get to observe, but I certainly heard all about it from my excited daughter afterwards. The instructors were “very kind” and “you didn’t get scolded if an egg rolled off the table and broke on the floor”! I liked the crisp white uniform complete with chef’s hat, all emblazoned with the company’s logo, that she was wearing when she jumped in the family car. I certainly liked some of the cakes she brought home, not all of which were cooked by the kids. Some were straight from the retail display cabinet.
You can’t help but feel good about a business that brings kids together and helps them learn in a fun but safe environment. When you think about it, there is a lot to learn in a kitchen: Ingredients must be measured carefully by weight or volume. you must be careful of sharp knives and hot ovens. Cooperation is needed between kids if the result is to be good, paying attention to the instructor is important, but a bit of creativity is essential too. There’s a bit of chemistry in baking soda and biology in yeast and plenty of other things to spark interest in young minds.
Perhaps it was one of those synchronicity moments, but I noticed that Young Chefs Academy has been added to the directory just a few days ago. I had a feeling that there was another business similar in nature already listed and so I went searching. I found it, it is (was) called Viva the Chef which promised “Viva the Chef is a culinary school with classes for kids and for adults. They have a six-week Mommy and Me morning class designed for a mother and a three or four year old child as well as other classes for older kids and for adults.”
Now there is a sign on their website which says:
“Viva The Chef is now closed. If you are interested in purchasing the book of business or the business concept, please email rwatts@kidchefs.org.
To all of you that supported us in the past four years, THANK YOU!!”
Well, another franchise bites the dust! I’ve left the entry in the directory, as the contact details may be of interest to some of our visitors.
I was curious about Young Chefs as I remember seeing references to it from time-to-time over the past few years, but it has always seemed a bit low profile.
I decided to investigate further. Well, Young Chefs Academy certainly has a history! They obviously got off to a rocky start. You can read more about the early years at this interesting line of blog posts: http://www.franchisespeak.com/young-chefs-academy-discussion
Now, those posts are a couple of years old now and it is entirely possible that the franchisors have sorted out many of their problems and most franchisees have moved into positive territory. Let’s hope so.
The local bakery franchise which hosted the party my daughter attended only does this in a few of their outlets and rather than depending on this business line for their main revenue, it would be considered an add-on. Further more the outlet hosting the party is in a shopping center that is quiet on the weekends.
So here we have two different franchise approaches to the idea of fun-themed cooking classes for kids. As an add-on it seems to have every chance of success and I wonder how many successful bakeries have considered taking it on.
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