Nathan’s November 2020 Newsletter
Now the real fun begins.
After an extraordinary summit and allowing time to let everything sink in, our focus is on our flagship program, which includes the GCI’s foundational components, what makes us who we are. The next months are crucial in which we will need to articulate our product offering, know our target student type and what we will be known for in the industry.
It is not going to be easy as we want to do so much, and now, we need to focus on what’s most important. Lior says it all the time, “we are not looking to be different, just to be different.”
The goal is to significantly impact the culinary industry, the lives of those students we serve, and our community. We want to awaken a passion for all the tourists taking classes or enjoying the incredible food from the region and top worldwide culinary talent. We need to be crystal clear on who we are and what will be delivered to our stakeholders.
The main differentiator that we identified is our emphasis on serving the student. Our focus is on helping students develop into culinarians who impact wherever they decide to go (or stay in Israel). This is a huge undertaking considering we are looking to create culinary tracks based on the students’ strengths and passions while working on the areas that need some fine-tuning.
We are also identifying common themes that will be woven into everything we do at the GCI. Areas include business and leadership, community, people, culture, innovation, marketing, branding, communication, technology, and lifelong learning skills. We are looking at the percentage of in-class, online, and experiential learning and the length of our overall program.
One of the most significant issues we have seen with other culinary institutes is their cookie-cutter approach to the end goal. Meaning, they provide the narrative that everyone will be a chef, a top chef who eventually becomes famous. Also, while they place the students in jobs, they usually are not the right job for the specific person. On the other hand, we will not create false narratives that lead students to eventually leave the culinary world.
We want to work with the student to determine a path based on their passions and strengths. The goal is to give students early on experience in different parts of the culinary life-cycle (farming, production, packaging, photography, marketing, restaurants, etc.) to get their feet wet and know where they don’t want to put their feet. Many programs, while teaching great content, miss the point of understanding the student. This usually translates into students leaving the industry after having some not great experiences.
After getting their feet wet through discovery, we want to focus on the student’s sweet spot through skills enhancement. We want to focus on improving strengths and weaknesses while identifying a career path that works best for that individual. Some students might be great chefs, other great business leaders, or food photographers. The key is identifying what is best for the specific student.
The last step would be to allow the student to work in the career path desired through an apprenticeship model while creating relationships with relevant industry players so that the right position is lined up when they complete our program. This isn’t a hard last step, as we see our students being connected to us throughout their career and staying in touch to provide guidance when needed.
All of this is in the works. I didn’t even get started with the differentiator of being in Israel, co-creation of classes and business opportunities, or working with the local community. So much to do, but with such an influential group of team members, partners, and advisors, we know we can make this happen.
Looking forward to a successful month of putting the pieces of the puzzle together and genuinely creating something unique that will impact the industry for good.
L’chaim (To life)
Nathan