In Hayden, Idaho, residents don’t have many options for fancy restaurant food. But they do have Tiffani Roesler and her store, Gourmet Way, which hosts cooking classes in the retailer’s big commercial kitchen.
“You can’t just go and get Moroccan food here,” Roesler notes. “There aren’t that many places to eat out. So if you offer a Moroccan cooking clas,s you get a lot of people who want to learn how to cook that food for themselves.”
Retailers like Roesler, who offer successful cooking classes in their stores, have learned to bring something special to the table, to appeal customers looking for options beyond going out to dinner, for having fun.
To that end, Roesler makes the class a date-worthy experience. “I keep class sizes small, like having a dinner out, and we have a variety of chefs come in who are expert in different cuisines,” she says. Her customers eat it up. “They take pictures of the food and the chef. They post on Facebook and tell their friends about our cooking classes.” Customer word-of-mouth helps boost the store’s business. “If you have a good cooking class, it advertises itself,” says Roesler.
Jill Foucre, owner of Marcel’s Culinary Experience, would agree. The Glyn Ellyn, Ill., kitchenware store was named Best Cooking School For Date Night, in Chicago Magazine’s 2014 Best of Chicago listing. “The hardest part will be choosing from an abundance of creatively conceived classes,” the magazine gushed about the cooking school. Those editors may be right.
Named after Foucre’s grandfather, a French chef, Marcel’s features a state-of-the-art kitchen that offers over 200 classes a year. “I have an executive chef on staff here and seven chefs who teach classes,” says Foucre.
The store’s website describes the classes as “a place to pull up a chair, gather around the table and discover fabulous food adventures.” Marcel’s staff includes professional chefs and chef educators as well as culinary assistants. With a professional line up like that, there are classes to suit everyone, not just for date night. “We have all sorts of classes, including hands-on cooking classes, kid’s classes and corporate events,” Foucre says.
Turning corporate events into fun events is a specialty at Whisk in Cary, N.C., where the retailer’s cooking school is the place for corporate team building classes, says owner Dan Saklad. Located in a top area for research and academic institutions, Saklad’s customer base includes business executives who find cooking a way to relax.
“We have a lot of people come in who have high-powered jobs and find sitting in our classes a release from their everyday tension,” he says. “In our cooking classes they are in a different environment, surrounded by creative people.”
Hosting private corporate events in the Whisk cooking school has been good way for the retailer to build business, he adds. “We do a lot of company team-building classes,” he notes, including hosting classes in the style of the Food Network shows, Iron Chef and Chopped. “With team building, they will call and say, ‘We’d love to make Brazilian food,’ and we will provide whatever they want in terms of their team goals,” says Saklad, a former business executive.
“Garnishing challenges, cooking challenges. It depends on how competitive they want to be. Sales groups are extremely competitive,” he notes. But these retailers say cooking schools do more than bring in paying customers, as nice as that is. “The cooking school makes the store smell good, it creates ambiance and entertainment,” says Saklad. And that, he says, helps to establish the store as a place where cooks come to gather. “Our focus is on building a community, a community of cooks.”
