How does an MBA help Home Chefs? The story of an MBA student turned home-chef

1. Introduction
2. Introducing Jayalakshmi
3. What made her choose this path
4. What’s in the box the home chef prepares?
5. What management lessons can a home chef learn from an MBA?
6. Mastering the art of advanced preparation
7. The leadership effect: The motive behind serving food for sick families
8. Stay organized and take notes
9. Manage routine and processes
10. Concluding thoughts

Introduction

Of late, home chef businesses are increasing by leaps and bounds but managing one is not a cakewalk. From inventory to delivery, the business is fraught with many uncertainties. But an MBA degree can offer you the required management skills and knowledge. Here is one such story of an MBA student who leveraged her education to start a venture of her own and is now a home chef serving meals to families going through worse during the recent outbreak.

Introducing Jayalakshmi

With unemployment rates on the surge, it has become even more difficult for recent MBA graduates to find a job of their choice. While the management program has given them the required skills and knowledge to survive in a competitive field, it depends on how the individual utilizes the imparted education to align his/her career.

Jayalakshmi Pailoor, an MBA student who turned home chef, is the founder of Jaya’s Kitchen. The current pandemic situation and the lockdown forced her to think beyond corporate jobs and led to her venturing into the food industry. Currently, she is working as a home chef for an Indian platform run by Chef Saransh Goila to offer food to sick families.

What made her choose this path?

In one of her conversations with Times of India, the 25-year old home chef narrated her journey as to what made her take up this task. 

“The pandemic and lockdown have forced me to think beyond corporate jobs. After completing my M.Com from St. Agnes College, Mangalore, I worked for a brief period but had to quit in August last year, for several reasons, including taking up an MBA course and dealing with my mother’s recurrence of cancer. Cooking has always been my passion, and I used this period to launch a social business”.

According to an article by Times of India published on 11th June 2021.

What’s in the box the home chef prepares?

The home chef has faced high demand for roti, sabzi, and dal tadka. She also prepares nutritious meals for diabetic patients. 

Her meals are also priced very reasonably. A Jaya’s Kitchen breakfast box costs around Rs. 50 while customized lunch and dinner costs around Rs. 70. 

What management lessons can a home chef learn from an MBA?

MBA curriculum is designed in such a way that it covers all the essential parts of management and imparts the required skills and knowledge to survive in any field you are put through. Here are some lessons that home chefs like Jayalakshmi can learn from their MBA degrees.

How management lessons have helped Jayalakshmi

Jayalakshmi’s prime focus was to incorporate the management skills and knowledge she had learned into her venture. As the only employee in her business, she manages everything by herself. 

Mastering the art of advanced preparation

Every meal has its combination of dishes, and one has to multitask between the various plating stages to make the meal. Also, chopping and cleaning raw materials consume a significant amount of time.

That’s when Pre-planned Executions, a fundamental lesson taught during an MBA to analyze a task and make a list of prerequisites required to complete a task in advance, come into the picture. The same can be done in cooking, as the chef can review recipes and prepare ingredients in advance. And, once the routine is set, it can save a lot of time and energy during meal preparation.

Jayalakshmi too implements the same in her kitchen. She prepares a list of tasks that need to be done, like restocking the vegetables and packaging items. Later, she cleans up the kitchen and ensures that everything is in order and that hygiene is maintained to the highest standards. 

The leadership effect: The motive behind serving food for sick families

About eight years ago, Jayalakshmi’s mother, diagnosed with cancer, was admitted to the hospital. During that time, she had noticed how her relatives and well-wishers would prepare and send food for them. 

But, it was during the outbreak, the thought of helping that the other families in need sprang to the 25-year-old’s mind. She wanted to serve the patients with the same love and care she had received when her mom was sick. She took the responsibility of starting her own venture and helping out the people in need, which is one of the main traits of a leader. 

Jayalakshmi’s Pailoor eventually turned the idea of serving food to sick families into reality by the first week of May. She learned to cook simple and healthy vegetarian meals during her mother’s health crisis. So, she executed this same menu to serve the needy. By far, she has supplied more than 150 meals and is expected to touch the 500-mark very soon.

As a chef and master of your workspace, you have to have strong leadership skills that incorporate execution, preparation, and excellent time management skills. An MBA imparts strong leadership and time management skills that chefs can utilize while at their workplace. 

Taking up responsibilities, having empathy, and delegating tasks to lower-positioned members will instill confidence and responsibility, thereby increasing productivity. One also gets to learn how to delegate tasks without wasting any time and effort.

Stay organized and take notes

Ms. Pailoor plans her day and has a schedule fixed for each task, a lesson she had learned from her MBA program as sometimes the work can get so daunting that you forget what is next in the pipeline. 

Being the master of your kitchen, you must be able to manage your time effectively, and it is better to write all the primary tasks on paper, which can also help you stay organized. An MBA course will provide you the envisioning skills to decide which has to go first and what can be picked later, thereby effectively managing the tasks. 

Manage routine and processes

The home chef’s day starts with vegetable shopping, primarily delivered by app-based aggregators. Then she plans what meals have to go out and starts her work accordingly. As a chef, once you get the hang of the work, you could follow a routine and set up processes. Right from the procurement of raw materials to delivering the meal, you will be able to set up a process that can save considerable time and confusion. 

The project-based learning provided by MBA courses is aligned to exactly impart experience in managing routines and processes that can come across in any workplace. 

Although multiple factors are involved in making a home chef profession a complete success, these mentioned pointers are the prime factors contributing to the rise of home chefs in this era. 

Concluding thoughts

25-year-old Jayalakshmi is still pursuing her executive MBA. But still, she has managed to implement the knowledge and skills obtained during the program to set up a venture of her own. The road to success is all about implementing and executing rather than just waiting.

Like Jayalakshmi, if you too want to enroll in a program that helps you practice what you learn, you might want to check out the Online MBA Program by JAIN (Deemed-to-be) University. The program focuses on project-based learning that can give you the essence of what’s happening in the real world and help you stay in sync with the current and future trends.