Today we’d like to introduce you to Rico Mandel.
Hi Rico, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
As I kid I loved to do photography, pretend I was on cooking shows, play businessman, and make movies. I didn’t make the connection until recently but at different parts of my life, I spent time learning and mastering each of these parts. I learned photography starting at age 8 and bought my first business at age 20 a rental darkroom and photo business. I studied cinematography in college to refine my lighting and storytelling skills. I went to culinary school and graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in 2004, working in fine dining restaurants, and doing catering and wine dinners. I make videos as part of my marketing business telling business stories with each of these parts of my life including my love of people, entertaining, and travel all converging into what has finally become Miz En Place, a culinary eCommerce website exploring all the gastronomic world offers through food and beverage artisans, products, experiences, education, and stories.
We launched Miz En Place, the culinary term for all your prep being ready for service, in April of 2021 with a focus on forming a connection between our customers and the artisans behind the products and experiences they are buying. For me, it’s about forming that connection virtually and eventually in person, like the act of getting to know someone over a meal, glass of wine, or shared experience.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It took about 10 years to finally launch Miz En Place, www.mizenplace.com. I went through a number of iterations and visions for the business and the website. Thinking at one time of developing an app instead of a website. Some of the struggles were figuring out what would work and dealing with the technologies of the time. Another part was really solidifying what the business was going to be and getting clear on the vision.
Funding was another part of the business. We’ve been bootstrapping the business for the most part which has made us look for creative solutions to putting this together.
Other issues have been customer acquisition, and how to get the word out and get people behind our vision and mission. Determining which areas to focus on since we have so many different facets of the business that we want to offer to our customers we have had to have patience and focus on creating robust offerings in one section of the business\website at a time instead of all of them at once. We chose to build out the product side first and this year we’ll be building out more of the culinary and wine tours and classes, in what we call our experiences section.
It’s not a smooth road but little by little it is all coming together and it’s about having faith and trust in the vision that we’ve created and doing the best to make sure our customers are very well served.
As you know, we’re big fans of Miz En Place. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
As I mentioned earlier Miz En Place is about having all your culinary desires all in one place. Just like the culinary term says everything in one place ready for service this is what we are about.
We are on a mission to bring people together to support the magnificent artisan small businesses around the world that are making great culinary products, creating wonderful gastronomic experiences, and teaching us how to cook while exploring their culture, history and stories.
In the end, we are not only creating a place where our customers can find all their gastronomic heart’s desires but also a global community of people who are all sharing their common interests regardless of geography or culture. In essence taking the idea of breaking bread with one another to a more global scale.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
I was a gregarious kid. Very active. My mom enrolled me in movie-making classes when I was 9 and 10 years old. So I made movies every weekend for each of the terms of the class. I’d show up and get some of the other students together and make a movie on the fly. I’d direct it and usually do the camera work at the same time. I also loved doing photography and darkroom work, I could spend hours in the darkroom with no problem. I liked riding my bike and playing with my friends. I was always an explorer and loved to hike in the hills around my house and explore anything I could get into.
I also love food and cooking. I would watch my mom and grandmothers cook and at the occasional time, my dad would cook. I used to watch cooking shows on tv and then go into the kitchen and pretend I was on a show where I would put different ingredients together to see how they would come out or try to make what I just saw the person on TV make.
In general, I was a good kid, creative and always thinking of different ideas and fantasizing about traveling the world and exploring different places. I also loved camping and fishing at times imagining what it would be like to live in the wilderness off the land.
In some ways, I was always willing to try something, get an idea and then just do something with it, not that they all came to fruition but when I think about it there were always things that I wanted to do, boredom wasn’t really anything that ever occured to me.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mizenplace.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mizenplace/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MizEnPlace
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/miz-en-place
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/mizenplace
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK0-oQlpknbaLHofbRH081Q
- Other: https://www.pinterest.com/mizenplace/
Image Credits
Rico Mandel
