Meet Cathey Ross of Junior Chef University

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I grew up in a household of six kids. I’m the oldest girl. We didn’t have much growing up, except each other. My mom was a stay at home mom and my dad struggled to provide for us, but they both did the best they could. At a young age, I learned to work hard. While many kids enjoyed their summer vacations being a kid, I spent mine taking care of my siblings. We had a ten years gap between us so I was the older sister–baby sitter. My mom allowed me to hang out with my friends once in a while, but my teenage years was full of responsibilities. In hindsight, those responsibilities is what helped me develop great work ethics. I worked to earn money as early I could trying to find “under the table” jobs because I wasn’t old enough—just so I could help out and be able to buy my own necessities.  I owe my strong work ethics to my childhood—thanks mom!

Fast forward to adulthood, I had a child at the age of 20, requiring me to have stable jobs in order to provide for my daughter. Those jobs were definitely not foods for the soul, I decided to go back to school quite a bit, enrolling in a semester here and there with every intent of finally completing a semester to get a degree, but always dropping out. In my late 20’s, I decided to pursue my bachelor’s in business. I was focused, spending many late nights and weekends studying, writing papers and taking tests. I decided to get a degree in business because my end goal was to be a CEO of a large company. Little did I know at that time that I would be a CEO with my own company. I worked hard to move up in my 9-5 job and worked my way up getting promoted to be a manager for a local medical device company and I decided that wasn’t enough. Looking back, I don’t think it was enough because I wanted to keep getting promoted, it wasn’t enough because it wasn’t my passion.

I’ve always had a passion for teaching kids and a passion for cooking. When my kids were younger, I home-schooled them for a few years while and I ran a catering business. I decided to go back to school a few years ago to earn my MBA and as a part of the program, we needed to do a mock business idea and write about it. As I thought of several ideas from opening a restaurant to teaching business, I had a few criteria’s in mind – I wanted to make sure I did something I loved doing, I also wanted to make a difference in the community and lastly, I wanted it to be different.

I was teaching a few kids how to cook and wanted to be able to reach more communities and kids. I started researching locations on kids cooking schools and found that there weren’t many in the Los Angeles County area. My goal was to make it easy for parents by making it affordable, and convenient so they don’t have to drive far for their kids to learn life long skills and teach them how to eat healthier and that’s when Junior Chef University was born.

Has it been a smooth road?
Owning a business and seeing it grow has been the most satisfying struggle I’ve gone through. The biggest struggle has been working my 9-5 job (which ends in October) and trying to run a growing business. I was giving the day job 100% and JCU 150% and tired is an understatement for this mama. I’m also mindful of continuing to be that great mom… I always keep track of the girls schedules, when I need to take them to their sports events, school events, spending quality time with them and just giving them mom advice. It’s been hard to balance time but my faith is what’s gotten me through all my struggles. Staying focused on what’s really important, keeping the goal in mind that I can make a difference in kids and families lives makes every bit of sweat and lack of sleep worth it.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Junior Chef University story. Tell us more about the business.
Junior Chef University is a mobile cooking school for kids and young adults. Our mission is to provide a safe platform for children and aspiring chefs to learn life skills and create healthy meals. We exist to inspire and empower people by teaching proper techniques and allowing creativity to boost confidence.

We are dedicated to:
Teaching healthy eating routines and about ingredient substitution. Build confidence in kids by allowing creativity in the kitchen using various tools and techniques. Teaching kitchen safety and cleanliness and help lower obesity rate, by educating our future on healthy eating habits, one child at a time.

We do all of this in a large trailer that I designed that kid friendly and safe. The mobile unit is a fully functional kitchen where we hold all our classes. We can come to any location and all we need is a few parking spaces. Our mobile unit is one of a kind. We teach kids from 5 and up. Our price points are very competitive. We focus on healthier eating and substitute ingredients all the time for a healthier version of recipes that we come up with.

The thing I’m most proud of is the amount of kids who’ve come in being intimated by cooking and being finicky with foods but coming out confident and trying new ingredients. I absolutely love the smile on kids faces when they do something they didn’t think they could.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Because of the obesity rate, I think that there’s a need for changes in our diet and lifestyles. We say that a great diet is 80% eating healthy and 20% exercising, but schools do not spend much time focusing on that 80%. There’s an opportunity to teach kids how to be able to care for themselves and that’s where we come in. Our mobile school can be available in any schools. Our curriculum is extensive.

In 2020, we plan to be in Chicago, Texas, and Arizona. We recently got our 2nd truck and are working on our 3rd truck. Because of the high rate of obesity, There’s definitely a need to expose more kids to learning how to take care of themselves by cooking. With many schools not offering home economics, many kids aren’t exposed to making any meals. I think that more families should know that they can make a quick, healthy but delicious meal. They don’t need to resort to fast food. With a team of a mom and her kids in the kitchen, a healthy meal can be as quick as 10 minutes away.

Pricing:

• $25-$35 per class per child includes all the materials and recipes
• $35-$55 per child for Birthday parties depending on the amount of menu items

We host classes for camps, any school events, girls scouts/boy scouts, recreation parks and any private events.
Contact Info:

• Website: www.juniorchefuniversity.com
• Phone: 877.4.JR.CHEF
• Email: info@juniorchefuniversity.com
• Instagram: @juniorchefuniversity
• Facebook: @juniorchefuniversity
• Twitter: @juniorchefuniversity
• Yelp: www.yelp.com/juniorchefuniversity