Chef Carolyn Crow of Black Bunny Bakery - Baking Resources, Depart of Health Regulations, and a Discussion About Deliciousness

On this week’s podcast we have chef Carolyn Crow. Carolyn is the owner of Black Bunny Bakery, as well as an event planner for the city of Gaithersburg, Maryland. We discuss how she’s been juggling event planning, programming cooking classes for Gaithersburg’s Casey Community Center, preparing baked goods for Black Bunny Bakery, and her new series of online cooking demos. We also talk about favorite desserts, baking resources, department of health regulations and if food should always be delicious 

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Carolyn Crow

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The Black Bunny Bakery Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/blackbunnytreats/

Join the conversation on Twitter https://twitter.com/xtinaxenos 

Check those pics on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/blackbunnytreats/

The Casey Community Center https://www.gaithersburgmd.gov/about-us/city-facilities/casey-community-center

Some of her favorite culinary resources are: The King Arthur Flour website, The Convert-Me website and a good kitchen scale. 

We also discuss Amanda Palmer’s The Art of Asking. Watch her Ted Talk and check out her book

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Transcript

Chris Spear : 0:00

Welcome everyone. This is Chris with the Chefs Without Restaurants podcast. Today we have chef Carolyn Crow. She is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, and she spent some time working at Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley before returning to her hometown, right outside Washington DC. After years working as a pastry chef and chocolatier in the DC area, Carolyn left the kitchen for the comfort of a desk job and the simple satisfaction of being the mom who makes the best birthday cakes. Working in marketing and event planning for a national gourmet distributor. She developed live and pre recorded pastry demonstrations for professional chefs and passionate amateurs alike, including chocolate tastings, molecular gastronomy demonstrations, cake decorating classes and more. And in 2018, Carolyn joined the city of gaithersburg government, as an event planner for regional events drawing 20 to 30,000 people from all over the area. 2018 also brought the launch of Carolyn's farmer's market cottage food business Black Bunny Bakery, now Carolyn finds herself juggling event planning programming cooking class, For Gaithersburg's, KC Community Center, pop up farmer's market appearances for Black Bunny Bakery, and a new series of online cooking demos. And she's still the mom that makes the best birthday cakes. Welcome, Carolyn. Thanks for coming on the show.

Carolyn Crow : 1:13

Thank you so much for having me, Chris. I'm so excited.

Chris Spear : 1:16

Yeah, that's, that's a lot. You've done a lot of different things, but so much within the food world, right?

Carolyn Crow : 1:22

Yes, it's been a long and winding road. And I still feel like I'm just getting started in a lot of ways. So definitely a diverse background, but I think every little bit has made a difference and brought me to where I am today.

Chris Spear : 1:39

So did you always want to be in food? I mean, I know you went to the Culinary Institute of America. Is this something that you had inside you from the time you were a little child?

Carolyn Crow : 1:48

I think it was. I remember, I always loved dining out I love going to restaurants getting the big New York strip and the chocolate mousse parfait and I just loved eating. And I realized if I wanted to eat food the way I liked it prepared, I had to prepare it myself. I do remember being in fifth grade and I was assigned a project to create a how to video, it could be on anything we wanted it to be. So I decided to make chocolate mousse parfait for my whole fifth grade class. So I had my mom record the video and I made the chocolate mousse and brought it in and shared it with everybody. And just seeing how much everybody loved having that chocolate mousse in the middle of the day in fifth grade. It sort of clicked with me of like, oh, like this, I should do more of this. So it's it's definitely an instinct of being a people pleaser. I've also always really enjoyed the performative aspect of it. I was a big theater nerd in high school. And I really think that when you present somebody with a plate of food, it's like saying I made this for you. It's the best I can do. This is the little show I'm putting on for you today. What do you think? Clap for me now, please. So that side of it really appeals to me too.

Chris Spear : 3:10

So that's definitely the art side of culinary arts. And this gets to be a hotly debated topic of, you know, why people eat and people eat for a number of different reasons, but there's obviously sustenance. You know, I had a turkey sandwich for lunch today. It wasn't special at all. But then there's the dining out and it's for, you know, that's your opportunity to try something different, hopefully. And I think you can get really creative and I've even said, and somewhat controversially that, I don't even think food always has to be delicious. I mean, it should be, but sometimes, there's some interesting stuff. I don't know if you've ever been to a place where there's a chef doing something really interesting and it makes you think about it. I almost would rather have one of those dishes that I didn't love, but thought about and remembered for months then just like a disposable, you know, steak that I forget and couldn't remember and couple months, maybe that's a crazy idea.

Carolyn Crow : 4:02

No, absolutely. This is actually a concept that I spend like a ridiculous amount of time thinking of, I actually end up on the other side of that coin, I would prefer to have food that is delicious, and really makes me feel comforted as opposed to something that necessarily pushes the limits of the culinary arts, but I 100% know how much those innovators are important in our field. Is it Noma in Denmark, where they're doing all of those incredible foraged meals, I think that they are really pushing the art form to the next level. Jose Andreas has done an amazing job at so many things, obviously, but of just normalizing molecular gastronomy and making it a part of the mainstream in in every kitchen around the country. Now people are doing molecular gastronomy. And I think Jose Andreas had a lot to do with that. But for me and my family knows I say this all the time, I still need it to be yummy. I want that yumminess if I could have a theater nerd moment, for just a second, I always compare it to Stephen Sondheim Sunday in the park with George. It's a musical that's about creating art, and creating art that isn't necessarily appealing to everyone. It's different people don't understand it, but it pushes the medium in a way that it needs to happen for the whole art form to move forward. That's what George sarada that's what Stephen Sondheim did with Sunday in the Park with George and I love seeing chefs doing that. I would just rather have a steak at the end of the day.

Chris Spear : 5:45

And I think on my last podcast, I said, You know, I would rather have tacos, really awesome pizza barbecue. I mean, that's the food I go back to. Like, I'm a movie nerd. And there's some movies that I really hate, but they resonate with you and make you think, so there's like part of that with me too. Like I don't have you ever seen the movie Mother that came out a couple years ago?

Carolyn Crow : 6:04

I specifically did not.

Chris Spear : 6:06

I hated that movie with all of my core. Like, I wanted to shut it off, like 10 times throughout, right? And I'm sure you've seen some of the reviews. But there is something that I still remember that movie. It's ingrained in me you go back and think about it, like I don't know, should I watch it again? compared to like some disposable stupid well, feral comedy that like entertained you for, you know, 90 minutes. The same with food. I mean, while I always want delicious food, it is interesting sometimes to have a dish that kind of challenges, your perceptions of things. So I like to have a balance of something that's going to push it a little bit but I also don't want to go spend $300 on a dinner that I didn't think was tasty.

Carolyn Crow : 6:45

Oh, for sure. There's nothing more disappointing. I think for me, the pinnacle of finding that balance was blue hill at stone barns I went there for my like six month wedding anniversary or something. So this was a decade ago at this point, but For me, they found the perfect balance of pushing the art form and making something that would make you think and be beautiful on the plate but also be so delicious. And I think Santa Barbara is obviously doing incredible things for the food industry as a whole. But that meal is still the one that I keep going back to my head of like that. They nailed it there.

Chris Spear : 7:26

I would love to go there that's on my bucket list.

Carolyn Crow : 7:28

It was incredible.

Chris Spear : 7:30

And I like I guess interesting food. Okay, so not that I don't want to taste good, but some of my signature dishes are things like scrapple dip, or pepperoni spread. They're actually things that when people try them they love but they not they're not going to order them on a menu and I send a proposed menu to a customer. You know this coming weekend. I'm doing a dinner and they want Philemon Yon with chimichurri and they want you know, roasted potatoes with rosemary and garlic. And you know, it's fine. Like it doesn't. It doesn't challenge me it's not particularly interesting. To me at all It pays the bills. Yeah, but that's where I build a little leeway into my menu for like Chef's Choice. So that's where I'm, we're doing a charcuterie and cheese platter. So I'll bring some of my smoked gouda pimento cheese, I'll bring some of my pepperoni spread and put that out there. So that people who are maybe willing to take a rest we'll try it, I'm not bringing something that won't taste good. But when they look at the menu, these are not people who are going to order those off the selection. So finding that balance of creativity to do kind of what you want a little bit, but also serving food that's delicious, I think is the balance I'm always looking for. Absolutely. So what is your favorite thing to make? I know that might be a little like picking a favorite child. But do you have something you love?

Carolyn Crow : 8:44

I mean, chocolate, anything chocolate really I was a chocolate here for about four years at a little boutique and in Clarendon, Virginia and it's my favorite thing to eat. It's my favorite thing to make. I love doing Chocolate work. So you know whether I'm doing bond bonds at home or really just anything with chocolate. I know it's an incredibly boring answer. But there's so much there. And it really has both. You got to know the science. If you don't know the science, your chocolate work is going to fail. You can't just make it pretty. But if you do follow the rules and know the science, you are going to end up with an inherently beautiful product. And bread is exactly the same way chocolate and bread. You have to get the science down, but then it's going to be gorgeous when it's done.

Chris Spear : 9:36

Sweets are so technical that way. Yesterday, we wanted to make caramel popcorn at home. So my wife popped out some popcorn, she started making the caramel. And you know the instructions say take it to 300 degrees. Well, I grab my digital thermometer and realize it only went to 232 you know, and it's just like bubbling away. I'm like, I don't know. So it was by eye and we didn't take it high enough. We partnered it on I was just still like kind of a soft caramel. It was delicious. But it did. It wasn't the hard crack stage. And it's just one of those things where you can't fake it, you have to take it to that temperature or you're not going to get what you want.

Carolyn Crow : 10:10

Absolutely. And there's definitely an inherent difference between savory chefs and pastry chefs pastry chef, we love following the rules. We like seeing a recipe a set of directions and saying, I know this is going to get me where I need to go. We used to say in culinary school that the culinary students would just like to throw everything into a pot. And if it doesn't work, you cover it with a sauce. But we like getting out the scale and making sure everything is just so

Chris Spear : 10:38

I'm a big fan of the scale now though, and I've started putting my recipes in grams. You know, I tell everyone by a digital scale, people will buy seven new weird ingredients for a recipe they've never made before. But they refuse to spend $20 on a digital scale and I don't understand it. You know, during quarantine, I was doing a lot of baking and I started putting out my recipes and they were all in grams. And I had a number of people message me and say Can you convert this? I said, No, I have no idea what 280 grams of kimchi brine is just yeah, at a scale and weigh it out, unfortunately.

Carolyn Crow : 11:08

Well do you know there's a recipe website that I use for that? It's called convert-me.com. Convert hyphen me, and you can just pick from the drop down menu and you say, Okay, I want to translate honey and then you put in I've got 10 grams of honey, what is that equivalent to? So I use that all the time. They probably don't have kimchi brine on there, but you could pick something that's a comparable viscosity.

Chris Spear : 11:33

Yeah, to be close to like water. Yeah, that's great. I'm gonna put that in the show notes because I haven't used that. I know, there are some online converters, but I still think everyone needs to scale right?

Carolyn Crow : 11:43

I agree. 100%. And it's so hard for me to not talk about it all the time. But I mean, people don't want to hear about it. They're like, yeah, that's fine. I get it a scale great. They can't comprehend how much better their baking life will be if they just get the dumb scale.

Chris Spear : 11:59

And I think the rock of the International cookbooks when you see guys like Rene Redzepi, when you buy the Noma cookbook, you know all of those recipes have grams, they might have, you know, volumetric cups and such. But I think every one of those cookbooks is going to be having grams. And now you're seeing a lot in the US, too, that chefs are putting both of those, not just pastry chefs, but savory chefs as well. So it's an interesting movement.

Carolyn Crow : 12:22

Yeah, what a relief to I mean, anytime I see a recipe that doesn't have weights, I say, well, this isn't for me. Clearly, they did not make this one for me.

Chris Spear : 12:30

It's been fun teaching myself, desserts because I do all my own desserts for my customers, which was really scary when I started. And it's even scarier when someone asks for something, because I've put together a dessert menu of things I'm comfortable with. And then someone will say, but my wife's favorite is key lime pie. Can you do it for our anniversary? And it's like, you know, I'm a chef. I'm sure I can look at some recipes and figure it out. But I never want my customers to be the test subjects. So yeah, you know, do I make one at home ahead of time? How do I figure this out? But

Carolyn Crow : 12:58

yeah, I mean, I can see It would be daunting and I felt that way about savory cooking for a long time to like, Oh, that's not my area of expertise. I don't really know. You could do three weeks of savory cooking when you go to the pastry program at CIA. But even with that, I was like, I don't know. That's not my thing. It's actually taken a lot of repetition from my husband being like, No, you actually know what you're doing here like you You are a good cook. You've studied this so just suck it up and do it.

Chris Spear : 13:28

Yeah, most of the skills translate back back and forth. I took two pastry classes in four years of college high school so similarly, their their nine day classes I had 18 days of bread and pastry and desserts in four years of school, which sounds crazy. Well, but now you're doing it as your business and of course experiential learning is the most valuable, most definitely. So are you still doing the farmers markets right now? What's the season looking like for that?

Carolyn Crow : 13:55

So the market that I usually do the Kentlands Main Street Farmers Market They actually stayed shut down. They decided the city of gaithersburg decided that it wasn't worth the risk of having people coming and mingling at the market. So they're actually just reopening this week. The KC farmers market is going to open July 9, and then the catlins farmers market is going to open. I don't know, whatever. Two days later is July 11. So I haven't had my market available to go to I've been doing some internet orders or just like people are dming me with orders on Instagram. I participated in the Baker's against racism bake sale, so that was great. But no, I haven't been doing the farmers market at all. With the catlins Farmers Market opening up again, I sort of have to decide, okay, am I gonna dive back into it? Or am I just going to keep taking 2020 as a moment to like, regroup, figure out what am I doing? I've only been doing the farmers market since 2018. And so far, my Goal has just been breaking even, you know, like, not being in the hole at the end of the year. And I accomplished that last year and I thought, Okay 2020 this is it, this is my year, I'm gonna really hit the ground running. Maybe I'm gonna get my business license and start working out of a commercial kitchen and like really be a big kid at the farmers market. And then of course, you know, 2020 happens. So, I for right now, I'm not at the market. I'm not on the schedule for the season at the moment. Maybe that will change later in the year. Maybe I'll just keep doing some pop ups and internet sales, things like that. Right now I'm mostly focusing on developing some zoom cooking classes and I've been recording a lot of virtual programming for the PC community center. So just filming cooking demos at my home. This week, I have a Facebook Live bake along with chocolate chip cookies that I'm pretty excited about. So I guess right now focusing more on developing the media side of things.

Chris Spear : 16:04

I did a lot of that too. You know, I wasn't doing dinners for almost three months. So he gave me a lot of time to work on some of that stuff. And I've talked to a number of guests about the virtual learning. I mean, it sounds like you already had some experience and kind of doing cooking videos and so forth. So was that an easy transition for you?

Carolyn Crow : 16:24

Yeah, I would think so. I mean, I was sort of able to just open up my laptop and kind of on a whim, I was making butter chicken for dinner one night, and I was like, I'm just gonna record this and see what happens and, and so far, it's been great. I mean, I've been teaching myself how to edit the videos. So that's been really great. I did feel like I was a little bit ahead of the curve just because what I had done previously was mostly b2c business to consumer. Trying to sell the gourmet distributor was doing like Blue Apron for dessert. So I am Some cooking videos for that. And then we did some chef instructor videos for professional pastry chefs. So I definitely got some experience there. But I mean, you know, it's a brave new world. Nobody really knows what they're doing right now I'm a little bit ahead of the curve. But honestly, I felt kind of daunted by my low tech situation at my house, I didn't want to have bad lighting and fad sound and put something out there that wouldn't be up to a certain technical standard. But once I saw that everybody else was literally just throwing up their whatever they could put together. It's like, well, shoot, why can't I do it too?

Chris Spear : 17:39

Because of my own marketing, you know, a couple years ago, I wanted to have some videos done and some photos and I started pricing it out. And, you know, I respect your time and if you're a photographer or videographer, but when you're getting like a $5,000 quote, to do some of this stuff, I just started looking on Amazon. I'm like, Well, if I buy some box lights, if I buy some, you know, back to ROPs buy some microphones, you know, I'm into it for like $400 at the most and then just teach myself. So, for the videos for my business, I started by just putting lights up in my kitchen and I had all that and then now with the podcasting, I have better microphones. I upgraded my webcam, because I'm doing the zoom. And I'm going to have a full multimedia studio in my house before I know it.

Carolyn Crow : 18:21

So what are you using for lighting because that's the piece of the puzzle that I feel like I'm still missing.

Chris Spear : 18:27

So I have like box lights. So they're really I actually have one on right now. And it's a little harsh because my table is up against the wall. And ideally it would be on the other side lighting the front of my face another side but for my videos, they're just two lights that are on like little tripods and they you can adjust them and shoot it all around. And I don't know they're like 50 $60 maybe at most, and they and they set up in about five minutes.

Carolyn Crow : 18:52

Yeah, I was definitely looking into something like that. I just feel a little intimidated by you know, do you do the ring light, the box light the Other led thing I don't know, it feels like there are a lot of options. And it just seems like I have enough other stuff going on without teaching myself to be an expert in camera lighting.

Chris Spear : 19:10

And you can overthink it right? Like everything on Amazon these days, I'm looking at some other equipment for my podcast and you can read way too many reviews, you're like 80 reviews, and it's like, I still don't know which one to buy. Right? Even the thing I looked at something the other day that had 7000 plus reviews, and it was like rated at four and a half stars. And the first three reviews were like terrible like this is garbage. Don't buy it. I'm like, I don't know there's 7000 4 and a half star reviews really it's not good. And then you just don't buy anything.

Carolyn Crow : 19:42

It's very easy to get stuck in your head and and even not just with buying something on Amazon. I mean this whole moment right now where everybody's trying to pivot and it's like, well, what do I do? What do I do? The people who are being the most successful at it are the ones who are just doing you know, don't overthink, just jump in there. That is not my strong suit by any means. I'm working on training myself to ask forgiveness instead of permission, which is not a pastry chef mindset. You know, I want to follow the rules, but folks are out there and they're just doing stuff and they're being successful. And I don't know, I guess that's why I'm you're on your podcast right now. Because like, I don't know, let's just do it. Hey,

Chris Spear : 20:25

yeah, that that's totally I mean, for me, it was scary. You know, I started this podcast and I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna start with friends. And then as you kind of work through your friend circles, like, you start reaching out to bigger name guests. And that's kind of scary for me to, you know, especially someone I don't even really know just shoot them a DM through Instagram, be like, Hey, I don't even know if you've ever heard of me or my show or my organization, but you want to come on a podcast and I've had some really great guests that I was surprised they wanted to come on the show.

Carolyn Crow : 20:51

Yeah, I mean, the worst thing anybody can say is now

Chris Spear : 20:54

Yeah, and that's what I found. I one of my favorite books is called the art of asking, have you ever heard of that book?

Carolyn Crow : 20:59

I have. Yeah,

Chris Spear : 21:01

Amanda gave a great TED talk. I think it started as like a 15 minute TED Talk. And then she turned it into a book. But that book was really kind of life changing for me, because I still was always in this mindset of, you know, I don't know, I guess it's below me to ask this person for this thing. And I found that once I started asking for things 99% of the time it worked out, so why not? So I'd like to hopefully be able to share that story with people and inspire them to just reach out to that person. So what does the summer look like for you then if you're not going to be doing farmers markets? Like how much have your all of your businesses been impacted by COVID? Like what's changed for you?

Carolyn Crow : 21:37

So I'm still with the city of gaithersburg doing both their event planning for regional events and the cooking classes for KC community center. So obviously, the big regional events were canceled. We just celebrated virtual summer fest. So the workload on that side of things has been very light for me. On the other hand, the KC community center cooking classes have been, we've been working on getting them online and making that something that we can do over zoom, which again, when all this started, and we didn't know how long it was going to go on for, and we were sort of thinking, trying to think of ways to keep revenue coming into the city. I was the one thing like, you know, there are so many free content, there's so much free content out there right now, I don't feel good about charging for online cooking classes, when there's so much free content, and I just don't think our technical ability is going to be worth paying for. But again, as I've, you know, participated in other people's cooking classes and seeing what people are charging 2535 $55 for online and people are people are paying for these classes are selling out. So now we're sitting in gaithersburg saying well, why can't we do that? To I guess, let's get this going. So I've been working a lot on getting those contracts in order. There's all sorts of fun contracts when you're working in local government. This is my first government job. I've never done it before. And I'm finding out all sorts of fun things. So it's mostly been figuring out contracts, insurance requirements. How are we going to make sure that the instructors have the proper technology that they need to lead the class? So that's been a big part of my day job is getting that up and running. And then my side hustle black bunny bakery is mostly just figuring out Am I going to be doing cooking classes myself online, you know, the gaithersburg thing. I'm contracting other instructors. Occasionally I'll teach classes to just to help fill out the schedule. But as part of my side hustle, I need to figure this out for myself as well. So I've been spending a lot of time hunched over my laptop editing videos and trying to learn about how to make compelling content that educates people. I don't think I would feel good about it if it didn't really teach people a little something about cooking.

Chris Spear : 24:14

For me, it was finding where my time is best spent because everyone says, Oh, you should be making cooking videos. And like you, I kind of said, there's a million people out there making cooking videos, and are people gonna pay for that? And even if they do, what's your time worth? Is it worth having 20 people come and pay you $10? Like, how much are people gonna pay to watch me do a zoom cooking class where I'm not even giving them the food? I don't know. So then I did a couple free ones, hoping that would be good lead gen type stuff. And it's, it's not I mean, you never know it might work out but I had this private session set and I thought 20 people were gonna show up and 10 showed and of the 10 half of them didn't even have their camera on and kept it on mute. And you know, I'm saying, okay, so you know, what do you think of this? What, what do you want to do with that and you have like one person, maybe answer Answering. And then nobody ever emailed me. Nobody followed any of my social media pages and it was just like, okay, I spent, you know, an hour, it's not a lot of time to waste. But I don't want to keep doing that. I would rather spend an hour talking to people like you and having a good podcast, I think that's going to benefit me more than doing a private class for people who aren't even engaged. Sometimes think if people aren't paying, they're not invested. You know, I've heard that through a number of business things that, you know, if it's free, what's the motivation to join? So, I've paid for some classes this summer, and I took them because I paid money. I felt like I want to get my money's worth, you know?

Carolyn Crow : 25:36

Yeah. And I think there's also a question of what market you're trying to reach. I mean, your Chefs Without Restaurants group is all geared towards professional chefs. I mean, and yet your catering business....

Chris Spear : 25:52

Perfect Little Bites

Carolyn Crow : 25:53

So you have customer facing business on one side and you have basically a b2b business on the other side. side and how do you decide where to spend your time and and where to prioritize?

Chris Spear : 26:07

That's a very good question. I asked myself that every day, as I sit and do a podcast and spend all the time interviewing, editing and all that, that doesn't make me any money right now, like, you know, the group is free, I don't charge for leads, no revenue is coming in. It's costing me money. Should I spend that time doing something for my perfect little bites businesses an hour or two or three better spent doing a marketing video that's going to reach them? I don't know. And that's kind of where I am right now is trying to figure out where I want to go with organization. And if there's an opportunity to monetize it, which I do think there is definitely and there's some things I'm working on, but like how do I allocate my time when I'm still one person right now?

Carolyn Crow : 26:48

Right, and not just how to allocate your time to maximize your your revenue potential. I mean, allocate your time to spend it doing the things that you love doing and Be with the people that you want to be with. I mean, I left my job at the gourmet distributor rather abruptly, I was laid off completely unexpectedly. And it was a huge wake up call. I had thought to myself like, Okay, I've got this nice little desk job and the money is good. And you know, the schedule is okay for my family. So like, this is fine for now. I wasn't really happy. But I mean, I did it because that's what I thought I was supposed to be spending my time doing. But it was really a wake up call of like, oh, work doesn't love me. And they don't care if I'm there or not. So why would I sacrifice my time with my family or my time on earth? To do something that just, I was doing it for the money but like, what's that worth even so now I just focus on trying to spend my time doing what I want to do and I love being at the farmers markets. I love talking to the customer. They're, I really enjoy getting up early on a Saturday morning and popping up my little tent and talking about chocolate chip cookies. I just enjoy that so much. And it pains me that it hasn't turned into big business necessarily. It's not a money making enterprise. So as much as I've had all this training and experience I hate to think that it's essentially a hobby for me right now, but it I mean, it is, but I'm enjoying my time I'm doing what I like to do.

Chris Spear : 27:25

That's the big thing I've seen and i i think you see it a little more with the sweet side of things, you know, people, there's so many people have cupcake businesses, Cookie businesses, things of that nature, and how many of them are doing that full time? I mean, as a personal chef, I'm not making a ton of money but I'm doing okay, selling dinners, but I'm in the you know, hundred dollar person range. You got to sell a lot of cookies and cupcakes and loaves of bread to make that kind of money. And you know, that's what I'm trying to get people No guest on the show, some have said it because I think nobody wants to talk about that on the air, what we're in is this world of you want to put to your customers that you're a successful business owner. So no one wants to come on the show and say, Well, this is really just a side job. I can't survive off of that. So you see a lot of posturing on Instagram and Facebook. And then I think it perpetuates this thing, where you have a lot of people saying, Oh, I'm going to quit my job as a banker to have a cupcake business. It's like, well, you need to talk to some of those people, because I don't know any of them who are doing it full time. Now, there are a lot of people out there who are working a 40 hour week doing something that pays the bills and just doing this as a hobby, and they're probably never going to get it off the ground. And I hate to say that, but I think that's the reality. And some people need to hear that.

Carolyn Crow : 29:44

Yeah, I mean, I'm so impressed by small business owners food businesses, specifically where they've really found a way to make it work. Just knowing how slim the margins are and how you have to put every fiber of your being into it. And it takes me years to get it going. And and I mean, I'm doing it. I'm doing it when I can, but I'm not making it. The biggest thing in my world and that's okay, too, right.

Chris Spear : 30:15

Yeah. I mean, sometimes you have to have that thing that you just love doing. And the extra money is usually nice. And maybe it doesn't take off, you know? Yeah. A lot of people start a business, doing something that they love. And then because the business is so grueling, they end up hating it, right? I mean, that's a common story you hear all the time people say, if you have something that you love, don't turn it into a business, do it as a hobby, because it's gonna kill you trying to make it your career.

Carolyn Crow : 30:43

Yeah, it's so tricky. You've really got to thread that needle.

Chris Spear : 30:47

And I think that's where, you know, if you ever get to the point to bring on employees, maybe have them do what you don't want to do. You know, that's what I've said all the time as I was working my way up through the food scene, and I will As I became an executive chef, I wasn't cooking anymore. So I was doing all the office stuff. So I leave the job to start my own business cooking. But now it's kind of the same thing, I get to the point where I have all these events and stuff. And I really have to spend so much time doing the marketing and answering emails and stuff. So it's not, not quite the same, but I'm not cooking all the time, either. I'm still 60 to 70% of the time doing office work marketing lead gen and 30% of the time doing cooking so...

Carolyn Crow : 31:28

but at least you're you're reaching people on a larger platform, then even if you're not literally cooking the foods that you put down in front of them. Your brand is bringing delicious food to a larger audience. And that's a beautiful thing too

Chris Spear : 31:43

Thanks. I'm glad you think of my brand as that. I'd like to think that as well. Do you have any other endeavors or anything that's kind of working right now? Or are you just trying to figure out how to fit into the world we're living in right now.

Carolyn Crow : 31:57

Don't I have enough endeavors? I mean, come on. I'm Chris. I have a four year old and a six year old.

Chris Spear : 32:03

Some people always have a whole bunch of things in the works. I want to make sure I wasn't missing out on anything.

Carolyn Crow : 32:09

No. I mean, I've I've been doing a lot of writing lately. Before I went to culinary to America, I was a Terp. I went to University of Maryland and got an English degree, mostly because it was easy for me and I could get in and out and also culinary school as fast as I could, but I've always sort of had in the back of my mind, like, Okay, well, I'll be a food writer someday, because I can, so I should. So let me get to that eventually. And now I'm really trying to focus and get the writing done. And get some thoughts down on paper. So yeah, the writing the videos. The day job, the kids,

Chris Spear : 32:48

it's a lot...

Carolyn Crow : 32:50

It feels like enough for right now.

Chris Spear : 32:52

And the kids for sure. I mean, I have twins. We're going to be eight in three weeks.

Carolyn Crow : 32:56

Oh, wow.

Chris Spear : 32:57

Yeah, that's a lot too. And you know what? The whole schooling thing I mean, I just saw yesterday what the proposed plan is for schools for next year. And it looks like the kids aren't going to be going back full time. So that's going to be a huge thing. And at best, it looks like the kids are going to be going to school two days a week. So you know, someone's going to have to be home trying to help them with the distance learning while having, you know, to working from home adults, which gets to be tough.

Carolyn Crow : 33:26

Yeah, I haven't had a chance to read Deb Perelman's New York Times article yet. Did you see that about having kids at home is working with working parents?

Chris Spear : 33:34

Yeah, I've seen that floating around, but I haven't had the time to read it yet. But it shows up seems like every half hour in my Facebook feed

Carolyn Crow : 33:42

Yeah, I mean, it's it's something that everybody's has on their mind, everybody's thinking about and again, it just goes back to like, Okay, how do I actually want to spend my time my children need me right now. I want to be there for my children, but I also don't want to die inside because I I can't do the work that I've been working on all these years.

Chris Spear : 34:04

But it is the benefit of having your own business because if I was working a job, you know, my last job was in contract food with Sodexo, and I was working in retirement community, they're essential workers, they had zero days off. I still have a lot of colleagues working at the place that I left and they there was no one week off one month off, like they were at it even more than they were before. Because when you're the manager there, that's on you. You got to be here, you're serving 1500 meals a day or something like that. So I wouldn't have been home. We have no idea what our home life would have looked like if I still had a job and had to take care of my kids.

Carolyn Crow : 34:42

Yeah, crazy. I mean, it's definitely a good time to be a chef without a restaurant without that brick and mortar building to worry about or I mean probably a lot of the people that follow you don't have that much staff that they need to worry about. So it has been a relief to just not have to think about all of that laundry list of things that need to be dealt with.

Chris Spear : 35:05

From a pastry perspective. I was reading the other day some article about, you know, is this gonna be it for pastry chefs who work full time, you know that restaurants are as they're looking at staff and cutting staff, I think always pastry chefs have had to kind of pick up maybe the Garmin j station or help out with this and that, and they weren't just doing a stream. And, you know, the article kind of says, with what we're going through now, you know, are people are people ordering dessert to go? How often are people doing that? And what's the, the role of the pastry chef going forward? And is that something that's going to be in danger? Have you thought about that? I mean, I know you don't work in a restaurant, but have you seen any of those articles or had thoughts on that?

Carolyn Crow : 35:43

I haven't seen those articles. It sounds really interesting, though. I've really been intrigued by the articles that have the point of view of let it burn, who wants to go back to normal that wasn't really working for a lot of people. So maybe there do need to be major systemic changes? And if that means eliminating the pastry chef position, I mean, I guess that's one way to do it. But, you know, there are specialists and I've always enjoyed being a specialist. I specialized in pastry, and then specifically in chocolate. And I think that it brings me a lot of satisfaction to be an expert in certain areas, but probably in the economy that's coming up, we're going to see a lot more generalists. So if you feel as a savory chef, that you can make a dessert that you feel good about being the finale of your meal. Well, then, I mean, that's what you're gonna do.

Chris Spear : 36:44

Yeah, definitely. You know, I haven't taken dessert. We've done a lot of takeout and I haven't gotten dessert any of those times. I don't know, in my mind. A lot of that stuff doesn't hold up really well. I'm always thinking of like, a lot of the desserts I do. Like how do you put up panna cotta in a to- go? How do do some kind of moves I'm thinking of like melting ice creams and whipped creams and all these things that tend to be very delicate and not translating well and I just kind of look at dessert menus and think none of that stuff's really gonna hold up for me to take it out. And I guess maybe that's an opportunity for pastry chefs and restaurants. I mean, you know, when you do things like what you do your stuff is very shelf stable that you would take to a market it might not be an intricate plated dessert but delicious, I'm sure.

Carolyn Crow : 37:26

Yeah, I mean that that is the thing. It's an opportunity for people to go back to basics a little bit. You can't really send a crimper lay home with someone unless you do it and the little tin and but you torch it and then it's going to be liquefied again by the time they get at home. It doesn't travel so it is a good time to give people those comforting treats. You know, instead of doing a beautiful play to dessert, they could be packaging cookies or the you know, beautiful little the Scotty to send home with people and just find Find those treats that are going to be comforting and travel well

Chris Spear : 38:05

making my caramel corn yesterday I was thinking I should start a cottage caramel corn shop out of my house but that sounds like that sounds like a lot of work

Carolyn Crow : 38:13

that's not allowable under cottage food law actually unfortunately

Chris Spear : 38:17

Why is that not covered there's no potentially hazardous food is it because the caramel

Carolyn Crow : 38:21

it's the caramel no caramel allowed

Chris Spear : 38:24

really I had no idea that's a cooked product. It's no different in my opinion than a cake. I mean you put eggs and you know, dairy into a cake and then you bake it you can do caramel under cottage bakery.

Carolyn Crow : 38:35

I don't think caramel is allowed. I don't believe it though. I know it's really limiting which is actually why I wanted to get into a commercial kitchen this year and sort of open up the whole laundry list of things I wasn't allowed to make before but it's also really limiting that you have to prepackaged everything with your sticker on it. So I spend like 40 cents on packaging for each unit that I sell It's the bag and two stickers. And of course, then I'm also thinking like, Okay, well, all of that plastic that's going into the world, you know. So, I've ponying up the cash for the compostable bags, you know, so at least there's that is anybody composting these bags? No, of course not. But I feel better about spending my money on that. So there's all sorts of fun rules that the cottage food bakers have to follow.

Chris Spear : 39:27

And they're supposedly the same for the whole state of Maryland. But I know for a fact that it varies county to county because it's enforced on the county level. And I just had a conversation with someone about this right before the show because we're looking at some of the things going on in Frederick County. And it's just kind of ridiculous, but who, who makes these changes and who's accountable to who I mean, if I see you doing something in your county, and I want to do it here and they tell me it's not allowed. What's the appeal process for that? There isn't really one you just say, Okay, I guess I can't do that. And then you're done with it.

Carolyn Crow : 39:58

And honestly, I've never seen it. enforcement of any kind. I have been so careful to package everything appropriately and follow all of the rules and spending money on this. And other people are just sort of out there like yeah, I don't know, I made this at my house, what's the big deal and nobody's enforcing it in montgomery county, as far as I can tell, and that's frustrating.

Chris Spear : 40:20

Well, I'm seeing a lot of that on the savory side. You know, I'm someone who's always said, do it the right way. Find out what the regs are contact Department of Health, and there's so many people out there right now. I get it times are tough and you need money, but there's people on Facebook Like I made these pupusas, here's my address, come pick them up, like, I don't know, like, I go to do an event and the Board of Health like I talked to them and they won't sign off on a permit for something. And then you got people selling these, you know, whatever shrimp scampi dishes out of their house for $25 ahead and right now enforcement's light and, you know, I don't want to sound like a hater, but it's kind of like there's a lot of people out there who are doing things the right way. We're pulling permits. We're paying for all that stuff for their licensing. You know, I have an LLC, I have liability insurance. I have servsafe. And you know, I don't know, maybe I should just be selling pizzas out of my front door.

Carolyn Crow : 41:12

Yeah, it can be really frustrating. And especially, I mean, pastry chef, I want to follow the rules. I want to do it right. I want to be a legitimate business. I'm not just some random person who thought she could bake cupcakes. I also have the insurance and the servsafe and the Culinary Institute of America for crying out loud, but you just see roadblock after roadblock and it's like, I'm trying to do this the right way. And you're making me feel like I should just be ignoring all of these rules. I actually I tried to launch retail business at the end of last year, they said that cottage food vendors could sell in retail locations. So I thought, Oh, that's amazing. I started going out to wine shops and little boutiques like that. Were a little Six Pack bag of cookies. could potentially be sold for $4 because it's a nice little stocking stuffer treat to go with your wine purchase. So I went through doing all of that I got a few orders, really excited, ordered my stickers and everything submitted all my paperwork to the health department and they said, Oh, no, no, no, you can only sell at grocery stores, grocery stores. Nobody is going to buy six cookies for $4 in a grocery store. What am I supposed to do with that? And it it just felt like there. there hadn't been that information anywhere. So I felt like the rug was pulled out from under me. I'd spent all that time preparing for nothing, basically.

Chris Spear : 42:39

Yeah, I've had that too. I planned a pop up event a couple years ago, and we did advertising was actually the front page in the Frederick news post advertising it and then I went to get my permit and was told you're not really allowed to do this. I know we saw it on the front page of the FMP. But we don't want to give you a permit. That's like what Like I like I've done this before I like in an office that I've come in and pulled permits all the time for one time events, because they can willy nilly pick which events they want to sign off on and which they don't. So it's okay for me to go do an event at the library or go do an event for the Chamber of Commerce and do this, and then they'll sign on the permit. And then now I've sold tickets for a dinner and I go to get permission. They say, No, we don't consider that an event. We don't want to give you the permit.

Carolyn Crow : 43:25

what did you do?

Chris Spear : 43:27

Well, the event actually ended up getting canceled because of snow. So end up becoming a non issue there that time. But that's something we're talking about now is because with savory chefs and events, they don't want to see food events that aren't tied into what they consider an event. So you can pull a permit and say, I want to go to this brewery because it's their five year anniversary. Can I have a permit? And they'll say sure, but then you go and say I want to go do a pop up at the same brewery because they're doing beer right? They'll say, well, that's not an event. And they won't give you the permit, like, and they get to decide what it is. So they say you can pull permits in conjunction with events, but then they get to decide what an event is. Oh, crazy. It is crazy. So you don't ever know if you're going to be able to do these things, which is why I've shied away from doing public events because it's a pain, you know, but you have to go and almost like beg them to give you permission to do this event. But why did they get to decide you know, what's not to say that this beer releases in an event and you know, now with everyone needing jobs and money and stuff, so many people said, Well, why don't you come and do you know, a pop up at our place? It's like, because if there's not an event, you know, if it was like a fourth of July cookout, that's an event, but if it's just like the fifth of July, that's not an event and they're not going to sign off on that. So it's really, really hard, especially here in Frederick County. And they'll tell you that that follows COMAR and it's the same for the whole state, but I've talked to people in almost every county and I know Know that that's not enforced across the board?

Carolyn Crow : 45:02

Mm hmm. Yeah. So frustrating.

Unknown Speaker : 45:04

Yeah. Which is, again, why like, I want to make sure that I put that out there and tell people because I think most people don't know that. And their response will say the Have you read comar? Have? I don't know, have you read COMAR? COMAR is like a 200 page document. And it's written out basically for for lawyers, you know, and there's like one thing in there and it says, you know, in conjunction with events, but again, that's up to interpretation. So

Carolyn Crow : 45:29

whoever's working the desk that particular day, I guess, gets to be the person who interprets it.

Chris Spear : 45:34

Yeah, but we're doing some, you know, that's where she goes without restaurants. I want to build a community where we can have some advocacy, and that was an area that I hadn't expected when I started this organization. So do you have anything you want to share with our listeners before we get out of here today?

Carolyn Crow : 45:49

Well, I mean, I've got some big changes coming up on my Instagram accounts. So I would love for folks to follow me on Instagram. I'm @BlackBunnyTreats. Black Bunny Bakery was taken. Don't look for me there. It's @BlackBunnyTreats. So I'm going to be announcing some big changes and events coming up in the not so distant future. And I'm on Facebook at the same spot Black Bunny Treats. And I don't know, come come see me in Gaithersburg whenever the city of Gaithersburg opens up again, we would love to have more chefs submit proposals for cooking classes, whether they are virtual cooking classes or in person. Once we start doing that, again, we're always looking for more qualified, talented chefs who are servsafe certified and insured. You don't need those things for the virtual cooking classes. But you know, a lot of people think that they're qualified to teach cooking classes, but it's really important to be to get real chefs in their teaching. I love gaithersburg because it's right smack in between DC and Frederick to great food town. And there's so much potential there right now people in gaithersburg want good food and they're just sort of like, oh, where do I go? What do I do?

Chris Spear : 47:08

It's easier to get into Frederick than get into DC.

Carolyn Crow : 47:11

It is yes. Well, geographically we're right in between.

Chris Spear : 47:15

Yeah, actually, I don't know you're kind of commuting. If you want to go into Frederick for dinner, then going up to 70 isn't fantastic either at night,

Carolyn Crow : 47:23

it all depends on the timing, but there there are so many great restaurants in gaithersburg. But I think that there's a lot of room for development in terms of Culinary Education. We had L'academie de cuisine, very sadly closed a couple of years ago. So I think that's sort of left a vacuum for Culinary Education. And since I came on with Casey community center last year, I've really been trying to make it a destination for top tier Culinary Education. They had the classes priced like hilariously low. They were like $25 per person. So I was frantically trying to recruit truck chefs to teach them. And it was like a blast from the past. I was just on the phone with chefs lecturing me about how I don't understand food cost. And it's like, oh, gosh, I haven't missed this at all. But now we've gotten that price point up a little bit, we can afford to pay our chefs what they're worth, and still provide relatively low cost, high quality, recreational Culinary Education in gaithersburg. So that's super exciting.

Chris Spear : 48:30

I look forward to that and I'll share all the links in the show notes and I always update them as well. So even two months down the road if something changes you want me to drop something in there, I'll put them in for everyone because people continue to listen to the shows. I'm amazed that episodes from like three months ago still get listens.

Carolyn Crow : 48:47

what else Anything else?

Chris Spear : 48:48

I like to do like a little speed round at the end of the show, and I've kind of changed it up every episode. Sometimes we do it sometimes we don't. So I thought I'd throw a couple questions out at you if you think you can handle are somewhat speed rounds.

Carolyn Crow : 49:00

I don't know, let's see.

Chris Spear : 49:01

Do you have any favorite culinary resources? Whether it be for pastry for savory for building a business like books, websites, people to follow on social media, where would you point some of our listeners to?

Carolyn Crow : 49:14

So definitely that convert any website is huge when I'm trying to write or adjust a recipe. That's a big one for me. And honestly, I go to KingArthurflour.com for a lot of recipes, they because they have those easy conversion tools, and the recipes are tested. Can't go to Pinterest for recipes. Who does that? Nobody does that. But the recipes that King Arthur are really great and reliable.

Chris Spear : 49:40

The focaccia that I've been making during quarantine was based on their base recipe. I used it and just swapped out the liquid so my kimchi foccacia it was just like okay, how much water is in this and then I just took half of the water and replace it with like drained kimchi juice, but it was essentially their recipe because I trusted that it was going to be pretty solid. They had some really great recipes on their website.

Carolyn Crow : 50:00

Yeah, that sounds awesome... kimchi

Chris Spear : 50:02

So as someone who's into desserts, do you have a favorite place in the DC area to get something? Is there a restaurant that does really great desserts or a little bakery? What are some places people should check out?

Carolyn Crow : 50:12

So for restaurants, my favorite has got to be Le Diplomat. It's old school. So simple. I mean, it's just regular creme brulee on the plate, but oh my gosh, there's a reason that creme brulee got as popular as it did. It's amazing. So that's definitely it for restaurants. And then bread furst, in Van Ness i think is just the most gorgeous bakery every time I go in there, I want to work there. I spent a small fortune every time I'm in there and they just have the most amazing breads and pastries. The canalee are just coming back. Now they're given me life. So I've got a run down into DC and get some of those.

Chris Spear : 50:53

So I think that's all I've got for you. If you have anything else you want to go over.

Carolyn Crow : 50:58

We all just need to keep pushing forward and getting to the next phase of what's going to be a glorious future. I'm sure

Chris Spear : 51:08

yes, the back half of 2020 will be glorious, right?

Carolyn Crow : 51:13

Oh boy, there's not a lot to look forward to in 2020 right now, but that's okay. We're gonna make it.

Unknown Speaker : 51:21

Thanks so much for coming on the show. And as always, this has been the chef's without restaurants podcast. You can find us at chefswithoutrestaurants.com and .org and on all social media channels. Thanks so much and have a great week. Transcribed by https://otter.ai