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South Lakes High School has a full commercial kitchen for students to use. The meals they cook are sometimes served to faculty and other real customers or at catered school events.
“In class, we try to make everything be as real world as possible,” Stowers said.
When a school invites JA for a Launch Lesson, the organization finds speakers through an extensive network of connections, one that includes staff, supporters and even local government entities, but it also attempts to tailor each event to the specific needs of the class in question.
Launch Lesson speakers represent nonprofits as well as small, midsized or large businesses, and they come from a variety of industries, from technology to finance and consulting to cleaning services.
The only requirement is that the speaker started and runs their own organization.
Reineberg got the invitation to speak at South Lakes High School through a friend who works as a staff member of JA, but that’s not her only connection to the nonprofit. Her grandfather served as a board member for JA’s south central Pennsylvania branch for 40 years, and as an elementary school student in Reston, she went through a JA program when she was in third grade.
“That’s an incredible connection,” Soneira said of Reineberg’s status as a JA alumna. “Ideally, when we take a look at the students we’re impacting today, we’d love to see them in 10 years running their own business and coming back to give right back to the community.”
Reineberg’s visit to South Lakes High School notably came during National Entrepreneurship Month.
President Obama designated November 2016 as National Entrepreneurship Month in a proclamation released on Oct. 31, calling entrepreneurship “the opportunity to forge one’s own future.”
Addressing two classes of about 10 junior and senior students each, Reineberg discussed her journey from aspiring journalist to chef and business owner before taking questions from the students, who touched on subjects ranging from how to break into the culinary industry to negative encounters with clients.
Wined and Dined offers a combination of catering and entertainment services, cooking classes, and custom-made, personal meals, all of which can be made or delivered right in a client’s home.
As the business’s sole full-time employee, Reineberg says that she frequently brings in contactors for specific gigs, and thanks to the connections she has made at school, through work and in her personal life, she has been able to make Wined and Dined work almost exclusively through word-of-mouth recommendations and referrals.
She also credited her mentors, including fellow female chefs and entrepreneurs, for the business’s success so far.
That willingness to both ask for help and offer it to other people is crucial to getting established and learning how to navigate any industry, Reineberg says.
“There is no such thing as competition,” she said, noting that other restaurants, catering services and private chefs can serve as sources of support. “It’s a community, and that’s something that’s really important in this industry. You can never look at it as competition.”
The Reston resident encouraged students to pursue a career path that they feel passionate about and to reach out to people who work in their field of interest for advice or opportunities to gain experience, such as internships or chances to shadow them for a day.
Though the students at South Lakes have plenty of time to figure out what they want to do with their future, Reineberg’s talk at least gave them a better idea of the possible options that are available to them as well as the work that would be needed to build a business or career.
As an aspiring baker who hopes to one day own her own cupcake business, South Lakes junior Makenzie Williams said that she was glad Reineberg discussed the financial and business management side of the culinary industry, including tax and licensing requirements.
“This was really helpful to me personally, because starting a business is obviously a very hard thing to do,” Williams said. “It’s so helpful to have people who’ve gone through the process to talk to you about the struggles they had and how they coped with it.”
Source: http://www.fairfaxtimes.com/articles/cooking-up-some-future-chefs/article_78735e60-b107-11e6-9be9-0f8e6743e6ae.html