corporate culinary events

Hue-Chan Karels, owner of Open Kitchen, combines her passion for food, wine, and education with a 20-plus year career in quality system management and organization development consulting to provide teams and organizations with experiential learning events to:

 

  • Deepen team-bonding experiences
  • Increase leadership skills
  • Bring about sustainable organizational effectiveness

Open Kitchen Santa Fe’s Corporate Culinary Events are held at unique, inspiring venues in Santa Fe and the surrounding areas and are custom-designed to meet clients’ objectives in the following areas:

          • Leadership Development & Team Building – Effective leaders, high-performing teams, and great meals all have something in common. They all start with a recipe. However, the proper recipe alone will not create phenomenal food.   There also needs to be an understanding of the resources (people, ingredients, tools) required and how to apply them in the right amounts, at just the right time, to bring forth the best flavors. The same can be said of inspiring leadership and high performance teams.
            • Participants will have fun preparing a delicious meal together in break-out teams. The essential elements of effective working relationships and leadership skills are transferred into the kitchen as team members are called upon to use creativity, communication skills, collaboration, organizational and decision-making skills, goal orientation, and leadership to accomplish their tasks.  The event will conclude with team members dining on what they have created together and a wrap-up session to review what went well, what could be improved upon, and overall team processes.
            • Details:  3 to 4-hour session; 10 min/20 max participants
          • Project Management –  Organizations need good project managers at all levels to effectively manage diverse components of its business, adapt to changes, and achieve its strategic objectives.  Project management knowledge, skills, and styles can be practiced and mastered by applying these to life’s most basic activity – cooking.  Similar to a project, cooking is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a meal.  
            • Participants will simulate key project phases (initiation, planning, execution, monitoring/controlling, and closure) as they break into teams and cook a meal together.  Through the cooking process, participants will perform tasks such as reviewing recipes, gathering resources (ingredients and tools), evaluating and managing cooking times, developing prep lists and planning who will do what, get cooking, checking on progress and managing risks, plating and presentation, and evaluating the finished meal to review what went well, what could be improved upon, and overall learnings.
            • Details:  3 to 4-hour session; 10 min/20 max participants
          • Leadership & “Preferred Future” Visioning — One of the most important responsibilities of every leader is to take time to envision the “preferred future” of their business that will chart and sustain a clear, meaningful purpose and strategic direction for their organization. 
            • Participants will take part in a creative, collaborative cooking process that will facilitate the visioning of the preferred future for their business – “What does our organization look like, and be doing, when we are performing at our very best?”  The outcome will be a “story of the preferred future” that will provide the foundation for developing a vision statement for the organization.
            • Details:  7-hour session; 10 min/20 max participants

For more information, including cost, location, and availability, please contact Hue-Chan Karels at 202-285-9840 or hcl@openkitchen-dcmetro.com.