Pastry Codex

I was telling someone today this is kind of how it all started about 5 years ago working for an outfit out of New York called Coco social.
Those people were working in teams of fours making macarons and they were bigger groups sometimes exceeding 20 students per class.
Most of the students booked off of Groupon which even I used for a little while early on with the onset of the company first getting started and up and running about 3 years ago.
Groupon is a ripoff artist outfit all you really see on Groupon are like nail Day spa pedicure manicure places. Groupon takes with their flash sales up to a 42% cut of revenues, absurd!
But that's how it's got started with me approaching New York and saying hey look I've got all these other ideas for these other classes and all they wanted to do was just have me host classes on how to make macarons 3 years ago. I knew there was more to it than that, there had to be.
The drivers and the impetus to generate all of those new experiences were out of design and intention of not being able to do anything creatively with Coco social. Once they found out that I had opened up my own company and were in direct competition with them they weren't too happy about it
So you see in life one loss can lead to another opportunity which is much much better.

It really breaks my heart.
I have always have said that "without a hosting venue, there is no school."

Pastry Codex has been something that I built as an idea, somehow always knowing that I would wind up ultimately teaching. Throughout these last three years, starting out from a ghost kitchen in Gaithersburg, landing at Mrs. Peacock's lounge in the 4 th quarter of 2020, to working at an Incubator Kitchen in Rockville, unsuccessfully partnering with a coffee shop in Silver Spring, to for a little over this last year working out of a bakery in Alexandria,.all I can say it hasn't been easy.

The economy definitely has had a bearing on guest attendance it makes me wonder if I am having difficulty filling slots and seats with bookings, how are they doing? Pastry Codex and taking a class with me has always been a luxury experience, it's not something you have to do, it's something you want to do as a part of personal enrichment and self development.
With everything being as expensive as it is, food, fuel, rents, people are undoubtedly stretched.
Words can't express how gratifying it was for me to have taught hundreds of classes and patrons over these last few years. The look of joy, and satisfaction of people having made things such as Macarons, Croissants, decorating their own blush cake, coming out beautifully really was a positive projection of a personal sense of optimism, and an upbeat intrinsic quality to genuinely loving to teach and help others raise their A game.
This last venue at the bakery has been one of the most challenging that I have worked at and for in a production capacity over the last 3 years. Without having to go into a lot of details, there were demands that personally compromised the quality of my life impossed on me from management at the establishment.
I consider myself to be very well organized, conditioned over the years to have to be so. It's been my reputation and very ability to work that generated that type of work ethic, when something interferes with my ability to do my job, complicates an ordering process from a purveyor, or some how if there is a sentiment of dissatisfaction with production I am forced to re-evaluate matters.

Of course I would never condone working off of a sheet like this. Best way is using weighted formulas in grams converted from U.S imperial measurements and working with a base 10 system.

Cups, and measurements such as there are subjective and open to interpretation (rounded vs. leveled) you get the idea.
Stick to the metric system.

It's nice to know I can do something right, and really be appreciated. I guess that's why entrepreneurs wind up going independent and working for themselves because to be honest they really can't work for anybody else let's be honest.
Something happened earlier at work that really convinced me that I need to really move on and terminate my current partnership with the hosting venue.
They only miss you when you're gone, and by then it's too late.

# vegan Macarons