{"id":24445,"date":"2017-02-08T06:16:26","date_gmt":"2017-02-08T16:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nmc.edu\/?p=24445"},"modified":"2018-04-14T23:12:17","modified_gmt":"2018-04-15T03:12:17","slug":"success-story-culinary-alumnus-carves-career-path-at-retail-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nmc.edu\/?p=24445","title":{"rendered":"Success Story: Culinary alumnus carves career path at retail market"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>February 8, 2017<\/h3>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Culinary Institute alumnus and Plum Markets vice president Randy Weed\" class=\"AlignImageLeft\" height=\"413\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.nmc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/1e956743c66cc78d627b6bb0cfd6624frandy-weed-pointing-300-1.jpg\" width=\"300\" \/>Consider the ideal working conditions for a chef, and <strong>Randy Weed<\/strong> has it all: Recipe development responsibility, gigantic pantry full of top-quality ingredients, and satisfied, often repeat customers.<\/p>\n<p>The twist is that Weed wields his talents in the kitchen of an upscale grocery store, rather than a restaurant. The 1996 NMC culinary graduate is the vice president of culinary at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.plummarket.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"(link opens new window)\">Plum Market<\/a>, an upscale retail grocer with six locations in metro Detroit and Chicago.<\/p>\n<p>Weed&#8217;s career path illustrates the options available to current Great Lakes Culinary Institute students, who on Feb. 24 will host <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nmc.edu\/resources\/lobdells\/taste-of-success\/index.html\">A Taste of Success<\/a>, a strolling dinner of international cuisines and the program&#8217;s biggest scholarship fundraiser.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When I started out in this career, the last place I ever wanted to work was a grocery store,&#8221; said Weed. But he&#8217;s found his passion for food, kindled at NMC by instructors like the late <strong>Lucy House<\/strong> and <strong>Pete Peterson<\/strong>, is stoked daily at Plum.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My goal has always been to have the highest quality food we can get. There is no better pantry than what I could access here,&#8221; said Weed, who supervises eight other chefs and creates the recipes served up at six different stations in the store, from an all-organic salad bar to a hot bar to a carving station whose all-natural meat entrees change themes daily, from Asian to chophouse to Latin. Plum also offers in-store cafes and catering.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the next step in the evolution of what&#8217;s going on with food,&#8221; Weed said. &#8220;We don&#8217;t look at other retail markets as being our competition. We look at other fine restaurants.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He would know. As a student, Weed did an internship at Tapawingo, Peterson&#8217;s legendary restaurant in Ellsworth, which closed in 2009. He later worked at other high-end northern Michigan restaurants including Latitude in Bay Harbor and the Garland Resort &amp; Country Club east of Gaylord. After moving downstate, he cooked in top-tier restaurants including the now-closed Golden Mushroom and Roast in Detroit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"NewTextBlock\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Plum Markets store interior\" class=\"AlignImageRight\" height=\"193\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.nmc.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/1e9bb2dec66cc78d627b6bb01bd1e8eaplum-markets-store-interior-300-1.jpg\" width=\"300\" \/><span class=\"AlignCaptionRight\">The interior of a Plum Market store<\/span>He&#8217;s thrilled to have landed at Plum, which has doubled its locations since he joined the company seven years ago. Besides his daily kitchen duties, Weed enjoys tasks like last year&#8217;s trip to Spain, to develop a partnership with the world&#8217;s largest purveyor of Spanish olive oil.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Everything I learned at NMC and all the different experiences prepared me for it,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Weed&#8217;s advice to current culinary students?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Work for the job that you want, not the job that you have. You can always do a little more, learn a little more, try to be a little better.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And remember that even with a VP in your title, certain tasks in the kitchen always need to be done.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s an example of Lucy House. She was never afraid to sweep and mop the floor.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><i>Tickets to A Taste of Success are $100 each. Sponsor tables are also available.<\/i> <i>Buy online<\/i><i> and support culinary student success.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>February 8, 2017 Consider the ideal working conditions for a chef, and Randy Weed has it all: Recipe development responsibility, gigantic pantry full of top-quality ingredients, and satisfied, often repeat customers. The twist is that Weed wields his talents in the kitchen of an upscale grocery store, rather than a restaurant. The 1996 NMC culinary [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intercom"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Success Story: Culinary alumnus carves career path at retail market - NMC Communiqu\u00e9<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.nmc.edu\/?p=24445\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Success Story: Culinary alumnus carves career path at retail market - NMC Communiqu\u00e9\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"February 8, 2017 Consider the ideal working conditions for a chef, and Randy Weed has it all: Recipe development responsibility, gigantic pantry full of top-quality ingredients, and satisfied, often repeat customers. 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