Craft foods calling: nationwide schools, seminars and workshops teach you how to launch your own business

Most children don’t dream of selling cheese or hacking apart animal carcasses when they grow up, but it’s a popular fantasy for many adults. Like most romantic-sounding culinary vocations, making craft foods and beverages can be hard work, and a risky business enterprise. “No matter how passionate someone is about their product,” says Heidi Yorkshire, founder of Portland, Oregon’s Food by Hand Seminars, “without business skills, they’ll never survive.”

Yorkshire, a small business consultant and former food and wine writer, was inspired to launch Food by Hand in 2009 because she saw a niche. “Our courses are mini-apprenticeships in running a sustainable business.” Past curricula have included butchery and craft distilling.

Food by Hand offers two-to-three-day intensives that teach the “craft and business of artisan food.” While the courses are designed for prospective business owners, they’re open to anyone wanting to know more about handcrafted foods.

[Photo credit: Flickr user mystuart]Food by Hand has an artisan cheese program that teaches everything from tasting, buying, storage and shop design to creating a business plan. The course is led by esteemed Portland cheesemonger Steve Jones, the son of a Maytag Dairy herdsman. Additional instructors include an expert on business planning and a tax specialist.

Jones has been in the business for over 17 years and is now on his second retail cheese venture, Portland’s Cheese Bar. He’s an industry badass and the winner of the 2011 Cheesemonger Invitational (yes, it really does exist and let me tell you, as a cheesemonger, it’s a pretty intense occupation and competition).

Food by Hand’s fourth annual seminar on The Craft and Business of Retailing Artisan Cheese will be held in Portland from May 30-June 2, 2012, and costs $1,795 per person; a $1,595 early enrollment tuition fee is available if paid in full by April 1. Click here for details on how to register.

In Spokane, Washington, Dry Fly Distilling’s aptly named Distilling School teaches their “farm to bottle” ethos (they use only locally, sustainably-grown raw ingredients in their vodka, gin, bourbon and whiskey) in two-day and one-week courses designed to “provide a variety of hands-on training opportunities to aspiring distillers.”

Opening in Oakland’s Jack London Square in April is the Food Craft Institute. Supported by sponsors and partnerships with some of the Bay Area’s most renowned artisan food organizations, farmers and food artisans (some of whom are also the instructors) the new school aims to “reinvigorate the creation and success of artisan food craft business in the U.S. through a combination of…training courses steeped in technical techniques along with a rigorous entrepreneurship program.”

It’s easy to poke fun at the overuse of words like “artisan” and “handcrafted,” and even I cringe when I hear naifs dreamily speak of quitting their six-figure tech jobs and buying a goat dairy. The reality is that unless you put in the hard time doing internships and learning the business end of things — and that’s assuming you have real, honest-to-god talent and passion — you’re not going to succeed at any food business. Having seed money or disposable income doesn’t equal good product.

On the positive side, my former employer, a Seattle cheesemonger, did her homework and spent two years interning, developing a business plan and taking Jones’ workshop as well as making him her mentor. Her business has been a success from day one. If you’re serious about getting (food) crafty, you can run a viable business. Just don’t think it’s going to be easy.

Kickstarter
and incubator kitchens such as San Francisco’s La Cocina have helped many craft food businesses get off the ground. If you’re considering a career in this industry, I highly recommend these and similar programs as resources. And don’t forget: craft foods make excellent travel souvenirs.

[Photo credit: lamb, Laurel Miller; cheese, Flicker user Mitchmaitree]

Why start a craft food business? Because you “can pickle that.”


Portlandia goes overboard with outdoor gear

Gearing up for a day outside should be relatively easy. Grab the necessities – proper clothing, comfortable shoes, safety equipment, etc – and hit the road. Sure, you’ll be excused if you include a few extras in your pack (especially if you bring along enough snacks for everyone), but it’s easy for things to snowball until you suddenly realize that you’ve completely filled your car with gear for a simple day trip. In typical Portlandia fashion, this sketch mocks those over-packers, hyper-planners and big talkers who just can’t seem to stop planning and start doing.

The next time you’re heading out for a day of adventure, try to keep your pack light. Just make sure you bring the snacks!

Comedic team of ‘Portlandia’ set to create an off-beat Portland, Oregon, guidebook


Are you bored of the usual travel guidebooks aimed at everyday tourists? If you’re interested in Portland, Oregon, and would rather learn about funny, fictional places that could exist rather than the Oregon Zoo and the Portland Art Museum, you should put “PORTLANDIA: A Guide for Visitors” on your shopping list. Set to debut in November of 2012, the book is being created by the team who brought you the hit comedy series “Portlandia,” starring Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen, which takes you on an off-beat tour of Portland while poking fun at the city.

“It will be written like a Fodor’s or Lonely Planet guidebook, but full of fake, made-up, humorous stuff that could easily exist in a place like Portland, but doesn’t,” explains Ben Greenberg, the executive editor of Grand Central Publishing who will be producing the book. “Everything will be a bit off.”


To get an idea of the team’s humor and what to expect, check out the clip above from “Portlandia” on the Independent Film Channel (IFC).

Video of the Day: Portlandia demonstrates the stresses of housesitting

The new IFC show Portlandia takes the quirkiness of the Pacific Northwest city and magnifies it. However, the inspiration for this sketch is as real as the trees are big in Oregon. Anyone who has ever had a housesitting gig knows that people can be insanely neurotic about their homes when they’re going to be away for a while. They’ll show you how to turn on the lights, how to properly sit on the couch and which plates should never be used for food. It’s enough to make you never want to travel yourself lest you become one of those crazy people who worries senselessly about your own home.

If you have a great travel video that you think we might enjoy, share the link in a comment below. We could feature it as our next Video of the Day!

[Via Gawker]

Portland, Oregon: myth or reality?

Just saying the name Portland, Oregon, brings all sorts of images to mind. Bicycling vegans. Farmer’s markets. Good beer. Hipsters with ironic mustaches (him), oversized glasses (her), and skinny jeans (everyone!). A national media darling for some time, the city and its inhabitants are now being perfectly skewered in the IFC series Portlandia. The story of Portland is being told as a wonderland where people sit around and drink coffee, discussing their latest art projects and the most responsible way to legalize marijuana.

Does this mythic Portland really exist?

In a word, yes; however, there is the seedy underbelly of high unemployment, homelessness, and other unglamorous real-life problems. But for travelers, it can be a bit of a hipster paradise – ignore those pesky issues and immerse yourself in the local culture, in all its left-leaning, locavoracious glory.

For instance: yes, the locavore myth is true – people in Portland care about their food, where it comes from, and tend to seek out the highest quality ingredients. This has led to an abundance of dining options, most serving up excellent meals with less attitude and a smaller price tag than neighboring Seattle or San Francisco. Local favorites include downtown’s hip Clyde Common and North Portland’s Tasty n Sons. If you’d prefer your lunch cost $5 and comes in in a compostable take-out box, just walk a few blocks in any direction to stumble upon one of the city’s 600+ food carts. Choices include tacos, waffles, burgers, noodles, or a snitzelwich, but I’d just follow the traveling Koi Fusion on Twitter to hunt down a Korean-style quesadilla – make sure to ask for kimchi.
Portland and brewing go hand in hand, whether you’re talking beer or coffee. Breweries are plentiful in Portland, and whether you seek out a big shiny brewpub like Deschutes, or just wander into any neighborhood bar, you’ll find a selection of local brews – from hoppy IPA’s to smooth, dark porters.

Good coffee is nearly as prevalent as good beer, but seek out the ubiquitous Stumptown – the king of independent roasters in Portland, with their most accessible location in the Ace Hotel downtown. Order a latte from the tattooed, possibly surly barista behind the counter. Admire the art they made in your foam. And be happy you don’t have to help them rewrite their resume for the eighth time this year.