McCarthy embracing change with ACC job

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This article was published 03/01/2022 (1542 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Always looking for an opportunity to sharpen her culinary skills, Kaitlin McCarthy left the comfort of working at her parents’ restaurant in November to pursue a new job at Assiniboine Community College.

McCarthy is no stranger to ACC’s Manitoba Institute of Culinary Arts, having already graduated from this two-year program in 2019.

But now that she’s serving as a culinary arts educational assistant, the 22-year-old told the Sun this new position presents a fresh set of challenges that will make 2022 a very interesting year.

“It’s a nice feeling to have,” she said recently. “I can truly say that I’m loving it so far.” 

Of course, McCarthy’s interest in the culinary arts is not limited to her time at ACC, since she grew up in a family that nurtured her love of cooking and baking from a young age.

By the time she was around 11 years old, McCarthy said she was able to prepare an entire Christmas dinner by herself, from the turkey to the roasted potatoes to the Yorkshire pudding for dessert.

“And I think from there it was something that I loved to do. I loved to experiment with all the different ingredients and flavours,” she said.

“I would always try to add some things into our supper while my mom wasn’t looking, just to try and spice things up a bit.”

McCarthy was also exposed to the business side of the culinary industry early on, with her grandparents having purchased the Chicken Chef restaurant in Russell roughly three decades ago.

“And then my parents took it over in 2009, so growing up that’s all I knew,” she said. “I was always in the restaurant, around customer service. I lived out of the restaurant, basically.”

Once she graduated from Major Pratt School, McCarthy decided to take all the skills and know-how she accumulated working at her family’s restaurant and apply it to a post-secondary environment in Brandon.

During her time as a student in ACC’s culinary arts institute, McCarthy found she still had lots to learn about the industry, despite already spending years preparing and serving food on the front lines.

“I felt like I was always gaining knowledge [at ACC],” she said. “So I felt like it was exactly what I needed and if I hadn’t done it when I did I don’t know if I would have pursued [this field].”

In fact, the ACC culinary arts program further cemented McCarthy’s desire to open her own bakery.

After graduating from ACC and spending some time working out east, McCarthy finally put this plan into motion in late 2019, establishing a bake shop at the front of her parents’ Chicken Chef restaurant.

Calling the business “Kait’s Kakes,” McCarthy provided the people of Russell with her own custom pastries and specialty items to help them celebrate a variety of personal milestones.

“I brought in another aspect to my parents’ business,” she said. “I was able to do all the baking for catering and for events and do wedding cakes and supply desserts whenever somebody was having a birthday party.”

While McCarthy had plans to find her own separate retail space to give Kait’s Kakes some room to expand, ACC came calling once again, this time with a job offer that was too good to pass up.

As difficult as it was to step away from a business she had built from the ground up, McCarthy said she was able to funnel all that passion and creativity into her new position as a culinary arts educational assistant.

Not only is McCarthy responsible for fulfilling food orders and making sure the school’s kitchen facilities are in tip-top shape, but she also gets to take on more of a supervisory role compared to her previous stint at ACC.

This new dynamic really hit home during the recent Farewell to Fall event, where McCarthy and her students were tasked with preparing an expansive dessert spread to complement ACC’s newest indoor dining experience.

Outside of being the school’s first opportunity to host a formal in-person dinner since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, this little soirée on Dec. 2 also proved to be McCarthy’s major induction into her new mentor role.

“It balanced out really, really well, and it was so nice to be there for the students to have their first event,” she said. “Because I think after almost two years of not having events, you really have to be on your A-game.”

In terms of what the future holds, McCarthy is weighing a variety of career opportunities in her mind, being drawn to both the teaching and business side of the culinary industry.

And while the ongoing pandemic has had a major impact on how this industry operates, McCarthy believes her ability to enact and embrace change over the last couple years will open up a pathway to success.

“I totally think that people should jump into a different kind of change, and there’s so many job opportunities that are possible right now because everybody is so short-staffed during COVID,” she said. 

“So I think right now, coming into the new year, it would be a good time for a change like that.”

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

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