Today we’d like to introduce you to Hollie Joseph.
Hollie, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I started my professional culinary career while living in Chicago in the ’90s. I had no professional culinary experience and grew up around my parents and Grandma’s cooking all the time and quickly grew to love cooking. Cooking to me seemed like that is how you show the people you care about love! I called up Chef Joshua Yung at Cafe Absinthe in my Chicago neighborhood and asked if I could come in to talk to him about possibly working in his kitchen. He said yes, so I went in one day and sat down for two hours and talked about food and the industry. As our conversation concluded, he said, “he’d never hired anyone without professional experience before and said he wanted to give me a shot because I was so passionate about food.” I was thrilled to be given a chance in a professional kitchen and started a few days later preparing salads and cold appetizers on the line for dinner service. Truth be told, I didn’t even know the correct way to hold a knife when I started at Cafe Absinthe!
I’ve worked in professional kitchens on and off up until 2011 when I moved to San Diego. When I moved, I decided I didn’t want to work in a professional kitchen any longer and decided to only take private catering gigs here and there. Two years ago, my Mother-in-Law, Rose passed away from Colon Cancer. Having lost my own Mom to Cancer when I was 21, I knew I needed to help people get healthy. A year ago, I honed in on my business and began focusing my energy on creating healthy, healing foods that help people stay healthy. I began branding myself as a Wellness Chef and preparing Vegan and plant-based foods for my client. As my business evolved, I started teaching Vegan cooking classes and am writing my first Vegan cookbook called, “A Little Lunch.” The name is an homage to my Grandma Olson who inspired me to become a Professional Chef. Whenever we came to visit, we would find her in the kitchen cooking or baking something. We wouldn’t see her but would hear her say, “sit down and have a little lunch.” We would sit down at the food-filled table and feast away on the cornucopia of delights we would see laid out for us on the table.
Has it been a smooth road?
I always knew I wanted to become a chef in my 20’s and knew after I’d worked in the professional industry for so long that I didn’t want to do that forever. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until I lost my Mom and Mother-in-Law both from Cancer that I realized I had to make a difference and help people take control of their health by helping them to get healthy and educate them on the importance of maintaining a Vegan diet to help heal the environment.
I had no clue how to start my own business and am still learning! I quit my retail job as a Visual Stylist two years ago and focused on building my brand and growing my business. My business is all word of mouth so it’s been hard to find my people and it is happening slowly but steadily.
My catering and event clients are coming to me and I actually had to put my Vegan cooking class on hold while I write my book and cater for events.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Jane Joseph Wellness story. Tell us more about the business.
I am not only a Wellness Chef but also a Reiki Master healer which means I energetically help heal people through Reiki sessions using hands-on healing. I Reiki-infuse my cuisine so people are not only healing from the Organic Vegan food they are putting in their bodies but also healing from the Reiki energy I infuse into each and every morsel of food I prepare.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
With so many people trying a Vegan or plant-based diets I feel the industry and my business will benefit from people realizing the health aspects of a Vegan lifestyle. Not only is a Vegan lifestyle good for your body but it also helps heal the environment and avoids unnecessary cruelty towards animals.
People are becoming Vegan or plant-based and it’s so great to see more and more restaurants with Vegan or Vegetarian options on the menu. Some analysts may say this is a food trend but if more and more people stick to a Vegan diet, it will outlast any trend out there as far as food is concerned because of all of the other great things that go along with it!
Look at the Impossible Burger or Beyond Burgers, they’re doing so well and places are selling out of them! This is a great “trend” to see in the food industry become the norm one day because going forward, we have so many to feed in this world and we as people need to find an alternative to meat to save the planet due to global warming. I’m excited to see what the future holds for a meat-free world!
Pricing:
- Private Cooking Lessons start at $125/hour plus food cost
- Group Cooking Lessons start at $75/per person
- Private One-On_one Reiki Sessions $125/Hour
Contact Info:
- Website: janejosephwellness.life
- Phone: 6122096413
- Email: jane@janejosephwellness.life
- Instagram: janejosephwellness
- Facebook: Jane Joseph Wellness California
Image Credit:
Kambria Fischer Photography
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