The American Personal Chef Association made another
landmark move in the development of the Personal
Chef industry with the creation of the
Best Practices groups at the Orlando Summit.
These groups, comprised of all attendees, were
special-interest breakout discussions on four
timely topics affecting Personal Chefs everywhere:
Code of Ethics
Sanitation and Food Safety
Personal Chef Certification
Standard Vocabulary.
By anyone's measure these groups were tremendously
successful, once again showing that when you have
a group of people with a common interest, professional
attitude and a desire to make a difference you can
achieve almost anything! Way to go APCA
chefs!
Here are some highlights from the groups discussions.
Once of the largest groups,
the Code of Ethics discussion generally agreed that there
is a need for an industry-wide code accessible to all
Personal Chefs. This code would lay the groundwork for how
each and every Personal Chef who voluntarily complies with
the code would conduct his or her business.
Many specific ideas were
generated as to what should be in this code and, perhaps
more importantly, the types of things which should
specifically be omitted. Preliminary suggestions were made
as to how the Personal Chef Code of Ethics should be
rolled out and how it would be administrated on an ongoing
basis.
The groups consensus was
that a Personal Chef Code of Ethics committee should be
struck, comprised of working Personal Chefs, do develop a
set of standards for consideration by the Personal Chefs
at large. Upon return from Orlando, the call went out and
a number of Personal Chefs have now committed to work on
this program. The Personal Chef Code of Ethics committee
is now hard at work in the initial phases of developing
this program.
For any questions regarding the Code of Ethics,
please
email the committee chair, Chef Brian Boots.
There's no doubt that the
Personal Chef industry is still out on the frontier of the
culinary world. Part of that frontier is the continuing
change that we see in food regulations with respect to the
Personal Chef industry.
The Sanitation and Food
Safety group tackled this tough topic with enthusiasm,
discussing issues of safe food handling, HACCP,
transportation & storage and more.
Again, many topic-specific
suggestions were put forward and the group as a whole
began developing great ideas. Once again, the general
consensus was for the striking of a committee for the
ongoing development and deployment of Sanitation and Safe
Food Handling standards.
Volunteers for the
Sanitation and Food Safety Committee, which will
officially start in January 2003, are currently being
recruited and we invite all APCA members with a solid
background in Food Safety to
email the
committee chair, Meredith Eriksen.
This groups had a two-fold
purpose; provide some additional information about the
forthcoming ACF Personal Chef certification levels and
discuss other needs regarding certification.
The whole ACF program will
be unveiled in January 2003, but some highlights of it
include specific points levels earned from general and
industry-specific education as well as extensive
experience operating a Personal Chef service. These two
new certifications are generally considered equivalent to
Chef de Cuisine and Executive Chef.
The group discussed the
forthcoming standards and proposed the development of a
third, more entry-level, certification more on par with a
certified Sous Chef. This program will more fully explored
and developed early in 2003.
With the constant breaking of new ground that the Personal
Chef industry does, being able to communicate clearly, to
the public and to each other, can be a tough challenge
when so many new terminologies are created.
The focus of the Standardized Terminology group was the
discussion of the need for standardized terminologies
that effectively describe our industry and services.
Certainly not designed to straightjacket anyone, the
focus here is to provide a "styleguide" of
terms that provides better reference to what we do
while avoiding the jargon that tends to creep into any
new industry.
Before year-end we will be working to create this repository
for Personal Chefs' use. keep an eye on this newsletter for
future developments.
|
