Koren Draper grew up cooking, but it wasn’t until she left a job in retail to care for her mother and a new baby that she started to think about a career in the food industry. At the time, Draper was reading lots of cookbooks, watching the Food Network, and experimenting with ingredients. When she was ready to get back to work, she had two requirements for her new job: It had to involve food and people.
Draper landed an office job at a corporate catering company near her home. But one day, after she helped out in the kitchen when the company was short-staffed, her boss asked her to make the switch permanent. At first, Draper was responsible for making salads. But she quickly moved to more complicated dishes. “My passion, once I gave it a little bit of fuel, just turned into a burning flame,” Draper says. She began taking cooking classes, which she’d once thought would be impossible to do while working. She eventually moved up to general manager at the catering company, bringing in new clients while overseeing the kitchen.
After about 15 years on the job, Draper wondered if she should try a new career. But nothing fulfilled her like preparing food. Around this time, Draper was introduced to a family in need of a private chef. It was a position she didn’t even know existed. She began planning meals, purchasing groceries, and cooking at the family’s home for the parents and their five kids. Soon, her client list began to grow, with help from social media and the website she built for her new business: Koren’s Kitchen.
Draper eventually moved from clients’ homes to a small kitchen in the basement of a church. After some experimentation, she felt that focusing on family meals and catering was the right fit. Recently, she moved into her own space, where she hosts tastings and cooking classes, and cooks for family meals and catering events. Today, Draper manages a team of eight, and although she’s moved into more of a leadership role at her company and spends less time cooking, her work is still about people and food, just as she always wanted it to be.
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