Jason McKinney went from never having taught a live cooking class to now running a virtual cooking class empire where people can learn how to make pasta alongside Snoop Dogg, Raekwon and Method Man.
McKinney is one of the three co-founders behind Truffle Shuffle, which went from selling truffles direct to restaurants before the start of the pandemic to fully leading popular online cooking classes during it, with included meal kits and ingredients.
Truffle Shuffle founders McKinney, Tyler Vorce and Sarah McKinney met while working at The French Laundry — you know, the uber-popular, three-Michelin-starred restaurant, scene of Newsom’s very public COVID-19 birthday party misstep in 2020 — in Yountville, Calif., and started their business together in 2018. When it came time to figure out what to do with 20 pounds of fresh truffles they had stashed at their apartment for their young business when the world shifted into shelter-in-place due to the pandemic, a pitch to do a virtual cooking class instead turned into an entirely new direction for the business.
"It [was] a 100% pivot and no, none of us were chef instructors," McKinney said. "We had taught people how to cook in restaurants and we kind of applied those same principles. If you were to go to the French Laundry, 11 Madison Park, Alinea — today, five years ago, at any point — and you wanted to be a great chef, you would go in, you'd be eager, you'd be ready and the chef would say, 'go mise [en place] out these ingredients for risotto.' And then you would go measure everything and then you would make it standing next to the experienced chef. And so basically we kind of mimic that same process of how you train great chefs, but doing that with home chefs and giving them the ingredients, doing it live and allowing them to ask questions."
It was a smart gamble that paid off, and the group has expanded from its initial six-person operation that first worked out of McKinney's 1,000-square-foot apartment, to a 46-person business operating out of its new Oakland headquarters — 10 times the size of that apartment, and with four studio kitchens for live cooking classes and facilities that can pump out 10,000 meal kits a week, McKinney said.
"[Our class] truly offers a level that you will never be able to achieve in a restaurant kitchen," McKinney said. "It offers a level of intimacy that you'll never be able to achieve in the restaurant kitchen, because as ... we're sharing the knowledge that we spent years to accumulate, we're watching in real time how well we are doing to communicate to the audiences that's taking part in the group. And if we do a well enough job with that, not only do [students] have a delicious dish, but they have a skill and a technique and a memory that they will carry with them forever."
A truffle-laden fettucine alfredo was a recent dish taught at a cooking class with Truffle Shuffle.
Courtesy Truffle ShuffleNow with the group's new facilities up and running, Truffle Shuffle is entering a new era of their business. They're attempting a sort of live streaming talk show version of a cooking class that’s interactive and likely includes a celebrity guest judge like Snoop Dogg who’ll ref your pasta rolling contest, as he did back in February.
"We feel that live streaming is the media of the future and we want to be ahead of the curve, and we have a cooking show that airs on Zoom," McKinney said. "... Zoom allows you an accessibility that there has never been before, it allows for a virtual connection that there has never been before … We found that using it as a tool to teach people how to cook better dishes in the comfort of their own home — and whether there's a pandemic, no pandemic — there'll never be a better way for people to learn how to make dishes than from the comfort of their own home.
"What Zoom does, and the special guests do is ... maybe there's 15 minutes and you need to simmer the paella," McKinney continued. "We'll keep you entertained. We will make it fun for you the entire time."
McKinney said they're working on getting a few more celebrity guests in the mix; Wu-Tang's Raekwon and Method Man (of whom Vorce and McKinney are both fans) are each taking part in a paella cooking class this upcoming March 28, with other special guests still in the works. Truffle Shuffle has also put together a weekly "segment" for their Sunday cooking classes called "Darnell and Friends," starring actor Darnell Abraham (who played George Washington in "Hamilton"), where a rotating cast of performers sing a few songs at the end of class. It's Truffle Shuffle's way of giving back to their customers, while also helping out performers who are out of work at the moment after COVID-19 forced the closures of plays and musicals.
It's that giving ethos that has helped guide the company since its early days. Early on in the pandemic, Truffle Shuffle began providing one meal to a frontline healthcare worker for each cooking kit sold, and is now working on a partnership with the Alameda Food Bank. It's a cause that’s important to McKinney, who experienced food insecurity as a child.
The company has also helped out fellow restaurant industry folks as they've expanded the business, hiring a roster of staff that come from Michelin-starred restaurants, including acclaimed San Francisco restaurants Acquerello and Benu.
"As [Truffle Shuffle] started growing, we had [a] decision to make: do we hire experienced talent that might already be working, or do we hire people that need a position and need a career right now? And we took the latter route and then we took the time to train them," McKinney recalled. "And now we've got a pretty smooth operating business over here — and it's really just come from ingenuity, you know?"
The payoff for moving into online cooking classes hasn’t just been helping out those who are hurting in the hospitality industry, but also sharing their cooking know-how with home cooks, all while having a great time doing it.
Meal kits and the Zoom cooking classes at Truffle Shuffle range from $95 - $125, for two servings of food. Sign-ups for Sunday classes must be received by Wednesdays at 4 p.m. to ensure that meal kits reach your home in time for instruction. Past cooking classes can be found on their YouTube page, here. For more information, head to www.truffleshufflesf.com.
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March 24, 2021 at 06:09PM
https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Truffle-Shuffle-Oakland-cooking-class-Wu-Tang-16048011.php
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