Chef Erika Wants You to Have Fun Cooking en La Cocina

Amy Schumer and 1,000 people follow @ChopCookCake on Instagram and so should you.

Welcome back to the FACTory! I’m Dr. Nutmeg, your hostess, and tonight we’re interviewing Latina Chef and Entrepreneur Erika Mayol, founder of @ChopCookCake (follow her, ja!). Guided by her Puerto Rican and Guatemaltecan roots, Chef Erika just celebrated her first anniversary running the business of her dreams.

Tell me in two sentences, what your business is.

My name is Chef Erika, and I am the owner of ChopCookCake.com, recreational cooking school. We teach children and adults to cook and bake and be more confident in the kitchen.

What is it like running a cooking school in Brooklyn, New York?

Running a cooking school in Brooklyn has been adventurous. I have an after-school program. And the children are super engaging, and curious and funny, and creative. And they make me laugh. And they drive me crazy at the same time.

The adults have been a mixture of, “I want to learn how to do this, thank you for showing me, you taught me something I didn't know, to. Let's just have fun. I'm so glad I did this.”

And you know, that's what I want. I want people to have fun while they're doing something that they're not used to or even just upscaling themselves for something that they already know how to do.

I've been fascinated by how you've been using technology to build your business over the last year. Can you tell me a little more about that?

Sure. I have been cheating this entire time (laughs).

I have a daughter, who is 28 years old. And she looked at what I was doing (on social media) those first two weeks of opening and was like: “This is all wrong. This is terrible. I'm gonna take over,” and I said, “Good.”

She's been fabulous at it. And we've got some really good help because one of her friends, who is a photographer @ven.camilo — comes by when I have class and he has time. And he'll just take amazing pictures with his amazing camera and he has super talent. He'll even edit the photos before he gives them to us.

Entonces — the biggest hurdle for many Entrepreneurs is the conversion from social media marketing. And it sounds like you’re doing it!

Yeah, it's funny — my very, very, very first signup was from a social media post.

She was someone I met, working someplace else. And I told her I was opening up a cooking school. And she was like, Oh, my gosh, she started following us.

The week I opened up, she said my post was the first thing she saw on Instagram that morning.

So it's been wild.

I’ve asked students: How'd you find us? And they're like, Google.

So Google has been good to us.

What's your metric of success?

Um, I have prayed when I opened this business, and I finally put my foot in the door: “God, just help me pay the bills and maintain the lifestyle I have.”

Would I love to make a million dollars? Yes. I would not turn that away.

But I didn't want my lifestyle to change what I had at home.

So I was like, listen, I just want to eat, pay the bills, pay my car, get the rent.

Any extras is what it is: extra.

Have things changed a little bit? Yeah, like, you know, okay, we only get pizza once a week, not twice a week, or you know, those little times I'm like, I would really like to to have Starbucks. And I'm like, Starbucks is like, seven bucks a coffee.

Now you understand your mom when you were little, and they said you got that McDonald's money because I don't have McDonald's money.

About a month ago, I was like, man, I need sneakers. And then I looked at my closet, and I found two boxes with two brand new pairs in there. And I was like, what am I talking about? That I need sneakers? And so in my head, I'm like, Oh, I just saved myself like $75 bucks.

Do you think running a business has helped you become better at managing money?

No! (laughing)

On the business side, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm doing the best I can. But I don't know what I'm doing. I know how to teach. I know how to cook.

The whole other side of keeping the books and paying the bills, and social media and marketing and sitting down at the computer and looking things over — All new to me.

But I was a wife once upon a time and I have three kids.

So you have an idea of how to do things and there are certain things I do, like I'll go to four different stores because I'm looking at all the sales. So I can budget you know, creating a recipe when my students so we can get it all done as cheap as possible, but without skimping on. On, you know, necessary ingredients and tools.

It sounds like you also need to have someone that could do the accounting and then you're really going to be full on!

How did you optimize your website to be found on Google?

Yes, when I had our web designer, they explained to me all of the background about that. So we typed in all the key phrases for all that, and for Google and Yelp. So every six weeks, four to six weeks, I try to update when I have a moment and remember to do things like that.

That's a feat for a lot of people! So I'm just going to put the crown on your head right now..

Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

Can you describe your GoFundMe campaign, why you started it, how much you're trying to raise?

Yeah, right now ChopCookCake is running a GoFundMe campaign to raise money and funds for a scholarship program. For our summer workshops and our five-day camps dedicated to children and teens.

Right now we've raised enough to send one child, and we're trying to raise $3,000.

Each week is about $600, on average, so we're trying to send them out to fit it in. And then we the children or teens that get chosen, we are offering a essay contest.

So we've offered it to one school so far.

What is the essay based on?

We want the children to describe why they would like to learn how to cook and why we should pick them.

If you wrote this essay yourself, what got you into this whole entrepreneurial mess (haha)?

Yeah, so many moons ago, I became a teacher in New York City and didn't like it, I didn't do it for very long.

And then I went back to school and went to culinary school and did the restaurant thing for a long time. And I decided to put the two degrees together and teach people how to cook.

The reason why we have an adult program and a children's program is because Home Economics is no longer part of the curriculum in New York City schools.

So no one is being taught how to do anything. As far as the kitchen goes. And I'm finding even a lot of adults don't know how to cook, when it's easier to get everything on DoorDash, or these home kits, which I don't have an issue with. But if you're not in that category where you can afford that, you should be able to at least have some basic skills in the kitchen or ideas on what you want to eat.

Especially in this day, and era where there's so many health issues going on. There's so many economic issues going on with affordability. So I want you to be able to cut the corners or learn that you can freeze half of your meals or try to cook things without waste, so that you're you're not spending this money and throwing half of it out in the trash.

The DoorDash idea actually sparked a little light bulb above my head is, is there an opportunity for ChopCookCake.com to eventually grow into where you provide the ingredients like HelloFresh? Is that a growth opportunity for your business?

Um, I've never thought about it. And I don't see me going in that direction. I want to be a little more community-based. I want people to also learn how to pick out their own food.

I once was a private chef for someone. And she fortunately lived right across the street from Whole Foods. So I would get to her place. She'd give me her credit card, and I would go across the street and shop. And she was like, Listen, you know, you can pre order this. And it would be here when you got here.

And I said there is no way I am letting someone else pick out the fruits and vegetables that I plan on cooking for you.

I said because they are not going to pick up the best one. So I want people who come to my classroom to learn how to do that too. Or I had a class where I explained something so simple as like, Oh, we're making guacamole today. And we've lucked out because the avocados are absolutely perfect because I bought them two days ago and they were rock hard. And I put them in a bag, a paper bag with some apples and they're perfect today. One woman stopped me and she was like, wait a minute, you need to explain to me why this apples and paperbag thing works. And she was blown away by this little bit of information. So if that was the only thing she took out from this class, I'm happier for it.

What does a meltdown look like for you?

A meltdown for me right now would be a piece of equipment giving out on me or you know, something like, the freezer stayed open and I lose my inventory. Or I had something where when dad walked in, and I was like, it smells like mold in here. And I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. And I cleaned and I mopped, and I like super scrubbed everything. And I was like, Alright, I can't figure it out, whatever, you know, it's summer, and I don't know where it's coming from. I couldn't figure it out. Went home came back the next day. And I have these those drop ceilings in my place, and one of them was completely soaked in on the floor the next day. And luckily, there's only one piece of tile. But that was the mold smell. And I that was the thing. I cleaned the whole place and never looked up. There was a leak on the apartment above me. Because I'm part of a condo but I'm the storefront but I'm part of a condo building. They had a leak. It leaked into my drop ceiling this drop ceiling soaked it up, it started to smell that it finally soaked up all the water it fell apart. And I walked in and was like what is that a muffler?

So when you're really emotionally overwhelmed with all of the things of running a business, you clean?

Um, yeah. My apartment gets cleaned like once a week overly done.

What are your other ways of coping?

My other ways of coping, I will procrastinate work and go on social media and support all my other friends’ businesses by liking their photos, and reposting their stuff.

And finding ways to be online without being online doing what I'm should be doing.

I have about seven weeks of recipes that I have to type up.

So that's what I'll be doing today. Why? Cuz I've been procrastinating that. And now I'm just like, it has to get done. Like, I can't, I can procrastinate more, but I'm not going to.

Is that the kind of thing that AI could help you with?

No, no. I mean, if I made me on a few and not necessarily AI, like I can probably cut and paste some of them. These recipes that I've gotten from sources. But yeah, it's just and then I'm at an age where I the glasses go on and off. Because I need them for vision, but I don't need them for reading. So I'm doing the constant like that. So after being on the computer for a little while, I'm like the eyestrain eye drops, I gotta walk away.

And then that's the other thing when you walk away, I'm like, Oh, look, the kitchen, there's dishes in the sink, I'm gonna start washing that. But if I if I'm going to start washing the dishes, I gotta clean the counter first. And oh, wait a minute, I noticed the garbage is filled. So let me take that out first.

You told me at one point, there was an AI app you used to help with your business. Can you just tell a little bit about that?

Yeah, it wasn't so much an app where it was a it's already built into one of the apps I'm using to create my calendars called, “Get Occasion,” which I use for my calendars for my website. I noticed that when you add a class, it asks you to put a brief description of the class so that people know what the class is about. And I noticed that there was like a little thing it says, “Do you need AI help describing your class?”

And I was like, do I? I don't know. And I clicked the button.

And it just started typing away. And I was like, this is way better than what I was planning to type!

What TV shows do you watch?

I don't watch TV. And if I do take time to relax that way, I watch a movie.

Have you ever seen any movies featuring a woman running a business?

The only ones I can think of there was one with Catherine Zeta Jones. And it's old where she's running a restaurant. And then the other one in the 80s or 90s where she gets like a family member's baby or something like that. I think she ends up adopting a kid somehow.

And she starts like an apple sauce company?

Yeah. The baby food! It's called “Baby Boom” or something like that.

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