Alumni Profiles - The Looking Glass Experience

Master Chef Victor Gielisse Brings Good Taste, Business Savvy to Food Industry Challenges

 

"At Looking Glass, you assume a role that is totally unfamiliar to you. You have to function within that role and rely on other people and other team members. I think that is the key, and it allows you to see the world from a different perspective."

- Victor Gielisse
Master Chef, Actuelle

Born into a family of restaurateurs and hoteliers in the Netherlands, Victor Gielisse decided at an early age that the world of food and hospitality would also be the life for him. His great success since then illustrates the breadth of fascinating possibilities open to one who can master not only the culinary arts but also the business side of the complex foodservice industry.

"There is so much opportunity," said Gielisse. "There's probably not another industry as diverse and as exciting as this one." And he has made his mark all over it - as a Certified Master Chef, as owner of the acclaimed Dallas restaurant Actuelle and the CFT/Culinary Fast-Trac consulting firm, as the author of two books (Cuisine Actuelle and In Good Taste, A Contemporary Approach to Cooking), as the winner of numerous awards, including medals at the Culinary Olympics, and now as head of the Culinary Institute of America's recently formed Industry Solutions Group.

In this new role, Gielisse directs the Culinary Institute's relationship with the foodservice industry, leading a core group of five individuals who are all Certified Master Chefs with advanced degrees in business. Their work involves helping foodservice companies advance to the forefront in fields such as health and wellness, supplier and operation relations, flavor exploration, research and exploration, and training and certification. Clients come for help with everything from food flavors and menu items to process simplification and success-probability analysis.

"It's about listening to clients and understanding their business and core objectives," Gielisse said. "Once we have a full grasp of that, we come up with solutions that bring about positive business results. When a project goes well and a client calls to say they experienced a big increase in sales largely due to our involvement - that is pretty cool stuff."

Gielisse joined the Culinary Institute in 1998 as dean of culinary, baking and pastry studies, and the idea of influencing new generations of foodservice professionals intrigued him immensely. "That position allowed me to do something that could be of consequence in terms of making a difference in people's lives, and seeing students succeed here was worth the whole journey," he said. "The college offers four degree programs, and you can see the impact our graduates have on the industry, not only in the fine dining sector but in the whole innovation process."

A serious student himself, Gielisse returned to school in the 1990s, earning an MBA and a doctorate in business administration. It was part of his master plan for differentiating and benchmarking his professional growth, he said. "I had the knowledge gained from having been a chef all of my life, but I knew that you also have to learn additional skills."

Gielisse augmented his professional growth in 2003 at CCL, at the Looking Glass Experience, which introduced him to something that is an important part of his work today: collaboration.

"At Looking Glass, you assume a role that is totally unfamiliar to you. You have to function within that role and rely on other people and other team members. I think that is the key, and it allows you to see the world from a different perspective," he said. "I think that is particularly important in the foodservice industry because what normally happens is that people in different areas sort of work in their own silos. What we do in our consulting now is really stress the notion that the collaborative process will allow them to bring products to market faster and with much more innovation because everybody is involved."

As his new work goes forward, Chef Gielisse recalls what he tells students at the Culinary Institute in terms of establishing a path for professional growth. "You will graduate here with a four-year degree in culinary arts and go out in the world. And, yes, you will be working somewhere cooking meals, but you're probably not going to do that all your life. If you carve out a growth path in terms of what your goals are, and do that every 10 or 20 years, pretty soon you will have amassed a pretty exciting career. It has just been a tremendous ride for me."