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Susie Franco is a professionally trained chef -- a
graduate of the prestigious California Culinary Academy in San
Francisco and a hometown girl born and raised in Pinecrest who has
returned to her roots, both familial and culinary.
Gardner's Markets new director of catering is a professional chef with
experience in many of the country's top restaurants and hotels
"I'm a graduate of all the Palmetto schools and I
got my college degree from FIU," she said.
Originally a business major, Franco soon switched to
Florida International University's innovative and then new hospitality
management program.
"Cooking and food have always been my first loves
ever since I was a child helping my Sephardic grandmother make
wonderful dishes like buyos (a Greek-inspired specialty similar to
filo triangles with spinach), doing everything by hand and from
scratch," said Franco.
Her first job was washing dishes and assisting
world-famous chefs in the kitchen of the old Bobbi and Carole's in
South Miami.
"I met John Clancey, Jacques Pepin, and Julia
Child," she said. "It was my first experience with gourmet
cooking and it was a wonderful discovery for me to see that cooking
can be both an art and a career."
After graduating FIU, Franco was hired to work in
Radisson's flagship hotel in Minneapolis, where she completed an
extensive management-training course with a specialty in catering and
sales. Soon after, the five-star Warwick Hotels snapped her up as the
company's international sales manager.
"I was based in New York, but my job required me
to travel to Europe quite frequently," she said. "And when
you go to Europe, you see food the way it is supposed to be; it's an
art form. Even waiters are specially trained and highly esteemed
professionals. It changed my whole perspective and I was excited to
try to bring that style and quality home."
One day during a business trip to Dallas, Franco met
nationally renowned chef Dolores Snyder who encouraged her to attend
culinary school.
"It was a dream of mine since the beginning and
with Dolores' encouragement I felt that the time was right,"
Franco explained. "She recommended the California Culinary
Academy and that turned out to be the perfect choice for me. San
Francisco is such a wonderful Mecca of food and chefs, and their
sophisticated attitude about food was as close to Europe as I had come
to in the states. It was a wonderful experience!"
After working for several restaurants and catering
companies around the U.S., Franco was hired by the top caterer in the
Southeast Affairs to Remember in Atlanta just in time for the
1996 Olympics.
"I remember that we did almost $4-million dollars in business
during those three weeks," she said. "But mostly I loved the
latitude I had to be creative and to develop some ideas of my
own."
Other good things also happened in her life. She
married one of her former classmates at CCI and together they had a
baby girl.
"That's when I knew I had to change my
lifestyle," Franco said. "With a new baby, I couldn't
continue to work the crazy hours catering demands."
So the young family returned to Pinecrest to be close
to family and friends. Shortly after they moved in, the opportunity
arose to work with Gardner's Markets. She was hired as the company's
director of catering sales about a year-and-a-half ago.
"This is a new position for us," said
Elizabeth Adams, one of Gardner's owners. "We discovered that we
were working so hard on the 'big picture' that none of us had time to
attend to details. That's where Susie comes in. She's not only a great
chef and very knowledgeable about food, but she's also a great
organizer with a strong business background, as well as a terrific
people person. She really brings it all together."
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