Ex-top mart exec to food service entrepreneur makers

At 39 years old, Victor Anthony Warren became one of the youngest managing directors of Unilever Foodsolutions. Victor led the Unilever Foodsolutions Malaysia office with a staff of more than 100 comprised of various nationalities.

With a top team of sales and marketing executives plus a slew of food experts, Victor positioned the company as one of the most profitable within the Foodsolutions region for several years complete with sustainable double digit sales and volume growth. This role demanded the expatriation of his entire family, multiple travels within the year plus a 24/7 global watch on anything and everything food service.

Now at 42, an age where most executives aggressively search for their second wind, Victor found himself happily retiring from this corporate environment.

This UP Diliman graduate looked just like a laid-back guy, fresh out of graduate school but he was now out of the corporate world after two decades of being on top of his chosen trade. It was time to do something fun with his dive master certification and interest in underwater video and photography.

Going after passion

However, it was only less than a year after retiring that he admitted to close friends and family that the passion for food and the food service industry that embraced him for years isn’t something one easily leaves behind.

It becomes one’s advocacy.

For Victor, the issue isn’t about Filipinos being able to whip up fantastic world-class dishes. He believes that it is simply a matter of time when Filipino cuisine captures the world’s attention. Victor also believes that Filipinos, more specifically culinary students, are well trained not just to explore their culinary heritage but pursue it as a profitable business – an option that is often overlooked in place of the want for a prestigious job offer in a hotel or restaurant.

He is amazed at how passionately culinary students joust for the limited number of jobs in top hotels and restaurants, and how the thousands that do not get employed simply wait for the next job offer unaware of their potential to kick-start a great culinary career by themselves.

Victor’s concern is focused on making culinary graduates believe that food service entrepreneurship could be even more rewarding than being employed. He believes that this is also key in spurring growth in the food service trade and in the industry.

He often wondered why highly skilled culinary graduates, well prepared by their respective schools, fail to seriously consider food service entrepreneurship as an equally profitable career option.  Equally frustrating was how brands present in the food service trade fail to see the chance to build relationships with so many potential chefs, restaurateurs, hoteliers or food service operators.

“It’s an opportunity for brands to plant loyalty seeds in this highly focused segment – the students. You don’t build a relationship when they are already on top of their careers. You start building this relationship during their formative years in school when they start building on the belief that they have what it takes. Brands fail to see that investing on these highly passionate people is a rewarding road compared to blindly engaging general consumers. One day, these culinary students will run big kitchens.

“The key is to make them believe in themselves. To refocus their attention to entrepreneurship – an option they might not have seriously considered. Those in the trade can encourage them to pursue this direction by reinforcing their confidence in themselves.

“Equally important is to help HRM [hotel and restaurant manager] educators by supplementing their efforts with the inculcation of real-world trade practices. The theories taught in the classroom must have a platform not just to test but to enhance the basic skills already learned. Those in the food business should extend their resources and view the effort as an opportunity not just to ‘give back’ but to build a relationship with the very people who will be their customers in a short

period of time,” says Victor.

Culinary student entrepreneurs

Victor’s passion about his vision for culinary students pursuing entrepreneurship is so evident in the way he illustrates how the academe and the trade can work together. Now it is easy to see why this simple, laid back guy who vowed to enjoy his retirement was soon back in a different “saddle” in such a short time.

“A foodcart, a carinderia, a small catering business are options a culinary graduate can do while looking for a job in a hotel or restaurant. No HRM student should be unemployed. Our academic institutions have prepared them well.”

Victor Anthony Warren set-up 2Advoc8, Incorporated with a handful of like-minded friends – aptly named as his passion for the food service trade is now a full-blown advocacy of promoting food service entrepreneurship.

One of the key roles of 2Advoc8 is to produce the Grand Culinary Challenge (GCC), a collegiate culinary-trade competition. The only one of its kind, GCC advocates food service entrepreneurship among Hotel and Restaurant Management, as well as, culinary students.

All GCC competitions, events and activities are designed to refocus students’ attention to take a serious look at the rewards and profitability of pursuing entrepreneurship in the food service trade. The second GCC is slated at the World Trade Center on Nov. 11 to 12, 2011. The first and highly successful one was held barely six months ago at the same venue.

The first GCC gathered close to 50 schools and 5,000 daily visitors watching and competing in GCC’s eight competitions. Backed up by seven companies headed by Unilever Foodsolutions, Cebu Pacific Air, Smart Bro, Electronic Yellow Pages, Tamayo’s Catering, LRT Stainless and PureGold, the first GCC was more than a modest start. With the help of two organizations, the Council for Hotel and Restaurant Educators of the Philippines (Cohrep) and the Alliance of Hospitality Educators and Practitioners of the Philippines, Inc. (Ahepp), GCC had an impressive start.

Six months after, Victor is staging his second GCC, bigger and even better than the first.

‘You can do this’

Victor insists that GCC competitions are different from standard culinary competitions. Emphasis is given to kitchen efficiency, quantity cookery and above all, food costing. He reiterates that the cost of the dish is of equal importance to taste, presentation and speed. Like the previous GCC, GCC II has already received an endorsement from The Commission on Higher Education (CHED), enjoining all colleges and universities to support the activity.

Victor explains the Greek words adorning the GCC logo – Ad Vitam Paramus. “It means Preparing for Life – this is the idea by which GCC was conceived. More than just a culinary competition, GCC is an exercise that’s designed to tell culinary students – ‘You can do this. This is what you’re capable of so go ahead and pursue it. We believe in you.’”

GCC is not just a culinary competition. It isn’t just about cooking something delicious and pinning a medal to the most appetizing dish. GCC is an HRM event. The two day event has an impressive lineup of seminars and activities designed to supplement the HRM curriculum and give students a glimpse of the trade that awaits them.

Victor emphasizes that “GCC is an engagement platform for companies present in the food service industry. It is a great opportunity for them to build a relationship with their future consumers.

“It is no longer about pushing products. It’s about spurring the trade into greater growth, into fresh new directions. More jobs, a more active economy, tourism, who knows how good it can be if we look beyond kitchen employment for our HRM graduates? It has to begin sometime. I choose now.”

Victor Warren had always been passionate about food. He admits however that his chosen advocacy brings everything he has accomplished into full circle.

And now that even wife Meldy has a diploma in culinary, Victor’s diving and underwater videography will have to wait a little bit longer.

The Grand Culinary Challenge is slated at the World Trade Center Hall B on Nov. 11 to 12, 2011 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For details, visit www.grandculinarychallenge.com