Back to the kitchen. Longer pause here, and we'll continue a bit. The last time I left the story was when I left Waskia from the role of kitchen shift manager to Sokos as a night shift, working night jobs, it took a couple of years. The phone rang and I was offered a chef's position at Waskia, in the end I made the decision to move back to a familiar house and try a slightly more responsible role, even a few years ago I had thought that I would go back to the kitchen when it was mine. The time was ~ 2011.
When stepping into a new role, I have to thank the shift manager Kaija again for all the support and lessons, I learned a lot about managing large events, how to really stack the tables, and few people can cut gray salmon at such a pace as this professional. Here we come to the idea of what is extremely important to you, the respect of your colleagues and especially when you have more experience in the field than your age, so often you could be a listening student even if you were his/their predecessor in the papers. Eternal learning - that's what this is.
While working at Waskia, I got to be responsible for large and really interesting entities. The most memorable were the summer days for 2,000 people, the Midsummer party on the seashore with roast pirates, all the trial menus and performances for customers. This is where I learned to market at the latest, or I don't know if I learned, but I was exposed everywhere a lot. Thank you to all of Waskia's colleagues for these years! Certainly, the number of events, menu planning and the execution of events became familiar in this place. The masses were sometimes so big that you really had to time your movements and of course I learned the importance of timing on that side. Even though we were part of Restel, the best thing was the freedom to make and design our own buffet menus & order menus, we could use local producers and we could always tell where the ingredients were sourced from.
Let's continue this at some point, have a nice week,
Lassi Keikkakokki.fi entrepreneur