Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sarah Daulton. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Sarah, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

The focus of our mission is all about CO-CREATION. The kitchen is the heart of the home and food is central to the human experience. At Denver Cooking Classes, our goal is to gather together to create intimate & memorable experiences based on food, friends, and fun in an in-home & team building environment.
When Denver Cooking Classes was first evolving, Chef Sarah went into a guest’s home to teach her first class with a family of five. By the end of class, she could’t help but notice how happy, proud, and excited the family was to have just created a beautiful meal. This was exactly where the inspiration began-realizing that she was a part of bringing people joy & delicious food, right in the heart of a home. The mission of co-creation became the driving force behind Denver Cooking Classes and what it is today. Denver Classes aims to gather families & groups together in an intimate setting with one huge goal in mind: Bring others joy through food!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Sarah grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and has worked in the food industry in and around Denver and Colorado for over 18 years. She’s worked as a line cook and a caterer, including her own small catering company, Daulton Culinary. Teaching is her second passion, as is utilizing local ingredients for the table.

Denver Cooking Classes offers the most unique recreational IN-HOME cooking classes for the home cook. We’ve designed our cooking classes to bring you A variety of authentic dishes from around the world. Choose from Italy, Spain, India, Thailand, Japan, France, Mexico, or our Globetrotter menu, and one of our experienced chefs will guide you through three dishes from the country of your choice! Denver Cooking Classes provides all of the ingredients & equipment needed For class – you provide the kitchen! Cooking classes are approximately 2.5 Hours.

Our in-home classes are curated for students who want to enjoy a hands on, chef guided cooking class led by one of our talented Chefstrcutors, in the comfort of their own home. Our mission is to take our students out of their comfort zones and into a new way of thinking, from a cooks perspective!
Our menus can be adjusted to accommodate most dietary restrictions!

Denver Cooking Classes offers a top rated team building experience for your corporate events. The Chef guided menus we offer are hands on, energetic, collaborative, and require a team to execute!

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

We do take pride in the excellent reputation that Denver Cooking Classes has built in our market & community. As we’ve mentioned before, we value the idea of Co Creation-bringing teams and families together to create an exceptional meal as a group. We believe that it requires both the input and the participation of the entire team to create something that everyone values in the end. Moreover, we value the idea of significance. Because each class is very private & intimate, we make it a point to learn every guest’s name, and something neat about them. As a company that goes into our guest’s home, we are able to focus completely on them and their individual needs as a cook-this ranges from honing knife skills to understanding different techniques around building our dishes. Denver Cooking Classes was created with an understanding & the opportunity to spend quality time with each guest-offering them the notion that they are significant, valuable and can learn new things. After each class ends, we witness the absolute joy & a new found confidence in all of our guests, and
it’s that experience that elevates Denver Cooking Classes and our reputation.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Denver Cooking Classes was built in March of 2019. This gave us around 9 months to begin networking, getting our name out into Denver, and teaching as many classes as we could book. It didn’t take long to begin gaining a lot of momentum, however, in early 2020, Covid hit, and threatened our industry. Because we could no longer access people’s homes, we decided to start offering on-line cooking classes! Chef Sarah used her home kitchen, allowed guest’s to pick any dish they wanted to learn, and we would do a class via Zoom! It was so much fun, and we Sarah was able to teach a variety of fun dishes, but mostly lots of handmade pasta. This online pivot allowed us to get through the pandemic, and we have been fortunate enough now, to get back into homes and team building classes in our kitchen. Denver Cooking Classes will still teach the occasional online course!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://denvercookingclasses.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/denvercookingclasses
• Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/denvercookingclasses
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTTtnjJA1YIxXrYuQ2Rk_8g

Image Credits
Chris Laplante