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

Alright, Chef thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

I’ve taken a lot of risk in life, but the biggest one to date is leaving my 9 to 5 behind to try and run my business full time. It’s not easy to walk away from certainty, but if you have dreams you can’t keep sitting on them and pursuing them part-time or you will never fulfill them. You have to get out that comfort zone. It has been very uncomfortable at first, because it if the money is not coming in, how will you pay your bills and survive. It forces you to become creative and figure things out, and the more you take on the challenge of figuring it out, the more excited you become about your business, and eventually the worry starts to fade.

Chef, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’ve been a chef for more than 15 plus years, but I didn’t start cooking with cannabis until six years ago in 2016, when cannabis was still illegal. I was dating this guy who was a cannabis connoisseur. He knew a lot of things about cannabis like; strains, terps, wax, etc. Cannabis was on the table around that time for legalization. We started visiting all these underground distribution sales events that were happening in the city. We started seeing all these infused products, but they were mostly sugar based dessert products. He came up with the idea that I should start cooking with cannabis and we would have these underground brunches for corporate and elite people that partake, but wanted to keep it on the low. We had a couple successful events, but unfortunately we went our separate ways. I was too enthralled to quit, so I created a business on.my own and kept going with it, and that is where LuckyPistil was created.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

My most effective strategy for building my clientele is going above and beyond expectations. Some might call it being a perfectionist. So instead of buying that box of instant, or cutting corners to save time I put in the effort to.make sure my customers are getting the best quality and from scratch. It is a strategy a learned a long time ago when I entered the hospitality industry working as an housekeeper at the Ritz Carlton. They instilled in us going above and beyond to take care of a customer, and even gave us leeway to do so. That is how they kept guest coming back. People like to feel special and truly deserve to, especially when they are spending their hard earned money.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When covid hit everyone had to pivot, people went working from home and everything was shut down. I went from finally getting the dream job that I wanted to help fund my dreams, to having no job at all and no catering events to have. So, like everyone else I had to pivot. I started doing meal prep for those that were considered emergency workers and the people in my building. It helped relieve some of the stress, but things were still hard. You should always have some type of skill set to fall back on. That pivot though started my career off in an unexpected direction, because now that pandemic has happened you want to be prepared incase something like that happens again.

Contact Info:

• Website: LuckyPistil.com
• Instagram: LuckyPistil
• Facebook: Enid Parham
• Twitter: Chef Sunflower @jusdet

Image Credits
Enid Parham OliveJMedia