We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jose Valines. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jose below.

Hi Jose, thanks for joining us today. Parents can play a significant role in affecting how our lives and careers turn out – and so we think it’s important to look back and have conversations about what our parents did that affected us positive (or negatively) so that we can learn from the billions of experiences in each generation. What’s something you feel your parents did right that impacted you positively.

There are may things that my parents did to impact my life and career. There are many stories and I will share one or pieces of some, My parents are awesome.

My parents taught me to be in the hospitality industry with out even knowing how real and twilight zone the industry is. We used go to soup kitchens growing up and offering genuine hospitality really had an impact on how I cook and want to make sure everything is great and up to or beyond the expectations.

This & Culture is probably a few of the things they did right.

Jose, 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 & We are Cooking Militia. We are a Hospitality group which wants to educate, guide & transform employees to their full potential so both employee and employer win.

We do consulting, Chef Apparel, Tools, We also have a Quart containers of Sense of Urgency, Give a Fu$%, Common Sense for larger corporations.

Some of the problems we solve for establishments is tightening the food cost, growing with the owners awareness of items or things they may have been overlooking. adjust to generate more profits.

I started in this industry by the age of 13 and learned the Brigade & basic culinary fundamentals which taught me the discipline needed to attend the Culinary Institute of America,

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

Well it’s quite simple. We were line cooks together at a French Bistro in San Juan Puerto Rico. Day in and day out working 70 plus hours a week and then playing dominoes to the early mornings we developed a friendship which turned into a business partner.

Any advice for managing a team?

One of my biggest advices I have for maintaining high morale is keeping the positive energy, good vibes and maintaining a healthy work environment not allowing negative BS to penetrate the force field. Sure mistakes, bad things happen that make us upset everyday but we don’t need to let it take over and drive us in to the gutter. Shake those things off, get back in the grove and continue to cook the best food possible since the customer will be able to taste or passion or lack of.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @chefjmv, @cookingmilitia
• Facebook: cookingmilitia

Image Credits
Pecker Farm