We recently connected with Lisa Elsis Amy Scotti and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Lisa elsis thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

Both Chef Amy and I (Chef Lisa Elsis) dreamed of being pastry chefs as small children. Our parents dissuaded us, telling us that only men were chefs and women could not earn a living baking professionally. I became a Stockbroker and Amy became a Speech Therapist. We both continued to bake and cook for friends and family, but had to put the dream of doing it professionally aside. During 2020 and the advent of COVID-19, Chef Amy and I actually met virtually for the very first time on a food blog. We discovered we shared the same childhood dreams. Once the restrictions of Covid eased up a bit, we actually met for lunch in a parking lot under a tent and in that one moment became friends for life. We spoke of our lifelong dream of becoming chefs and decided that it was time to stop being afraid, to act in spite of the fear. In 2021 we applied to and were accepted to culinary school. When we began culinary classes I was 66 and Amy was 63, our fellow classmates were children, most were 19 and younger. We were both inducted into the phi theta Kappa organization for academic excellence. Literally three weeks after school ended, we opened the doors of MustGetSconed.

Lisa elsis, 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?

We knew from the very first moment that we wanted a boutique bakery. We wanted to build a business based on excellence of product and integrity in the way we present ourselves as well as our baked goods. We wanted to create an atmosphere that was so attractive and so welcoming that people wanted to come back time after time, bringing their friends and family with them. We bring not only skill but imagination, creativity and excellence to the table every day . we are dedicated to helping to improve our community and we do so by donating 10% of every sale to a worthy charity. We use only the finest ingredients that we can purchase . we produce and package everything ourselves. We are also contract Bakers and create special items for customers, birthdays, showers, and other events.. We proudly participate in our local restaurant week event in New Jersey. We care very deeply about the community in which we live , work and serve and take the time to get to know all of our customers.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

It was 2019, Amy Scotti ran her husband’s dental practice, I (Lisa Elsis) ran a customer service division for a chain of furniture stores. We were both successful in business. 2020 dawned, COVID-19 arrived, Dr. Scotti ‘s business closed by state mandate and I was let go from a job I had worked for 10 years because I was 65 years old, and my employer considered me too old to work! Now, Amy and I were not friends at this point. In fact, we didn’t even know the other existed. Both of us were devastated by the loss of our careers/livelihoods. While we were both in our 60’s neither of us were either emotionally or intellectually ready to retire. Because there was very little to do during the first 12 months of Covid, I began to get very involved in social media as did Amy. In fact, that’s how we met. We took notice of each other’s comments and conversation on several food blogs. Amy actually reached out to me and we became lifelong friends very quickly. It wasn’t too long before we actually consider ourselves family. The pivot in our lives came when we decided to have faith, face our fears by jumping off the cliff and going back to college to pursue our dreams of becoming pastry chefs. It was extremely intimidating on a variety of levels. It was intimidating socially because our fellow students were young enough to be our grandchildren. It was also intimidating intellectually, could we handle the workload in our mid 60s ? The pastry course we took was accelerated, and the workload was grueling. Our husbands suddenly had to get used to the idea that we were in school for six hours a day and then home doing homework and baking to practice our skills. Their lives were drastically changed as well as ours. We had to develop a real sense of confidence in our talents and abilities. We had to become risk takers! We had to become fearless.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Amy and I did not know each other until we were in our 60’s. Once we became friends, we discovered that we had always had the same childhood dreams, to grow up and become chefs, specifically pastry chefs, and that we are both talented in the culinary arts as well. We were both told over and over again by our parents that we could never be successful as chefs. We were told that we had to go to school and pick a real career and then get married and then have families because that’s what women do.. We both had very successful lives, careers, and marriages. But, that dream of baking professionally lived on inside of both of us. We both had to let go of what our parents taught us, that we could not be successful as professional Pastry Chefs. We had to face our fears and embrace our dreams. We had to believe that we could make our dreams come true, no matter our age, or how afraid we were of failure. We had to know that no matter how big the workload was, we were up to the task.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Www.mustgetsconed.com
• Instagram: @must_get_sconed
• Facebook: MustGetSconed
• Other: [email protected]

Image Credits

Lisajo Elsis