President’s e-News - August 10, 2009

Michael Ty, CEC, AAC

Dear ACF Members:

The culinary industry and the American Culinary Federation are in a different place today. Your newly elected Board of Directors and I met in San Antonio to set goals and lay the foundation for a strategic plan that will take us through the next two years and beyond. They are ambitious goals for the good of the Federation, and I will need your help.

What transpired when your national board of directors met in San Antonio was the start of a strategic plan in which we identified four key factors for success.

First is branding and communicating ACF and its value to increase and further develop our brand awareness as the “Voice and Army of the Culinary Arts World.” During my administration, brand awareness will be paramount. I think we need to turn to the professionals in this area, so I propose engaging marketing firms that will help us develop brand awareness for ACF. It is my vision to bring recognition to our organization and our members and to make ACF a household name. This will be a substantial investment, but the value and the return will be immeasurable.

The Chef & Child Foundation is one of the greatest publicity tools that we can use to promote our organization. The Foundation members need to be recognized for what they are doing in our communities; many times their volunteer service goes unrecognized.

ACF Culinary Team USA is another way for us to tap into and gain public awareness. It’s not just the national team, but individuals like yourselves who compete independently, as well as the regional teams, the pastry team, our youth team and especially our military team. Many times they go unrecognized for their efforts, and only if they are on top do they receive the recognition they deserve. Team USA is ready to move in a new direction, and so it should.

Team USA is under new leadership. The board, on the direction of the ACF Board of Governors, looked into the feasibility of the team as a separate foundation. I am happy to report that Team USA will remain within the ACF Foundation under new leadership. I believe that the team has great value and offers a significant opportunity to bring recognition to our Federation. I’m aware of the many challenges we’ve faced in the past, but that was then, and now we need to decide what’s in store for the future.

The American Academy of Chefs is the honor society of our Federation. Everyone aspires to be part of this society. There is a wealth of talent and knowledge with the more than 800 members, and we need to give them a purpose—to mentor our future culinarians and make contributions to our profession.

Our partnerships with ProStart, SkillsUSA and Family, Career and Community Leaders of America will help bring us brand awareness. These programs involve almost 100,000 culinary students in secondary and postsecondary schools across the nation.

Our second key factor is to demonstrate financial stewardship through the implementation of the strategic plan. We will be an administration that is transparent and accountable to the members. We will practice responsible spending. We need to preserve our valuable assets and learn to safeguard our precious membership money. While I am president, we will work on streamlining our expenditures. We will look into other avenues of increasing our assets and, more importantly, we will operate our Federation as a business.

We are going to share information generously with the chapter presidents, because they need to be knowledgeable when they make decisions that concern our future. Chapters, through sound regional leadership, will be given all the information they need to do their job efficiently and completely. We will implement webinars to help chapter presidents and officers understand the various documents ACF provides to them before the ACF Board of Governors meeting.

Our third key factor is to organize the board for long-term sustainability. This includes making sure that we are not changing the focus every time we change administrations. In addition, we may know who our incoming president is a year or two out to allow us to have continuity between administrations. This may entail staggering our election process so we do not have a completely new board.

Our last key factor for success is to provide members with services through certification and education. As your national president, I will continue to ensure that our certification is the standard for our industry nationwide. The ACF Certification Commission is working hard to make certain that we are accredited through the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA), the certifying body for the National Organization for Competency Assurance (NOCA), to solidify us as the authority in certification.

We are looking into adding more benefits that will entice our members to continue their membership long after they leave the kitchen. We’ve given this much thought, and we hope you will come to us with your suggestions.

The Board is comprised of only nine people, and we can’t do any of this alone. We need all of you—your creativity and your feedback—to move ahead. Now that you know what we will be focusing on during my administration, we hope we’ve given you strong reasons to believe in this administration, to believe that we are completely dedicated to strengthening our Federation. We hope you will be more committed than ever to working cohesively with this administration and your chapters to improve the relationships within our rank and file and to build our Federation into a recognized brand.

Your board and I challenge each and every one of you to make it your goal to increase our professional-culinarian membership category. We ask you to make one of your goals in the coming year a 50 percent increase in professional membership. I know this is an attainable goal if each member would seek out former members to rejoin, and reach out and embrace new members in restaurants, hotels, clubs and nontraditional fields, such as healthcare, business and industry and more.

You have provided me with the highest of callings, and I am honored, humbled and excited, as is your board. These are going to be great times for our ACF. I believe that protecting our profession and membership assets is of singular importance and one of the greatest challenges we face as an organization now. It is that mission and challenge that bring us here today, along with the opportunity to work with the dedicated chefs of the ACF who perform their duties, day in and day out, with diligence, dignity and professionalism.

As I begin the work of directing this great organization, I call on each of you to make a silent commitment, right now, that you will work with us as we take ACF to greater heights and gain more recognition for our members, our organization and our industry. I ask you today to commit yourselves. Work with us as we build the confidence of our membership by acknowledging their deeds, needs and desires. Work with us as we fulfill our mission, making a positive difference for culinarians across our nation and creating a fraternal bond of respect and integrity with culinarians everywhere.

Finally, I look forward to hearing about your ideas, concerns and solutions, and to serving you.

Sincerely,

Michael Ty, CEC, AAC
President