Kid Chefs
Kids Who Make Dough
Adam Nadel, Polaris
by Rachel Wharton and Steven Stern
Plenty of kids sell lemonade on a street corner for extra quarters, but there are some who take culinary capitalism to an entirely different level: launching their own television cooking shows at the age of five, say, or distributing their own line of pickles to nearly every supermarket in the state. Here are eight stories of underage entrepreneurship that are bound to make your childhood candy drive seem like so many small potatoes.
Click the picture below to meet the world's youngest cookbook author, a pre-teen restaurant critic and a 5-year-old TV show host who cooked his way onto the "Today Show."
Kid Culinary Capitalists
by Rachel Wharton
Plenty of kids sell lemonade on a street corner for extra quarters, but there are some who take culinary capitalism to an entirely different level: launching their own television cooking shows at the age of 5, say, or distributing their own line of pickles to nearly every supermarket in the state. Here are eight stories of underage entrepreneurship that are bound to make your childhood candy drive seem like so many small potatoes.
AP
Julian Kreusser
If most chefs dream of having their own cooking show by 30, Julian Kreusser has them beat by 25 years. The Portland, Ore., 5-year-old, who started sneaking off to make his own culinary creations at three, already has his own cable access cooking show called "Big Kitchen with Food." Kreusser's super cute production -- "Let's start the movie!" he shouts at the start of one episode -- features the tiny towheaded chef perched on a stool in his parents' kitchen.
Learn more about Big Kitchen with Food
BlipTV
Aaron Ware
When 11-year-old Aaron Ware (pictured on the right) was diagnosed with depression after his twin brother (on the left) Eric's death from cancer, his pediatrician prescribed mixing bowls rather than medication. The D.C.-area boy told his doctor he loved to bake, and she suggested he create a business plan.
Click for the rest of Aaron's story
Angela Ware
Aaron Ware
Ware's passion was also his talent, and he and his brother Bryce (pictured on the left) now bake and sell chocolate chip, butterscotch, and black-and-white cookies to friends and family under the name Doughjangles, donating part of the proceeds to cancer charities like the Casey Cares Foundation.
Mike Buscher of Xsight Marketing
Neal Ely
Many kids barely even bother finishing their school projects, but they aren't Neal Ely. After watching crowds picking wild asparagus, the fourth generation farmer decided to work on a plan to plant the crop in his family's Nebraska fields, selling the yield at farmers' markets. That was a hit, and his next move was marketing his mom's asparagus pickles, which he now sells, along with pickled peppers, online at elyfarms.com and to more than 100 stores in the Midwest.
Learn more about Ely Farms
Neal Ely, Ely Farms www.elyfarms.com
The Bakers of Mission Pie
Run by a non-profit education program, Mission Pie is a two-year-old, for-profit café at the edge of San Francisco's Mission District. It's designed to help urban high school students sharpen their job skills and business acumen and eventually make some money baking the city's best-tasting, truly farm fresh pies. Many of Mission's ingredients -- lemons, berries, rhubarb -- are grown at Pie Ranch, a farm south of the city where the students learn the art of the pitchfork along with that of the whisk.
Learn more about Mission Pie
http://www.flickr.com/photos/telstar/3254063742/
David Fishman
At 12, David Fishman knew he wanted to write restaurant reviews for the Zagat Guides. He began carrying around a notebook -- people assumed it was homework, he says -- to jot down thoughts on ambiance. Spotted by a New York Times reporter dining alone in a hot Manhattan restaurant, the resulting story made his dream a reality. Not only was the New Yorker, who says his favorite food is spider-roll sushi, taken to eat at the world-renowned Jean Georges by Tim Zagat himself, he now posts his own reviews at zagat.com.
Visit Zagat.com
Adam Nadel, Polaris
Spatulatta
Two of the most successful young culinary entrepreneurs have to be Isabella and Olivia Gerasole, the pair of grade-school sisters from Chicago who launched the much-visited site Spatulatta: Cooking 4 Kids Online a few years back. The sweet pair (13 and 11, respectively) post videos and recipes geared to help cooks their own age; better still, they let others do the same. They've won a James Beard Foundation Award for their work and even published The Spatulatta Cookbook in 2007.
Visit Spatulatta and buy The Spatulatta Cookbook
Amazon.com
Justin J. Miller
Justin J. Miller likes to call himself "the world's youngest chef," and he's got proof. The Guinness Book of World Records named the Pennsylvanian exactly that in 2002, following it up with an award for the youngest chef to publish a cookbook called 'Cooking with Justin' in 2005. Now 19, the teen, who trained under Rick Tarantino and was on Letterman at 5, has released his second book. It's 'Cooking for Dormies: Recipes for college students, newlyweds and people just beginning to learn how to cook.'
Buy Cooking with Justin
Shelly Thompson
Sweet Things Bake Shop Girls
At Manhattan's Lower Eastside Girls Club, girls from the lower income neighborhood can take photography, run a radio station or write poetry. But the luckiest ones get to attend the Cookie Academy, an eight-week afternoon workshop on running Sweet Things Bake Shop, the club's pastel-painted neighborhood Fair Trade café. There 11- and 12-year-olds learn commercial kitchen safety and sanitation; bookkeeping; and how to bake, ship and sell $2 dangerously fudgy brownies or cookies like gingerbread and buttery shortbread.
Learn more about Sweet Things Bake Shop
The Lower Eastside Girls Club Sweet Things Bake Shop. www.girlsclub.org
