Minutes, CACC business meeting
Prairie Dog Brewing, Calgary
February 7, 2023
1. Chris, our president, called the meeting to order at 7:05 pm.
2. He thanked all for coming and asked that our guests be introduced.
3. The agenda was accepted as circulated.
4. No questions or business arising from the minutes of our last meeting on January 10th, our AGM, held at Calgary Golf & Country Club. MOTION to accept the minutes by Tierra W, seconded by Jessica S- carried.
5. Chris called on the floor manager, Thalice, to come forward and accept our certificate of appreciation for hosting the meeting. She spoke of how grateful the establishment was for thinking of them to host a meeting and that supporting industry was one of their stated goals.
6. Unfortunately, the Prairie Dog Brewmaster was sick, and our facility tour and presentation was cancelled.
7. The membership was reminded that we are again collecting membership fees locally.
8. Helmut spoke of the slow progress in creating a new website. Implementing a payment component into the website has been complicated by the operating system we are using. Hopefully he will have the system up and running by the end of the month. The new site is being continually updated with information contained on the old site migrated to the new one.
9. President’s update;
► President’s Gala cancelled for 2023 and moved to 2024 for the following reasons:
o I believe our Association hasn’t reached a point of post-COVID ‘bounce back’ that warrants a proper ‘celebration’ of our beloved club’s accomplishments.
o Our goal was to have a much greater growth of our membership base, but at this point, we just aren’t there in numbers.
o I believe our industry is hurting in many ways. Shortage of staff, both FOH and BOH, is still causing a great deal of burnout and stress, within our comrades in the field.
o Our Holiday dinner this past December was very successful, in my opinion, but I don’t believe having another elaborate event, so soon after that, will be as well received or attended. We must maintain the high standards we have come to expect.
o The ‘main event’ of the gala is to present awards to our hard-working members and industry partners, a lot of which we haven’t been able to bring back to our association, just yet.
o I think we have more work to do, before we celebrate and as President, I’m not 100% in support of having it at this time. It’s just too soon.
► CF Conferences 2023:
Western- Victoria- March 17-19
National- Niagara Falls- June 4-8- Registration Open on CF Site
10. Jessica, our VP, announced our March 7th meeting at the Calgary Zoo; April 4th at Village Way Kitchen/Catering with Chef Mars Bacani, May 2nd meeting at the Stampede Grounds and June 6th at the CBE Career and Technology Centre (2336 – 53 Ave SW).
11. Secretary’s report attached after the minutes; Blake announced we had 40 people in attendance for the meeting.
12. Martin was busy processing payments at the sign-in desk and did not present an update at this time.
13. Travis, our membership director, thanked all for coming out. We have a nice crowd to be sure but of significance is the number of new faces in the crowd- this is a welcome sight! We are working on several new initiatives and will bring them forward when they are ready for prime time.
14. Abdel and Mikael, our education co-chairs, were both absent attending to work commitments, so that report was not presented.
15. Mathieu, a social director, spoke on the results of the survey members were asked to complete; some of the results were surprising and future surveys are in order to pursue certain apparent trends. Education was one of the most supported topics within the survey, and outside events, such as walking trails and hikes, that do not fall within our usual food service environment also scored well in the survey.
16. Our junior directors were absent and no report was presented.
17. Jennifer Chapman-Clarke, a certified holistic nutritional consultant, and O/O of Nourish Women’s Wellness, gave a very interesting 15 minute audio-visual presentation on food, and how you handle and prepare that food will change the beneficial aspects of the food. She had samples of pickles and sauerkraut, each presented two ways, pickled with vinegar and the other method fermented, to highlight her presentation. Fermented foods are better for your gut health because they contain a tremendous amount of healthy pro-biotics, but the pickling process has benefits as well so neither choice is wrong, just different.
Chris, our president, presented Jennifer a certificate of appreciation after her presentation.
18. Future meeting dates and sites addressed in point 10.
19. MOTION to adjourn by Werner k, seconded by Federico C- carried.
●Blake Chapman,Secretary’s report,CACC, February 7, 2023,Prairie Dog Brewing.●
1) Database is an ongoing concern, in other words a living document.
We will need everyone to go online when we are set up and complete an application form.
Much of our data is being pulled from various sources, many of which are several years old!
Accurate information depends on your support to fill in the blanks and keeping us up to date when other important data changes.
2) The sign-in sheets reflect those members who have paid their 2023 dues.
We still recognize members who were current in 2022 for the time being; to keep that standing we urge members to pay their 2023 dues ASAP. It is especially important this year because branches have their voting weight based on current membership #s and we vote, this year, on a new national president at our national conference.
3) It is important you understand this is your association. The executive take direction from you. Without your support we cannot hope to be successful. We are only as strong as the level of support you give to the CACC. You do not need to be a guiding light; take comfort in being a spark that will catch someone’s interest and soon all those sparks will light a bonfire of support.
4) Get involved if you can. We should appoint an Election Committee Chair next month in preparation of our nomination meeting in May. Give serious consideration in serving your association- after all, many hands make for light work. It is much easier to effect change from within than it is from standing on the side lines!
Have a wonderful day,
Blake.
Tuesday, January 10, 2020
CACC AGM minutes
Calgary Golf & Country Club
1) Meeting called to order at 7:00 pm
2) Blake, our secretary, asked all to stand and read our Code of Ethics.
3) No amendments to our circulated agenda
4) Chris, our president, asked that guests be introduced.
5) Chris also announced that Greg, one of our associate directors, was hospitalized; he asked we keep Greg in our thoughts and we wish him a speedy recovery.
6) We held a moment of silence for departed members since our September meeting at SAIT- George Van Dyk and John Pasley. Chris asked if those in attendance could announce other departed members but no further names were advanced.
7) Chris asked if there was any old business arising from the minutes of our November meeting at Spolumbo’s- there was none.
MOTION by Beat H, seconded by Jessica S, that we accept the minutes of our November meeting as circulated- passed unanimously.
8) Our President called Abdel Belmoufid forward to accept our certificate of appreciation for hosting the meeting- Abdel is the Executive Chef of the Calgary Golf & Country Club as well as one of our education directors.
9) Chris reminded everyone that the CACC has taken back the responsibility of collecting membership dues and we are still sorting out the logistics. Our new website is coming!
10) Helmut S, our webmaster spoke of the challenges in sorting out the issues surrounding our website culminating in the CACC creating an entirely new website. WordPress is the platform we have chosen and when set up will allow us to provide the needed features to service membership requirements. The content from the old website is being migrated to the new one. Helmut hopes to be able to process payments through our website within the next few weeks. The new website is: www.chefscalgary.ca
11) Mikael is busy teaching at SAIT so Chris spoke about the CCC; the nutrition course starts in February with other courses slated to start in March. The practical exams will be provided when numbers warrant.
12) Travis, our membership director, spoke of the importance of growing our membership. New initiatives are coming and it is important to listen to the members.
13) Mathieu introduced himself as one of our social directors. He would like to think outside the box and investigate events and activities that are not necessarily tied to our industry- walks or hikes, camping, family get togethers, etc.. He is creating a short survey for the membership and colleagues to fill out so please participate when asked.
14) Before Martin, our treasurer, presented the proposed 2023 budget, Chris, our president, spoke of a new entry in the budget. A $700 entry to stimulate membership by having the board pay aprospective member’s door fee to our host property- we will track this expense with membership data to see if it is effective and make changes as required.
Martin explained that the proposed budget before the membership follows the same format as the one initially shown at the November meeting. In broad strokes he highlighted revenues exceeding $48,000 and expenses of $55,750 resulting in a projected loss of just over $7,000. Martin then answered questions from the floor. MOTION by Jessica S., seconded by Drew D., to approve the 2023 proposed budget-(our secretary noted only current members may vote using the provided ballots) passed unanimously with 25 recorded votes.
15) The President’s report is attached at the end of the minutes. Western Conference is in March in Victoria and the National AGM is in Niagara Falls.
16) VP’s report attached at the end of the minutes. Jessica asked that anyone wishing to host a meeting should contact her; all meetings to May are in place with only the June meeting to be confirmed.
17) Secretary’s report is attached at the end of the minutes. Blake announced we had 40 people sign-in for the meeting.
18) Abdel gave a short education report. He highlighted a recipe contest for the February meeting at the Prairie Dog Brewing Company. Details and logistics are being sorted and when finalized will be disseminated.
19) Our next meeting will be at Prairie Dog Brewing, 105D, 58 Ave S.E., Calgary on Tuesday February 7, 2023. We will have a guest speaker doing a presentation on naturopathic/holistic approach to food.
20) MOTION to adjourn moved by , seconded by Will W- passed unanimously.
President’s report
Christopher Sprentz CCC
Passing of members- George Van Dyk, John Pasley
Membership initiative with CACC BoD. The team has an initiative to actively pursue growth of our numbers.
CF Conference- Just announced. Western, March 17-19, Victoria. Details – not scheduled
CF- National Conference June 4-8 , Niagara ON. Registration site will be up and running, shortly.
Cheers and make it a Great Day!
Christopher Sprentz CCC
President
Calgary Academy of Chefs and Cooks
VP’s report
Jessica Schweizer
As VP, the main are of responsibility is to find venues to host CACC business meetings.
We have the next few months of general meetings set up and they are as follows:
Feb.7 Prairie Dog Brewing
March 7 Calgary Zoo
April 4 The Ranchmen’s Club
May 2 The Calgary Stampede
June is TBD
If anyone would like to host a future meeting please come see me after the meeting.
Thanks for your time.
Secretary’s report
Blake Chapman
CACC AGM, January 10, 2023
Good day everyone;
►The pandemic struck our industry very hard.
Our association was not spared. We have lost membership over the past few years. Our industry has lost many workers and these people would be, in normal times, our target audience.
Chefs and cooks are working long hard hours to meet expectations and are left with little free time. What free time they have is spent with family and friends, or simply decompressing from a hectic lifestyle! Our association is no longer on their radar!
►We failed to consistently communicate over the past few years to the membership. We have rectified that shortcoming and are now in regular contact with you. We could not have in person meetings, and we failed to adapt by using video conferencing, or using zoom calls, as examples, to remain in touch with the membership. We have resumed regular monthly meetings since May so that deficiency has been addressed.
►We allowed the national body to take over the responsibility of collecting membership dues and many of our members felt left out- very little communication from national was happening and when issues cropped up it was felt national was aloof and unresponsive. We have resumed control of collecting membership dues to better serve the needs of our membership- you again will be able to have in person talks regarding issues important to you.
►You have a full Board of Directors- 14 people willing to provide their time, energy and experience to serve you, the membership! But you must never lose sight that this is your association and we take direction from you. Do not complain about the last board, we have moved forward and so should you!
►Our website was ineffective and we are working on restoring that functionality; the same goes regarding our social media accounts. All are being or have been reset to better communicate with you and provide better service to address membership issues, purchase tickets for social events, etc.
►We have initiated a wellness committee to share our members successes and personal milestones within our group. Please share new jobs, promotions, achievements in competitions as examples of notable work/industry related events. Let us know of weddings, births and other personal landmarks so that we may support our members by showing we are thinking of them and share in their good fortune.
►We have created a new database to help in communications; we stopped maintaining our database several years ago and that hampered our ability to remain current with the membership. We will be able to target information based upon need- as an example reach out to associate members to get their feedback. Please complete a CACC membership form when available from the website so that we may update our records.
►We have much work ahead of us such as updating our Bylaws- mundane items like membership questions as an example. I also propose we put in place rules that protect our intellectual properties, such as our website and social media accounts, to hopefully prevent a repeat of what has transpired over the past 9 months. We have put off addressing many of these issues to face more immediate problems and will review these items by our next AGM. If you have issues you would like addressed bring them forward. This is your association and the board of directors take direction from you; having said that the board cannot be successful in driving the CACC forward without your involvement. We are as strong as the level of support we receive from membership. Together we can make it happen!
Yours in cooking,
Blake
Blake Chapman,
Secretary, CACC
C 403-652-6462
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