Two young women with big dreams meet
Alexis Armijo moved from her small hometown of El Paso, TX to Arizona to seek better opportunities and growth with her financial education business. Along her journey she wanted to hear from local business owners and was playing around with the idea of starting a podcast to hear about the journey, trials, and successes from entrepreneurs in the area, Amanda Jane Rubio owner of “Baby Jane’s Custom Desserts” commented on a facebook post saying she was interested in being interviewed. The two met at a local coffee shop and a friendship and business relationship started. Both share big goals to help people, especially minority women catch up in the business world. Upon meeting Amanda expressed she was wanting a change of pace with her bakery, she was getting burnt out and needed help. Alexis was also running in circles trying to grow her business but wasn’t meeting people with enough dedication to run alongside her. Alexis already had a fun cooking club on Meetup.com called “Wannabe Chefs and Dining Club” and asked Amanda if she would ever consider teaching a baking class to the group. Amanda was nervous but excited and said “yes”. Alexis has always had a strong belief that food can bring anybody together and started the club to meet people from all different backgrounds, ages, united in the kitchen in a time where the world seems to divided. The first class they did together flowed so well, everybody made the most beautiful delicious scones, with different fillings. Some chose blueberries, others chocolate chips. She led a class of 16 people with such confidence and grace. Alexis was looking forward to do more events with Amanda. Some time passed and Amanda came to Alexis for financial advise, asking what steps she should take to sell her business, her heart wasn’t in it anymore. Alexis reminded her what an incredible talent and passion she had for baking and told her that she wasn’t built to be an employee. Both ladies are free spirits, rebellious against “social norms”, and enjoy owning their time as entrepreneurs.”Why don’t we start a business doing more cooking classes” Alexis suggested to Amanda. “Also, this town is full of foodies it NEEDS some high quality food tours to expose all the amazing local spots”. Amanda grew with excitement and said she was in. Both ladies went from 0 to 60, to launch “The Phoenix Palate”. Although they are both millennial's and there’s so many negative stereotypes on how millennial's are entitled and just want to work a business behind a phone or computer screen. this duo is putting in the old fashion elbow grease. Alexis runs 2 networking groups to bring together entrepreneurs in addition to her cooking club “Millennial Millionaires” and “Minority Professional Women”. She still is actively growing her financial services client base, and building relationships and exploring every idea possible to make “The Phoenix Palate” the best it can be. To get classes booked consistently, they took the streets with flyers in hand to speak to apartment complexes to offer cooking classes and food tours for their residents,and to senior centers to add a fun different activity into their calendar. They have opened their homes to teach classes, gone to other homes, even have taught cookie decorating classes at bridal shops, real estate offices, coffee shops and don’t plan to stop there. To get their food tours going, again the old fashion way the girls went to Downtown to speak to owners and managers to scout places that they could partner with to feature on their tour, negotiating prices, selecting menu items,and planning the rotation was loads off fun but also tons of work. “We plan to be a household name a year after launching, we want to reach as many people as possible and help people have some amazing food experiences, with old and new friends.”- Alexis. They plan on partnering with other chefs to teach classes in cuisines the girls aren’t strong in, such as Salvadorian, Vietnamese, Japanese, Indian and the list goes on! “We hope to get to the point soon we are partnered with dozens of chefs, helping them do something that seems impossible, to enjoy cooking good food without living at a restaurant for 12 hours a day”. “They can be independent contractors, teach as many classes as they’d like and make a couple hundred dollars for a couple hours of work”. There’s so many talented chefs who get burnt out because of how the traditional restaurant structure works, and are getting out of the industry and we are missing out on their incredible talent, we hope to bring them to “The Phoenix Palate” to have room to get as creative as they’d like, to make their own menus, schedule on their time, to work on their craft in a less stressful environment, and have time to actually have a life! We have so much to work on, but we aren’t focused on a destination we are enjoying the journey, and we invite the rest of the world to join us on a culinary journey that could change their lives!
