The Latino Professionals Association Celebrates Yo Soy: Cooking with a Community Flair (Part 1 of 2)
While she is an assistant vice-president at Park Bank and gives her time to several non-profits, Sujhey Beisser pursues her passion for Venezuelan and Latin American cooking through Five Senses Palate, her blog and cooking class business.
Since 2001 when she moved to Madison from her native Venezuela to attend an ESL program, Sujhey Beisser has been impacting the community in three different ways: through her work at Park Bank, her community service and her devotion to creating quality Latin foods.
Since 2002, Beisser has worked at Park Bank, rising through the ranks to become an assistant vice-president.
“I started as a teller at the Old Sauk branch,” Beisser said. “At the branch level, I pretty much did all of the roles. I was a teller, personal banker, assistant manager and a branch manager. I worked between Old Sauk and Sun Prairie, I worked at the branches for 16 years before moving to a support role here in our Park Bank Center in 2018. I support the branch network and some other departments. On the back end, currently, I am the assistant vice-president of strategy and development. My support roles kind of evolved into other things that I was doing. My manager, at the time, gave me a role in strategy and development. In 2020, I got the promotion to AVP. And I work directly with the bank CEO and the president. I help support his strategies for the bank. So I work directly with all of the departments basically: marketing, HR, retail — I support a lot of retail on the business side. It’s kind of a support role, but at a higher level. I do get to work for everyone. There is a specific role that I have here, which is helping our marketing department.”
Beisser sees no reason why she won’t finish her career at Park Bank. She has a good working relationship with her boss, the CEO of Park Bank and her length of service and current job duties allow her to pursue her passion. Beisser’s switch to a support role in the central office allowed her to focus some of her time on her passion: cooking Venezuelan and Latin food.
“I didn’t want to be in the branch network and work six days per week because that wasn’t allowing me enough time to dedicate to my cooking business,” Beisser said. “So in 2018, after I had been running my business for a couple of years, I asked my boss if I could do something different. He gave me that support role and that is when things kind of shifted for me.”
Beisser has been active in the community and often for fundraisers or organization potlucks, she was asked to bring a dish. People enjoyed it so much thay they were dying to get the recipes.
“I started my food blog in 2014, I believe,” Beisser said. “And I just started writing recipes and posting my recipes and pictures on a blog online. At the time, I wasn’t on social media as much. The reason I started to blog because people would always ask me for recipes of things that I brought to parties or work or gatherings. I thought, ‘Okay, why not put all of my recipes somewhere where people can gather them?’ And so I created my blog. I took some photography classes so that I could take better photographs of my food. And then people started saying that having my recipe was okay, but now they wanted me to cook for them. And so I started exploring the personal catering business. I started my business by donating dinners to Centro’s silent auction to see how that would pan out. The dinners sold really well and made money for Centro. It gave me the opportunity to test the business, which was basically me putting a menu together, going and buying all of the ingredients for that menu, coming into someone’s house with all of my ingredients and cook the entire dinner and then serving the dinner. And then I would clean up. That was the service that I started offering.”
Initially Beisser tested the market by donating in-home prepared Latin American meals. Beisser received a resounding yes from her initial offerings.
“I started offering it and charging people for it,” Beisser said. “I would say that I did that successfully for about six years. Honestly, the year of the pandemic and the following year, 2020-2021, were the best years for my business because people were not going to restaurants during those years. I think I hosted two small weddings. One was literally six people in 2020, the bride, the groom and their parents. And then in 2021, I hosted a wedding for about 12 people. I did anniversaries and birthday parties because people were not going out. Those two years were really good for my business. And then because of personal reasons, I kind of decided not to do more dinners because the planning and all of that takes a lot of time. And I wasn’t really making money to live off of that. We were just making money to pay for my business because having a business requires certain expenses. I had to pay for the website. When I was cooking at people’s homes, I needed to have insurance. There was software that I used for my photos. All of that came out of my business. So I basically made enough money to sustain my business, but not to live off of. That’s why I have my Park Bank job.”
Beisser decided to go a little upstream with her cooking business, teaching people how to cook Latin food.
“I started just offering cooking classes, which is what I’ve been doing for the last couple of years,” Beisser said. “It’s kind of the same idea. They are private cooking classes. I go to people’s homes, bring the recipes and ingredients. Depending on the size of the kitchen, it could be 6-8 people. We just cook together. I teach them how to cook the recipes. They sit down and enjoy the recipe they just made with their friends and family. I clean the kitchen and then I go off and they enjoy.”
Beisser has also expanded her classes to organizations and schools.
“I also do cooking classes for kids at school sometimes,” Beisser said. “I’ve done it for Rooted for three years in a row. I’ve done their summer program. I worked with REAP last year. They got a grant to work with students at Shabazz for some cooking programs. They reached out to me. It was 4-5 weeks that we did that. I met with the students once per week. I brought some recipes. I taught them how to cook those recipes. And then at the end of the program, they participated in a festival at school. We prepared recipes at FEED Kitchen. And then they presented samples of the recipe at the festival. I wasn’t able to go to the festival. But I was able to cook the recipe with them the day before.”
In Beisser’s view, food brings people together and so through her work, she is community building.
“I think that people connect through food,” Beisser said. “And food is the best way to share your culture with people. What I enjoy the most about teaching people how to cook something is I am able to tell them stories about that food or about myself with that food. To me, it’s a way to connect with people through food.”
Next issue: The secrets to Beisser’s cooking success