Culinary arts

This week on "Agency Bites," my guest is James Kwan, founder and CEO of Figments, a digital creative and marketing agency, where he uses brand storytelling and digital strategy to help companies grow from ideas into industry leaders.

His eclectic background spans culinary arts, graphic design, entrepreneurship, marketing, and theology, and he's spoken and mentored at platforms like HubSpot's INBOUND Conference, Mass Challenge, MIT, RISD.

Offstage, James is all about family time with his w- wife and three kids, his church community, and his golf buddies.

James, pumped to have you.

As always, we have a big show for a holiday weekend.

Really excited to share with you Team USA 2027. competing in the Bocuse d'Or International Culinary Competition, which is thought of in the international culinary community as the most prestigious cooking competition in the world.

It's so big, it's only done every two years.

Teams have to qualify to be able to go to Lyon.

at am830.net. Lots of options.

I'm Andy Harris, the executive producer and co-host of the show, and we're presented by our friends at Melissa's World Variety Produce.

Regular listeners to the show know I had the honor a month ago of going to New Orleans to follow Team USA 2027 and as they competed in the America selection for the Bocuse d'Or International Culinary Competition, which is so big they can only do it every two years.

And it really is amazing to watch these culinarians in action.

...

MasterCard has a bunch of dining reservations that you can book through priceless.com/culinary.

It's, like, part of their priceless experiences.

And sometimes when I can't find a reservation on Resy or on OpenTable, I go to MasterCard.

And this is one of those things, okay? Recently, and because I've implemented this in my own life, mindset recently, my answer has been the following.

So somebody comes up to me and says, oh, corporate's coming Monday, for example, right? The CEO, the COO, the VP of Culinary, all of the bigwigs of corporate, they're coming Monday or Tuesday.

We're not sure when.

My response now is, okay, and? They're like, well, I just want you to know so you can get ready.

Sí, pues sí.

Este, y, y bueno, entonces investigué esta escuela, iba empezando, o sea, Culinary Arts, yo creo que yo fui el segundo año, algo así.

Y empecé a estudiar allá, pero lo que más me llamó era como vas a viajar, porque el sistema es de que tienes prácticas, eh, pr-prácticas nacionales, internacionales y lo profesional, entonces tienes que viajar.

Y yo decía: "Guau, qué padre".

[upbeat music] Welcome to the Chef JKP Podcast with me, James Knight Pacheco.

[upbeat rock music] Culinary brothers and sisters, foodie disciples, this is the place where you will find your solace, a place of worship for all things that combine us together, the common thread that brings us around the table, food and memories.

Wherever you are in the world, whatever you're doing, I ask that you sit back and listen, and perhaps take away a few morsels of advice.

There will be laughter.

Look, these, I'm gonna talk about later, they're delicious, but like not as delicious as a fucking french fry from McDonald's.

Which brings us to today's Culinary takeaway.

Yes.

If you-

I think one thing that happens with Charlotte is we're this crossroads.

So we're kind of in this spot where Culinarily, we don't have that signature thing.

A local newspaper person just wrote, what's our signature thing? We're this crossroads.

We're an old Indian trading post, but it's where the Piedmont comes in, the Lowcountry from Charleston and all that meets here, and then Appalachia.

I'm trying to find...

What was the specific name? Yours is the College of the Culinary Arts.

I sent you a link to it, and I knew this was going to be hard to find again.

I wonder