My Biz: Solon kitchen business grows organically

A visitor at Becky Schmooke's home arriving just after noon in the summer may find its spacious kitchen in cheerful disarray.

'This is the aftermath of 23 kids cooking for three hours,” Schmooke explains as she wipes crumbs from an expansive counter top.

Children's cooking camps and classes have become an unexpectedly large part of Becky's Mindful Kitchen since Schmooke, 30, launched her business in 2012.

'If you had told me three years ago that half my business was going to be kids' classes, I never would have known that,” Schmooke said. 'I had no idea it was going to grow in that direction. Now I've got 50-50 adults and kids.”

Schmooke also offers cooking classes for adults, for private groups - 'birthday parties, bachelorette parties” - and corporate clients.

'Corporations send people for leadership classes,” she said. 'You come and have to learn to get along, and it's a great icebreaker.”

Schmooke also does personal kitchen consultations, helping clients clean up their diets and the contents of their cupboards. That's not a major part of the business now, but it's a reminder of how Mindful Kitchen got its start after Schmooke was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.

'That made me naturally look at what I was eating,” she said. 'I already thought that I ate pretty healthy - I ate organic foods, all that. But I kind of went down the rabbit hole of, what is real food?”

That led to one-on-one cooking lessons in Schmooke's own kitchen.

'I was just doing it for my friends, and they said, ‘You should do this as a business,'” she recalled. 'It's just grown organically that way.”

Schmooke built her approach from personal experience and research.

'I do not have a degree in nutrition or anything like that, so I don't advise along those lines,” she said. 'It's just going back to how we used to eat. Simple, good quality food.”

Schmooke sources the food for classes and recipes from area farms.

The Iowa City native still finds her UI theater degree useful.

'There are plenty of times I have to dip into my well of knowledge when we do the kids' camp,” she said. 'It's thinking on your feet.”

Schmooke cooked in a few area restaurant kitchens but found it didn't fit her lifestyle as the mother of two young girls. She and her husband now have three daughters.

'It wasn't the life for me,” she said. 'I just really enjoy the challenge of teaching and customizing recipes.”

The Schmookes' move three years ago to an 1880 farmhouse tucked in the woods south of Solon allowed her to expand her course offerings. The kitchen was expanded last fall to accommodate larger groups.

'Even before we added on I had cooking camps for 15 kids in it,” she said. 'Looking back on it, we'd say ‘How did that work?'”

When it comes to running a small business, 'I learned that there's a lot to learn,” Schmooke said. 'I've learned to ask for help. I've learned that running a business, there's so many unseen hours. A two-hour class is really about five hours, six hours of extra time behind it. It's given me so much more appreciation for other people who own a business.”

Schmooke is her own sole full-time employee.

'Except for my children do help clean, my husband and my mom take care of the kids during classes,” she said.

That's made sticking to her guiding philosophy simpler than it might be with a larger organization.

'It sounds like a cliché, but it's doing the right thing,” she said. 'Just making sure that every decision I make I feel good about, and if I were on the receiving end I would feel good about it.”

She expects continued growth, in new and possibly unexpected directions.

'We have goats now, and chickens and we're really adding more of the homestead aspect, teaching people how to build a small homestead,” she said. 'So it could go in that direction. I have lots of projects that I want to do.”

There are other rewards. Schmooke recalls a recent private group - several University of Iowa graduates who gather every summer.

'They're friends since college and they're all in their 60s now,” she said. 'They live all over the country and they get together once a year, so they all came for a cooking class.

'It's so fun being part of that experience, friendship and there's something so familiar about cooking together with friends and we've lost that, I think. That was fun. I got to join that group for a little bit.”

AT A GLANCE

Owner: Becky Schmooke

Business: Becky's Mindful Kitchen

Address: 2247 Sugar Bottom Rd., Solon

Phone: (319) 325-3464

Website: www.beckysmindfulkitchen.com

l Know a business in operation for more than a year that would make an interesting 'My Biz”? Contact michaelchevy.castranova@thegazette.com.