Today we’d like to introduce you to Amanda Rubio and Alexis Armijo.
Amanda grew up in Arizona and went to study baking and pastry arts at Johnson and Wales University in Denver, Colorado. She has run a successful bakery for the last two years “Baby Janes Custom Desserts” her specialty being beautifully decorated wedding cakes. Alexis grew up on the border of Texas in El Paso and was raised by an entrepreneurial father and artistic mother which she has a strong influence on both. She moved to Arizona to expand her financial services business and along the way met Amanda. Alexis had formed a cooking club to meet people since she was new to The Valley and invited Amanda to Co-Host some classes to show the members more baking and decorating skills. The two quickly became friends, they are both young millennial women. Amanda 24 and Alexis 25. They decided they wanted to share their love for food and helping people experience good home cooking again and that’s where “The Phoenix Palate” began. In a world of mediocre chains expanding quickly, frozen meals, and drive through restaurants, people have lost touch of good food made from quality ingredients. Many have lost the tradition of coming up with homemade recipes to pass on from generation to generation and cooking from scratch has become a lost art, even in restaurants many ingredients are prepackaged and canned. We aim to bring love and passion back to the food experience, to help families connect through making magic in the kitchen and feel pride about the food they serve on their tables.
We also started Food Tours, through that we hope to connect both locals and tourists to local restaurants that are unique and truly care about making a memorable experience both with their environment and food they offer. We walk a group through a neighborhood and stop at three to four carefully selected restaurants and they learn history, art, and indulge their senses to amazing food and drinks that are pre selected at each stop. We hope to bring our community together through food. Because that’s what food does best, bringing people together. Regardless of culture, income, age, when you break bread at a table everybody is family!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We just started with the classes in early summer of 2019, so we are so new that we are in the “honeymoon” stage. Everything is new and shiny and exciting. The beauty is that there isn’t high start up costs, but our challenge is getting our name out there. Which we know is something that comes with time and putting in elbow grease. I’m sure we will run into hurdles, that’s what comes with being entrepreneurs, However we are going into this with so much heart we can’t lose. Plus we make a great team. Amanda is very well connected in the food industry because of her culinary experience and running her bakery. Alexis is a numbers whiz with her financial background and is constantly looking at costs, profit, time, negotiating prices, and seeing if certain projects are worth pursuing. We are confident we will be an unstoppable force that will soon become a household name in the community.
Please tell us about your business.
So many people can put together a cooking class, and a monkey can walk people through a neighborhood showing them local spots. We are so crazy detail oriented and obsessed. We think about every single step in the experience. The smells, the art, the ambiance, the flow, the music, everything in our classes are carefully selected we go above and beyond to make sure people are blown away. With the tours, we have been very selective about who we partner with, we want our guests to feel like movie stars going into a restaurant and getting the best possible experience. Not to brag but we are a load of fun we are always cracking jokes, dancing, taking fun pictures with our groups and we make it a mission to make the group feel like they’ve been old pals for years. We also study our business like we are private investigators solving a cold case. We look up our competition and go through hundreds of reviews to see what worked for them and what didn’t, we study different variations of recipes and make them our own for our classes. Amanda’s specialty is everything baking she can do just about anything! Cookies, brownies, cakes, donuts, you name it and make it look beautiful as well as taste amazing.
Alexis is very influenced by her Mexican roots her grandparents on both sides came from Chihuahua, Mexico and move to Texas. Her maternal grandmother was a very well known cook who to this day, 20 years after her passing is still talked about her memorable dishes. That rich culture and pride in her heritage make Alexis passionate about educating people on true Mexican food. She often feels Mexican food has been watered down and recreated in the US that few people have truly experience Mexican food the way it was meant to be. Both Amanda and Alexis are huge in wanting to make everything from scratch. Making bread, pasta, sauces, salsas, broths, everything from scratch. Love is put everything that is made.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Always put pride in everything that you do. Never take away the quality, treat every person like they are important. We believe everybody that does business with us should be treated like family. We never want to stop having fun doing this, and want to remind ourselves that we are very blessed to be able to do something that brings so much joy to others and ourselves. Some so many people are miserable with their jobs, living in a bubble and a rut, We want to help people live with passion and let loose. In the process, we want to grow our business to help reach more people and not limit ourselves. We believe the businesses most successful in this era are the ones who make everybody feel welcomed and don’t limit themselves to staying small. We don’t want to stay small. We want to grow to the point we have multiple classes and tours running a day. We want to partner with many other chefs who share our vision that have strengths that we don’t have, to run classes. We want to do food tours not just locally but take people on weekend getaways to other cities in the US who offer rich culture and food. We want to always stay mobile so we can reach people. We do our classes in many different venues on many occasions. We go to retirement communities, apartment clubhouses, people’s homes, corporate events, you name it! We don’t expect opportunities to come to us, we print out flyers and go on foot to places to talk to them face to face, Even though we are millennial’s and we are utilizing social media, we believe it’s a cherry on top. Connecting with people face to face is what’s always going to grow our business.
Pricing:
- Our classes will fit every budget we do classes as low as $15 a person some are $100 a person depending on the food and occasion. We offer group rates as well.
- For our food tours since they are getting to sample the best of each place they can run a little on the higher end but it”s a top notch experience they start at $65 per ticket and go up to $100 we offer couple and group discounts
- We do plan on doing some food tours for “cheap eats” to reach students and people on a budget as well
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thephoenixpalate.com
- Phone: (480) 334-9823 and (915) 252-3168
- Email: thephoenixpalate@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thephoenixpalate/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ThePhoenixPalate/
Image Credit:
Alexis Grant (Timeless Present Photography)
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