A business plan with bite: RRC training opens restaurant options for grad
Helene Seradilla is well acquainted with the concept of ‘mise en place,’ the French culinary term referring to advance preparation — gathering tools and ingredients so everything is in place when you’re ready to start cooking.
She didn’t realize it at the time, but during three years in Red River College’s Business Administration program, the 1998 grad was gathering the tools she’d need to become an entrepreneur in the restaurant business.
In 2012, Helene (nee Paredes) and her husband, well-known local chef Rod Seradilla, rolled out popular Filipino food truck Pimp My Rice. Last year, they opened full-service Corydon Avenue eatery Bisita (Visitor, or Guest, in Tagalog), a venture that required a solid business plan — something Helene had already taken a dry run at in college.
“That’s what we had to do in our program at Red River,” she says. “Pretend you found a location and you leased it and how much would the lease be, how much square footage … the equipment, the assets, the payroll, how would you work it, and what product would you have.”
A busy mom to two young sons, seven-year-old Ryu and six-year-old Sonny, with a full-time career at Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) in the individual tax and benefits section, as well as the two “mom-and-pop” businesses, Helene has aced multi-tasking.
Fully hands-on with Pimp My Rice, which will be back on the road this summer after a hiatus in 2016, she often heads to Bisita in the evening and on weekends.
“I’m in there as much as I can be — as much as, you know, you can work with someone that you live with,” she laughs. Read More →