Jody Denton

Background

About Jody Denton

Food is at the very center of my life. My entire adult life has been in Culinary as a Chef in a wide range of diverse roles. It has been my greatest passion and for over 30 years that passion was in independent restaurants all over the United States and around the world. I started out at 17 as apprentice to a German Master Chef and from there have led multiple kitchen Brigades as Executive Chef, working with many notable Chefs and mentors such as Wolfgang Puck, Mark Miller, Rick Tramonto, John Folse, Rich Melman and many others. I ran a multi-unit restaurant company in San Francisco where I started a successful, award winning line of gourmet food products as well as owning my own two restaurants for many years in beautiful Bend, Oregon. I’ve opened 9 restaurants in my career from the ground up and created and designed 7 of those concepts myself. I’ve organized and executed both small and large, high-end catering events for as many as people. My areas of greatest passion are concept design and development, systems and procedures, program development, team leadership, special events organization, and all aspects of restaurant openings and operations for both back and front of the house. My culinary passion and expertise are in multiple cuisines; Country French and Italian, wood-fired cooking, Artisan Pizza, regional American, regional Mexican, German/Swiss/Austrian, Japanese and a wide range of Asian cuisines including Indian. Specialized culinary skills include sausage making, salumi and charcuterie, meat smoking and BBQ, handmade artisan pasta and old-world artisan bread baking. The past decade of my life in Culinary took a very different turn into the world of a Research Chef working for PepsiCo and Frito Lay, the 2nd largest food and beverage company in the world. As a Certified Research Chef, I’ve been a collaborative out of the box creative contributor to well over a billion dollars of in market innovation across an incredibly wide and diverse range of brands. Specific skills include flavor development, early-stage innovation, product formulation and optimization, creative ideation, brand activation, food service innovation and customer applications, team management, food styling and extensive media facing skills.