As a special addition to our member promotion services, the Chamber is now offering a free Featured Member Profile, which will be printed in the Chamber View and posted on the website for a month, then moved into a prominently-placed online archive for the remainder of the year.  To win this free publicity, just drop your business card into the Featured Member Fishbowl at each monthly Networking Mixer and be present for the drawing.  For more information, call the Chamber, 410-719-9609.

Featured Member

June 2010

Life-Saving Compliance Support for Restauranteurs:
Bilingual Hospitality Training

A lifetime spent traveling, talent in languages and teaching, and hands-on experience in every phase of the restaurant industry led Juliet Bodinetz-Rich to create Bilingual Hospitality Training – a three-year-old home-based business now riding a growing wave of success in the Catonsville business community and beyond.
“I knew I’d arrived,” she says in her lilting Cockney accent, “when I went to the AIWF (American Institute of Wine and Food) chefs’ contest just recently - and knew half the chefs there.”

Starting as a bus girl over 25 years ago in a fine dining Italian restaurant, she adds, she has done everything in restaurants, from busing to supervising, receiving much of her training at The Chart House in downtown Baltimore. With this comprehensive experience, she became a trainer almost by default, not only training employees in restaurant operations, but also teaching English for three years in Barcelona.

Passion for food safety arose from a stint with international Med-Evac operations. “I saw first-hand the repercussions of food-borne illnesses,” she says…including the repatriation of the remains of Western travelers who perished abroad due to food-related illness.

A serious mission indeed, no less serious in the States, where slimmer wallets and tighter legislation have led restauranteurs to change the relaxed approach to safety that was common in years past.

So in 2007, Ms. Bodinetz-Rich launched Bilingual Hospitality Training to teach basic food safety protocols to restaurant managers and staffs on-site. “I get on with everyone,” she says, “because I have done all of their jobs, I know what’s involved.”

Today, she offers a menu of on-site and off-site training and consultation services, from food service manager certification and re-certification to alcohol training, restaurant start-up support, and – her newest service, in cooperation with her husband – HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) plan writing and compliance support.

“I’m trying to grow the business, have a team of teachers to dispatch from Maryland to DC,” she says. “I already dispatch teachers to CCBC. My style of teaching seems to be successful, and I am working on replicating it.”

A growing list of Catonsville clients attests to her success: El Nayar, Café on the Grove, Chef Paulino’s, Double-T Diner, Catonsville Gourmet and Edible Arrangements are just a few of the establishments who use her services  to stay current with the State’s requirements. With the HACCP standards – which originally only applied to new restaurants – now being required for existing eateries, she expects that list to grow: She adds, “I pride myself that most of my customers and clients become friends.”

While most of her business still comes from satisfied clients’ referrals, she’s using a proactive, multi-level approach to promote her services: not only writing a column on food safety in Foodservice Monthly, but also engaging the best of the Internet social marketing tools with a website calendar of classes (http://bilingualhospitality.com/), as well as Twitter and LinkedIn accounts and a Facebook business page….and of course, networking ferociously in real time.

She’s connected with major corporations such as AC Beverage, Coastal Sunbelt Produce, MICROS, Saval FoodService, to provide safety training for restauranteurs at a discounted cost; the heavy-hitting PFG Performance Food Group just chose her as a partner. “That is simply huge,” she says with a grin.

“I want prospective clients to know that we’re here to help with their food safety and HACCP needs,” she says. “That’s my tagline – Let us help you.” For Catonsville Chamber members in particular, she is making her services even more accessible with a $25.00 discount for individuals signing up for classes.

 Past Featured Members