iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
Indian American entrepreneur from Utah, Lavanya Mahate, has launched the RISE Culinary Institute, a training kitchen, and school located at Saffron Valley’s Sugar House in Salt Lake City to address the shortage of labor in Utah’s restaurant industry.
Mahate, a restaurateur, and chef has founded the RISE Culinary Institute, a non-profit devoted to providing free culinary training to refugees in the State of Utah. A first-generation Indian American immigrant she is also the first female entrepreneur on both sides of her Indian ancestry and is passionate about ending the suppression of potential amongst women globally.
Like her preferred style of cooking Mahate’s entrepreneurial journey has been slow, careful, and thoughtful. Although she now owns five Saffron Valley restaurants in Utah and a dessert shop, Biscotts Bakery, Mahate, an immigrant, started small. She moved to Utah in 2001 from India, after completing a master’s degree in mass communication. “I really wanted to start working here,” she said. “But I was on a dependent visa, so I couldn’t go to work.”
Mahate then enrolled at the University of Utah, and earned another master’s degree, this time in integrated marketing communications. After graduation, she worked for two years as an unpaid intern at the Women’s Business Center of Utah. “Those were the best years of my life,” Mahate said.
After two more years, the Salt Lake Chamber sponsored his visa. She went on to become the marketing director, and eventually the director, of the Women’s Business Center. But, in 2010, nostalgia came calling. While at the Salt Lake Chamber, she did a lot of cooking for others. Through it, Mahate said, she found purpose, creativity, and achievement. That marked the building blocks of Indian food: a line of proprietary spice mixes that she sold at farmers’ markets across the state. Spices, she said, are what really set Indian food apart from other types of cuisines.
A year later, in 2011, Mahale opened the first Saffron Valley in South Jordan. “What was different about Saffron Valley is that we brought in food from the north, south, east, and west,” she said. “Until then, there was no restaurant in Utah offering all the different regional foods of India.”
Now, 12 years and four more restaurants later, Mahate is ready for the next phase of her journey: giving back, specifically to Utah’s refugee and immigrant communities. That idea culminated in the RISE Culinary Institute, a kitchen and training school being built at the back of Saffron Valley’s Sugar House in Salt Lake City.
Mahate said RISE came about as a result of a labor shortage in Utah’s restaurant industry and a growing population of refugees and new residents — people who “are willing and able to work and they just need the resources or the training to get a job in the culinary field.”
The institute selects, through an online application process, refugees and new residents for a free hands-on culinary training program. After three months, students will be placed in restaurants for six months in a paid internship position, with the goal of being hired full-time by the restaurant.
The first cohort of 12 students will start in April 2023 and Mahate said the institute will train four batches each year. The program is not for profit, so Mahate encourages people to apply as volunteers, donors, and sponsors.
“We’ve seen restaurant after restaurant close, cut their menus or their hours just because of labor shortages,” Mahate said. The program, he said, should be a win-win, not just for the restaurant industry, but for Utah’s economy. “It’s a small but creative solution, and we’re happy to be a part of it,” she said.
“The real success of any business is when they can be successful for themselves and their employees, and also contribute to the community and help build a community,” Mahate said. She added that making food and sharing it started as a passion for her. Eventually, she said, it became his purpose: to use food as a conduit to connect his culture with his new home. “My purpose has evolved since then,” he said. “First, it was always to serve the people. It has become more than that. now, it’s to help people explore their potential, while I explore mine.”
