Learnings from Pastry Connection: Reinventing your Business for the Future with Paco Torreblanca and Luis Robledo

I feel very lucky on a personal and professional level, since I’ve had the privilege to work alongside people I admire for some years now. For example, I had the opportunity to work with Luis Robledo, and besides confirming that he is an excellent chocolatier professional, I also had the chance to get to know him as a great person and he is now a big friend of mine, who is always willing to help every time I need advice or to learn something new.   

On the other hand, some years ago I worked for some days very close to Paco Torreblanca during Pastry Chile, he has been one of my professional referents since I started immersing myself in the gastronomy world. Right away I was able to see the great person he is, with an innate teaching spirit and an amazing sympathy. That experience was very enriching, since it helped me confirm once again, that true professional greatness comes from the perfect combination of professionalism, humility and sympathy.

So, to see them together now discussing the future and problems that most of us are facing during this time of crisis with our businesses was a bitter-sweet moment. We were able to see the worry that the closure of businesses has generated, or also how low the market is developing right now. For these two chefs and for a lot of entrepreneurs, one of their biggest problems is to gather enough resources to continue paying their collaborators, and to make everything possible in order not to leave them without a job or helpless.

Among all the ideas that were developed in a conference of just one hour, some of the main ones were that: the best reinvention we can have right now is to go back to our basis, to impose the quality of our products over its quantity, but at the same time to strengthen ourselves with the use of technology, and looking for alliances with other gastronomy professionals. On this context, what awaits us in the future? It is actually very hard for someone to have a 100% accurate answer, what is a fact it’s that these complicated times have make us rethink our businesses and become stronger. We have to stay together and support each other through creativity, and above all keep hope that things will get better soon. As Paco said, “we should always try to keep our head on the stars and our feet on the ground.”

  Natividad Toledo, Chef Brand Manager for Par de France and República del Cacao ally