Cooking Team

North Dallas cooking school stages culinary competitions to break corporate ice

Cook with your coworker and come out a friend.

iStock

A unique culinary concept from Atlanta called Team Building with Taste is expanding to Dallas, which combines cooking classes with corporate team building.

The concept is going into the space on Preston Road that was once a Cafe Express and more recently a DiMassi's, and will feature not only corporate classes but also regular cooking classes, wine tastings and other foodie events. The projected opening date is mid-October.

"Our primary focus and goal is corporate team building, but in a culinary environment," says spokesman Chic Henderson. "Companies like Toyota will bring in groups of their people who maybe haven't worked together. We break them up into teams and put them in the kitchen together, and they get to cook some good food."

Menus include Southern with fried chicken and potato salad; Italian with crostini, pappardelle and tiramisu; healthy with kale Salad and salmon; steak house with Caesar salad and New York; tapas; and brunch.

The idea evolved out of a food truck company with whom Henderson worked; he used to have the Potato Potahto food truck. His associates in Atlanta had a commissary space and wanted to make better use of it. Most of them, including Henderson, had corporate experience. They've helped more than 200 companies such as Wells Fargo and Home Depot.

Henderson says that there are other similar groups but they generally rent space and equipment at a hotel or other event space.

"Our secondary thing is that we have a cooking school, with demonstrations and cooking classes, and that's something we're introducing in Dallas," he says. "There's a shortage of good cooking classes, without going to a cooking school, for people who want to learn about cooking. You can go to Central Market or Sur La Table but it's not the same thing."

Dallas' enthusiasm for food and its large number of Fortune 500 companies makes it an ideal market for something like this.

"Food is an ice breaker and a friend maker with people," Henderson says. "If you can make a meal together, you learn things you probably didn't know."

unspecified

Coworking News

New coworking space to open in Dallas' Oak Lawn neighborhood

Office Evolution

A coworking space is opening in Dallas in a central location: Office Evolution, a Louisville-based coworking chain, will open what a release says is a "state-of-the-art coworking space" at 3500 Oak Lawn Ave. #360 in Dallas at the southeast corner of Lemmon Avenue.

No details on what makes it state-of-the-art, but construction is ongoing and an opening is anticipated in mid-October.

Office Evolution was founded in 2003 as a shared workspace-coworking environment, cultivated on the principles of "Ohana," the Hawaiian tradition that references family working toward a common goal. (The founder was from Hawaii.)

The company started out in Boulder, Colorado, then relocated its headquarters to Louisville. It's an affiliated brand of United Franchise Group, and is part of The Vast Coworking Group, which specializes in franchising within the coworking industry. All of their locations are franchised.

The Dallas location is owned by franchisee Michael Pickering, a Dallas native who runs a family-owned indoor soccer facility in Dallas. (There are two other Office Evolution locations in the DFW area in McKinney and Southlake, owned by different franchisees.)

They're describing the Dallas location at 3500 Oak Lawn Ave. as "Turtle Creek," although its location at Oak Lawn and Lemmon really puts it at the epicenter of Oak Lawn. (To further complicate matters, the building previously and incorrectly described its address as "Uptown.")

It's a seven-story building in which the majority of tenants are doctor and medical offices.

Office Evolution rates include a coworking day pass for $25, plus "flex" office options starting at $200 a month for 20 hours, up to $550 a month for 80 hours.

Amenities of the building that are also accessible to Office Evolution customers include a front desk; a 1,000-square-foot fitness center; covered parking; and on-site security six days a week.

According to a spokesperson, Pickering and his team put $1.2 million into the renovation to transform the space, which occupies most of the fourth floor where it will span 9,240 square feet of space with 41 total offices — one of which is earmarked as an "on-demand office" for the professional on the go.

trends oak lawn openings