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Nicole Jordan, owner of Nicole Jordan Catering (Photo credit: Amber Marie Green, AMG Media)
After ten years as a consultant, University of Chicago graduate Nicole Jordan (BA ’96) is at a crossroads.
With a degree in economics and aspirations to become an entrepreneur, Jordan was able to apply to business school. Alternatively, you can develop a love of cooking and entertaining and go to culinary school.
Jordan took the lesser-known route and completed coursework in culinary arts and management at the (now defunct) Illinois Museum of Art in 2005. Eventually, she launched Nicole Her Jordan her catering. This company prides itself on its service as much as it does its food.
Now a graduate of the Polsky Center’s Financial Fundamentals and Small Business Growth Program, Jordan uses both his business consulting experience and culinary skills to help his fellow small food businesses grow. is launching its second business, Urban Operations, to help it become an economic engine for its communities. .
“I want to build a seven-figure business,” says Jordan, a Chicago native who lives in the historic Pullman neighborhood on the South Side. you can’t.”
From consulting to catering
Jordan’s passion for cooking traces back to her grandmother, who began working as a maid at the Knickerbocker Hotel and eventually worked in the kitchen. Her “all 4’11”. She later opened and ran her own restaurant with Jordan’s uncle and inspired Jordan with her cooking and her talents as an entrepreneur.
Choosing to go to culinary school sowed the seeds of a career change for Jordan, but it took her a while to step out of her comfort zone of business consulting. She eventually spent her 20 years in consulting and project management, with a focus on advising startups on everything from healthcare benefits to technology. Attempts to start a catering business as her sideline were shelved due to a hectic travel schedule.
In early 2016, with his final bonus secured, Jordan quit his job at JPMorgan Chase and left the American corporate world for good. With the help of her friends, she officially launched Nicole Her Jordan Her Catering from a shared kitchen space in the Beverly area.
“I was jumping off a cliff every day, so I am grateful to have lived my startup life as a consultant,” said Jordan.
Thanks to her strong professional network, Jordan’s business grew rapidly by word of mouth. By September 2016, she moved into McKinley Park’s private her kitchen. This central location was hoped to help reach downtown customers and give them room to take more orders.
Drawing on his consulting experience, Jordan focused on providing excellent customer service. She approached the customer relationship as a partnership, optimizing the customer experience throughout the engagement lifecycle.
“I’m a big believer in customer experience,” she said. “It generated a lot of customer loyalty.”
financial fundamentals
Jordan made many mistakes along the way. One of the biggest, she said, was that she underestimated herself when setting her price.
“I didn’t charge enough,” she said. “I left a lot of money on the table.”
Jordan came from a business background, but had a lot to learn about running his own business. She ended up at the Polsky Center after participating in numerous small business assistance programs, including her 10,000 Small Businesses initiative at Goldman Sachs.
Jordan enrolled in Polsky’s Small Business Growth Program in the spring of 2021 and enrolled in Small Business Financial Fundamentals that summer. Financial capital pathways and reserves. Both programs target minority- and women-owned businesses in Chicago’s south and west sides.
Financial Fundamentals gave Jordan tactics for approaching financial structures, such as how to handle debt, and encouraged him to leverage his audience in various ways to create other revenue streams.
“It put me in a regimen, put me in a room with other businesses and networks and allowed me to get out of my own head and get a different perspective,” Jordan said.
The new insights came at a critical time, as the COVID-19 pandemic forced her to take a step back and reassess her business. While all catering orders for the majority of 2020 have been canceled, Jordan is leveraging all available small business grants and loans to feed frontline workers and turn time into strategy. I managed to survive by using it.
She has moved away from doing small private events like weddings and has decided to focus exclusively on institutional clients such as hospitals, universities and corporations. Clients of these institutions tend to host more efficient events on simpler budgets.
“Economics says we need to focus on niches that will drive profitability,” Jordan said.
Marriage of skill sets
As her menu and catering processes become more streamlined and standardized, Jordan is moving away from her daily chopping onions to focus on growing a new strategic consulting business.
Urban Operations helps food-based small businesses address what Jordan calls operational “junkness” and build their internal structures to operate more efficiently, productively and profitably. The purpose is that.
The ultimate goal, she said, is to change the way people of color think about businesses to grow as a whole and create a profitable ripple effect for other businesses in the community.
“Small doesn’t mean small potatoes,” she said. “With just a small shift, you can actually scale your business growth and impact communities that are literally generating economies. You are the economy.”
article author Alexia Elejalde Ruiz, Associate Director of Media Relations and External Communications at the Polsky Center. A longtime journalist, Alexia was most recently a business reporter for the Chicago Tribune.Reach Alexia via e-mail Or on Twitter @alexiaer.
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