Experience
2008 - 2014
Pastry Consultant
Bar la Grassa, 112 Eatery, Crave, Soprano Italian Restaurant, Barrio Tequila Bar, Smalley's Caribbean Barbeque and Pirate Bar, Masu, Heyday, 6SmithMinneapolis, MN
Education
Advice from Diane Moua
Quotes about career path, skills, and teamwork from an industry leader.
I've had some amazing mentors, including Adrienne Odom, the first pastry chef I worked under, and Michelle Gayer, the second pastry chef I worked with - I learned from the best and both are very talented.
They taught me to constantly keep pushing and learning. There is no end to learning.
Gavin Kaysen and I have only worked with each other for a few months, but his drive and motivation are unbelievable. His leadership skills are great and it keeps you wanting to learn more and do better every day!
The best advice I've received is to be true to yourself and you will continue to grow.
There's no looking back.
Always move forward and work harder than before.
I did a quick stage at Restaurant Daniel and Café Boulud before starting at Spoon and Stable.
It was very memorable and life changing. The drive and motivation the team leaders had to lead their teams was incredible.
I keep my team motivated by instilling the value of teamwork!
Surrounding myself with talented people and bouncing ideas off of each other keeps the motivation alive.
I continue to educate myself by looking up to my mentors and many great pastry chefs.
I read and watch what everyone is doing, from magazines to social media to local pastry chefs in town. So Good magazine is great! They highlight some of the best pastry chefs in the world, sharing ideas and recipes.
Don't forget to take, don't forget to breathe, and don't forget to rest, because we cannot burn out.
We are mentors and leaders, so we need to make sure we can take care of ourselves before we can take care of others.
If you're one foot in, one foot out, always ask yourself if you've given it 100%.
If you did it and it's not doing well, then it's okay to walk away from it. But you have to give 100% first.
Take notes.
The good and the bad. There's always things to learn from the bad.
My inspiration is my parents' hard work.
They drive up once or twice a week to drop off veggies, and they work so hard. I'm very proud to serve their hard work. They just keep going, and they inspire me to really stay motivated.
The concept for Diane’s Place evolved a hundred times.
Opening restaurants is a lot of hard work. The owners do all the paperwork. As a chef, all I had to do was go in, set up my station, and train my staff. That was the easy part. I was scared to open my own place. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was very lucky because relationships in this industry are really important. All the chefs that I worked with, they had all opened their restaurants. I was able to go to them, ask them questions, and take notes. It might not make sense in the moment, but if you take notes, you can always refer back to them.
Trusting people was one of the hardest things.
Sometimes you just want to do it yourself to make sure that everything is done correctly. But you have to trust, otherwise you just become controlling. Expectations and controlling are two different things.
When running a business, a valuable lesson I learned was you have to know how to do the work.
You can hire somebody else that knows how to do it, but as the owner, you have to know how to do it too.
Everywhere I worked, I've always treated every single place like it was my own.
I was always very proud of everywhere I worked and everyone I've worked with
Tim McKee always told me, “You're not leaving until you leave to go to do better.
You don't leave to take a step back.”
What my parents taught me is hospitality – people come to our house, you take care of them.
And when I was working with Gavin [Kaysen], I did a lot of that. We talked about hospitality; it's not just about the food, it's about the whole service, the whole ordeal. I was like, hey I've been doing this my whole life. I still do it. So being able to put the two worlds together was really good, and that's kind of what Diane's Place is too.
Roles in Pastry & Baking
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