Recipe Step 1: Roll out life-long interest in food
For as long as Jacqueline Tucker can remember, she's been interested in food -- preparing it, serving it and seeing people enjoy it.
Though never formally trained in the culinary arts, Tucker learned to cook as a child. “We had a choice: cook, wash dishes or wash clothes,” she recalls.
Tucker opted to spend her time learning to slice and dice, boil and broil, often preparing meals for her large family and always finding the experience tremendously satisfying.
Even today she hasn't lost her enthusiasm for well-prepared food. “When I'm on vacation, I'm the kind of person who peeks into the restaurant's kitchen to see what good things they're cooking up,” she says with a chuckle.
Recipe Step 2: Add clear vision for success
Though Tucker's family tree reveals a few entrepreneurs and plenty of good cooks (years ago her grandmother ran a restaurant in Indiana), the road to entrepreneurship wasn't without some bumps. During most of her adulthood, Tucker worked various jobs, including some in the food service industry. But by 1990, she was a divorced mother of three teenagers, collecting welfare and hating a “system” she found demeaning and demoralizing.
But she also was nurturing the germ of a business idea, which she developed and refined at Detroit Entrepreneurship Institute's training program. By the time the course ended, she had a clear-cut business concept and newfound self-confidence.
“At my humble beginning, I never, ever thought it would go this far. I was so determined that I wanted to be successful. I believed I could be successful. ... Three out of five businesses fail. But I said, 'Failure is not an option.' ... I wouldn't look behind me and I wouldn't let anyone stop me from getting to the place I wanted to be.”
Recipe Step 3: Mix in sufficient amount of “adaptability”
Tucker is one smart cookie. Long ago she realized that to stay in business for the long haul, she needed to explore new ideas and alter her services to meet changes in the market. During her 11 years in business, she's been the in-house caterer for both a wedding chapel and a banquet facility, and has expanded her array of services well beyond food to include arranging hall rentals, entertainment, decorations -- even guest limousines.
In addition to juggling private catering jobs, she and Eternal Pleasures currently are under contract to a career training center in the Detroit area to teach culinary arts. In that role, Tucker is one of four chefs teaching young people various cooking techniques, as well as how to operate a commercial kitchen and cafeteria.
Her teaching schedule still leaves plenty of time for the catering business. Plus she gets a chance to identify promising students she can take along on her catering jobs, while the students gain a paid work experience they can add to their resume.
“My business has grown like a wise old woman,” says Tucker. “I kept it small and didn't allow it to grow to a proportion where I couldn't handle it.”
Recipe Step 4: Sprinkle in on-going support from DEI
Although it's been more than a decade since Tucker first turned for business training to Detroit Entrepreneurship Institute (then known as the Detroit Self Employment Project), she's maintained a strong relationship with the staff through the years. “I enjoy the support I get from them,” she says, adding: “I still need wise counsel now and then. And that's something I seek out from them.”
Recipe Step 5: Preserve properly for future generations
“No one in my family has ever gone this far in life ... The main purpose of me doing this is for my children and grandchildren. I decided I would do this for them -- that there would be a legacy left behind of success. Being successful is possible -- it can be done. And they're expected to do it as well.”
The
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