Bloom's 'street smarts' propel Culinary Academy

Nation's Restaurant News, August 27, 1990

Bloom's `street smarts' propel Culinary Academy

SAN FRANCISCO -- His title has a bit of an ivory tower ring about it, but California Culinary Academy president Thomas A. Bloom, Ph.D., alias "Dr. Doom," is giving the students in his charge a lesson straight from the streets.

When sales at The Academy Grill, one of the 13-year-old school's public restaurants, dipped a while back, Bloom did not hole up with a pack of his instructors and postulate theorems as to what might be behind the drop. He took a walk.

"Sure enough, a new Taco Bell had opened two blocks away," he recalled.

Bloom responded by adding soft tacos with smoked chicken and beef to the menu at the grill. The soft tacos not only helped win back sales, but also gave the academy's student chefs a chance to demonstrate and hone their newly-learned smoking skills.

After hearing news of chef Jeremiah Tower's plans to open a tropical saloon, Speedo, nearby, Bloom ordered up a preemptive strike.

"I had them add Caribbean food to the menu," he said, letting just a hint of a chuckle escape.

Unhappy with the dinner business in the Academy Grill, he said he told the staff, "The way to bring them [customers] in is with a good bar." And with that, the grill began staging theme nights with free hors d'oeuvres and a special line of beers from a specific region or country.

Bloom indicated that he uses real world reconnaissance techniques and aggressive tactics in running the academy's three public restaurants because they are laboratories for students who will work in the real world.

"My first objective is that the students must learn to cook," he said.

But he has another objective in which the restaurants also play a role.

"I want to build schools, several schools," he said. And to do that, he indicated that he needs to "keep the restaurants full" and "tuition low."

The academy's owners have long talked of a second campus in Southern California. Bloom said his timetable calls for that second campus to open in 1991.

The California Culinary Academy was founded in 1977 as a school for professional chefs and its reasonably priced grand buffets have long been appreciated by locals. It most recently changed hands in 1986 when a group of investors purchased it from McKesson Corp., which had bought the school years before.

Academy students study in six kitchens, a butchery, bakery and an assortment of classes and lecture rooms. Their public restaurant-laboratories include the 200-seat Careme Dining Room, with a fixed-price and a la carte lunch and dinner menu, the 150-seat Academy Grill, and Cyril's Restaurant, a 90-seat restaurant that specializes in "Heart Healthy" foods low in fat, sodium and cholesterol.

The academy has never turned a profit, but Bloom, whose administration has boosted enrollment from about 300 to 425 and believes the school can handle 640 students, is out to change that.

Formerly with the California Polytechnic Institute at Pomona's School of Hospitality Management and before that a vice president of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, Bloom took over the academy two and a half years ago. Things have not been the same since.

He earned the Dr. Doom nickname the first year after he dismissed several deans and vice presidents. He later selectively refilled some of the positions with the likes of Brother Herman E. Zaccarelli, a nationally respected hospitality management educator.

Though he was generally impressed with the instructors and students, Bloom said he made some dismal discoveries during his first few months. Among them was that the school had no standard curriculum or formal recruiting program or even a glossy brochure to send prospective students.

Those shortcomings, which were taken care of in short order, were secondary to Bloom's primary mission of winning accreditation for the school.

Only through accreditation could the school begin its climb to prominence and become eligible for the student aide programs that could help it increase enrollment, he indicated.

"The long and arduous" accreditation process came to an end in July of 1989 when the American Culinary Federation Educational Institute awarded the academy a five year "unconditional" certificate.

The ACFEI was impressed enough with the school to ask Bloom to be on its accreditation commission.

Graduates of the academy's intensive 16-month program receive a certificate of Culinary Arts, which school officials say is recognized by the National Association of Trade & Technical Schools, The American Culinary Federation, the United States Department of Education and the Council on Post-secondary Accreditation.

Among the unusual projects undertaken by Bloom's administration has been the development of a private label wine program. Vice president of food and beverage, Jean-Michael Jeudy, an award-winning wine expert and former private maitre d'hotel to French president Georges Pompidou, worked with one winery to turn out Academy 1988 Chardonnay, and is planning to offer a red wine.

An advisory board created by Bloom includes cooking authority Julia Child; winemaker Robert Mondavi; wine expert Andre Fornier; American Culinary Federation officer and Monterey, Calif., restaurateur Bert Cutino; and San Francisco chef Hubert Keller.