Employee Profile: Kathleen Hoffman

Kathleen Hoffman is Checkers' Executive Chef and Kitchen Manager.

She oversees daily food production in a very busy kitchen and manages 15 full-time employees and many part-timers. Kathleen is responsible for kitchen staff training, inventory and ordering, recipe development, assisting in the creation of Checkers' extensive menus, as well as custom menus for special events such as wine pairings. She also works closely with the staff when an event requires an on-site chef.

As a junior, and like many others before her, Kathleen was diligently searching for a way out of high school fast. Her break came in the form of a curriculum of classes that would allow her to graduate as Junior; she could take cosmetology, drafting, automotive or food service classes. With no motivation Kathleen settled for foodservice and under the guidance of Master Chef, Maurice Clark, found she loved it and was good at it! "He was an incredible teacher, a wealth of culinary knowledge and an inspiration to me. He encouraged me to further my training and go to college". Which she did, Kathleen attended both Alfred State University and the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. "All the schools used to compete in culinary competitions, Maurice's class would enter every year and while I was attending Alfred State we took first place one year. That was my greatest joy because Maurice, my mentor, was so proud of me."

Kathleen's first job out of school was for an unknown hotel, the Guest Quarters in Houston, Texas. She also opened hotels for Marriott and Hilton then spent ten years opening restaurants for Fuddruckers, Chili's and the Boston Market chain, before taking six years off to spend time at home with her young family. At that time Kathleen also opened her own personal chef service called "Diablo Dine-In," before it was trendy to have a personal chef make weekly meals for busy families. However, "the opportunity to join the Checkers team presented itself" and the rest is history.

Kathleen was born in Ithaca, New York and grew up outside Buffalo in Tonawanda, New York. She has been married for twenty years, "to a wonderful guy" and they have two children who attend school in Dublin. When asked what her favorite food is, she says "home cooked meals that I grew up with like soups and stews, the ones that simmer all day and smell so great in the house!" and her pet peeve? "I don't like chocolate on my hands. In culinary school I always had chocolate all over me; as soon as it gets on your hands it's freakish!"

For fun, Kathleen is an avid practical joker and often ropes a few close friends in, to play practical jokes on one another, with lines like "Hey, come over I've got an idea" And their jokes are really elaborate. Once, a friend (who we'll call Jane) who has a beautiful convertible bug went out of town for three weeks and asked Kathleen to watch the car, and "drive it around every so often." So Kathleen, being a gracious friend, did so then promptly gathered 16 similar looking car keys and eagerly handed them out to mutual friends with specific instructions to give the key back to "Jane" the next time they saw her and say "Thank you so much for letting me borrow your car!" which each person did. "It was hilarious" Kathleen laughed, "people would see 'Jane' in the grocery store like a month later and say oh, thank you so much for letting me borrow your car while you were away, it really helped a lot"!