Young Chefs Academy

This business went out of business in October 2011– A letter posted on their website
(viewed on 11÷28÷11) explained their versions of why and also gives information about getting refunds for any groupons, membership tuition balances, BOGO and certificates. Here is the information directly from the website copy and pasted:
Dear Customer:
We deeply regret to inform you that circumstances beyond our control have forced us to send out this notice. Despite our best efforts, Young Chefs Academy of Chandler’s doors were closed by the Landlord without notice. What is even more discouraging and disheartening is the fact that the Landlord has refused to work with us to reopen them even though we were the longest standing tenant, we only had three months left on our lease, and we could have had the opportunity to move elsewhere. The Landlord also refused to renegotiate a more market appropriate rate even though they were advertising such rates. As a result of the Landlord’s actions, we were forced out of business, and the Landlord kept approx. 95% of our property making it impossible to open elsewhere, so needless to say this has financially destroyed us.
As you can imagine, we are devastated along with our staff as we have thoroughly enjoyed working with all of the kids & their families over the past three years providing this excellent service to the community & would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those wonderful customers who emailed the same such sentiments to us. You will all be missed as well.
Sadly, we have weathered the economic storms over the past few years with great plans for the future only to meet our demise in this fashion at the cold and heartless hands of corporate indifference.
For those inquiring about Groupon refunds, please contact Groupon Customer Support directly at (877) 788‑7858. For those inquiring about BOGO, Gift Certificates & Member Tuition refunds, the customer will need to file a dispute with their credit card provider indicating «services not rendered» & inform them we are out of business, and you will be reimbursed from the reserve account of our merchant service provider. This is how we are handling all refunds aside from Groupon refunds (see above) since we are no longer in business.
We would like to thank all of our many customers for their loyal patronage, and your business over the past three years has been greatly appreciated. We sincerely apologize for this tragic turn of events.
With best regards,
Young Chefs Academy of Chandler

Chef Kathy had to resort to mentioning «libel» and then defining it for us in case we are not intelligent enough on Unilocal to know what it means. I’m well aware and she would be laughed out of a court of law if she wanted to spend the money to sue someone for voicing an opinion and sharing an experience on a forum, if however, she was confident in her customer service she would not have even responded. We live in America last time I checked and can have an opinion and share it out loud, I’m not standing outside her business making comments, and this website is meant for people to share opinions, I’m positive my one negative comment will not close her business doors but in these tough times when I see the mall food court had to close down she should change her attitude and be happy she is still in business and kind to her customers Honestly, I really need not say more because anyone who reads her own comment in response to my comment can see what I meant. I’m glad Unilocal is a sounding board and a place for real people to get real information without it being censored and I think this is a great forum for hearing other’s true experience and I have never had any other negative reviews on here other than that one because I truly do not enjoy saying negative things about anyone but felt strong in that case.

I LOVE the idea of this place! It is a very colorful interesting place. The people that run it are poor business people and jerks.
The website should be your first clue. When you read about how they cannot accommodate people with gmail — run. Then the way you register is almost archaic in this day and age — send an email???
After my free introductory class for my child where I felt absolutely unwanted — parents are NOT allowed to watch (WHAT??? How do I know what my child is learning so I can reinforce that in the kitchen at home???), the instructor was in a pissy mood (she actually said something to the effect of «if you older kids feel like this is too slow for you we have better classes, there are younger kids in here and I don’t know why). I sent an email to Chef Kathy to give her my feedback. She defended everything that happened during our «introductory» class. If I didn’t believe in the value of teaching kids to cook then I would NEVER return. And this is the class that is supposed to be the hook to get you to buy a membership???
Additionally, she uses groupon a lot. The last groupon in april sold 2,111 spaces in the class. It seems like they only have about 2 — 3 classes per day with about 10 students each. That’s only about 30 spaces per day, plus they have to accommodate their membership students. So here it is the beginning of June and all of June’s classes are still sold out. Most of July’s classes are sold out. How are you ever supposed to get a space in this place at this rate??? Not to mention they are only getting about $ 5 for each of these students due to the price of the groupon so I wonder how much longer they can pay the bills.
I think someone who actually enjoys teaching children, cooking, believes in good customer service and has a GOOD business sense should open their own YCA. After all, it is a franchise and I would definitely go there and leave this one in the dust.
I would also stay away from Chef Jo, I think she hates kids.

My youngest daughter really enjoys cooking and is very good at it as well. So when we got a flyer about this place and did a little research on it we thought it might be something she would enjoy.
They offer an «advanced» class called senior chefs for teens with more experience. Frankly, we expected more. Much of the cooking was from prepared food, they weren’t allowed to handle actual knives and it was overall just too remedial for older more experienced kids.
By the time kids are experienced enough to enroll in «senior chef» classes they should be doing more actual cooking.
Overall I liked the facility and the staff and it is probably a good thing for the elementary set, just not well suited for older kids that have some experience going in.