R A S H N E . D E S A I .  '83.

The following feature story appeared in the campus publication MOSAIC in January, 2000.

BALANCING CULINARY SKILLS AND THE BOTTOM LINE

All her life, Rashne Desai ’83 has had an appetite for wursts, fondue, sushi, and other ethnic foods. So it is no wonder that, after working for five years in currency trading at Citibank -- when she finally had had her fill of schillings, francs and yen, she succumbed to her love of food and traded her pinstripes for a chef’s toque. Today, Desai lives in Florida, where she is the trend-setting head of prepared foods in the country’s largest natural foods market.

Desai, a native of Bombay, learned to appreciate the distinction between Iranian black and red caviar, the pleasures of raw oysters, and the pungency of Hungarian donkey salami at the knee of her father, who was an avocational epicure. "Whatever he ate, I ate," Desai says. An airline employee, Desai’s father would arrange monthlong family vacations in places like Japan and Switzerland, with the local cuisine being a primary point of interest. "My first such experience came when I was three and on a train in Japan where a passenger had sushi," Desai recalls. "I sat down and started eating it with them."

Savoring economics
Desai followed her father’s example in more than just food. Like her father, who attended the Hartt School of Music, Desai traveled to Connecticut for her college education. She initially enrolled at Hartford College for Women and as a junior transferred to Trinity to pursue studies in English. Being in a liberal arts environment proved stimulating for her. She developed her aesthetic sense by taking classes in art but really concentrated on furthering her knowledge of economics, which she had studied as a student in India. Especially memorable, she says, were courses in corporate finance taught by Ferris Professor of Finance Ward S. Curran and classes with Professor of Economics Robert A. Battis. "I really got a good grounding in finance at Trinity," she notes.

Following graduation, Desai headed for New York where she dabbled in jobs in the clothing and import-export businesses before landing a management training position in the eurocurrency department at Citibank in 1985. She enjoyed the intricacies of currency transactions and advanced to manager of operations and trading, but she realized that she would need to earn an MBA if she wanted to become a trader herself. The rigors of business school caused Desai to do "some serious soul-searching." Food won over finance.

In 1990, she enrolled in an intensive program at the French Culinary Institute in New York, a school whose curriculum is based on that of Le Ferrandi, the official Paris institution for training in the culinary arts. Six months later, with a Grande Diplome in hand and her culinary skills nicely honed, she got a job as a cook at New York’s well-known gourmet emporium Dean and DeLuca. Over the course of four years, she worked her way up to chef and finally commissary manager, responsible for supplying prepared food to a dozen satellite cafés within the city.

In 1994, after spending 11 years in New York, Desai was ready for new horizons. She headed south to Florida to run the prepared-foods department of the Unicorn Village Marketplace in Aventura. A year later, Whole Foods Market, Inc., the world’s largest natural foods supermarket, bought Unicorn for $4.1 million. Today, as head of prepared foods for the Florida region of Whole Foods, Desai designs the menus, searches out and chooses vendors, sets up the display cases, and is responsible for the bottom line. She oversees five stores in Aventura, Fort Lauderdale, Plantation, Coral Springs, and Winter Park. Two more new stores will be added to her purview when they open later this year.

Innovation and creativity have been hallmarks of Desai’s career. For example, in Whole Foods’ Aventura store, Desai instituted a stadium-style hot dog stand that brings street-vendor food to a gourmet setting at a reasonable price. And rather than rely solely on the more traditional fare of brown rice and tofu offered by some natural foods stores, Desai has drawn heavily from her background and creates ethnic dishes such as basmati rice with saffron threads and a spicy dish of lamb biryani for Whole Foods’ customers. According to Desai, she prepares her menus with a keen eye on the bottom line, aware that both taste and cost dictate success in the food business. Whole Foods has recognized her ability to balance her culinary and financial skills by awarding her two national and four regional All-Star awards for excellence.

Says Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science, Emeritus Ranbir Vohra, who served as Desai’s mentor at Trinity and with whom she remains in contact, "Rashne started from scratch and though she joined a prestigious institution after graduating as a chef, it was a risky new career. But she displayed a remarkable sense of self-confidence. Her hard work and obvious talent have finally paid off. Looking back on Rashne’s life and development, I feel that it was Trinity’s liberal arts education that contributed to her cosmopolitan outlook, helped her to discard narrow prejudices, and strengthened her conviction that she could follow her personal inclination to achieve fulfillment."

Desai couldn’t agree more with Vohra’s assessment of her life. "The liberal arts education I received at Trinity gave me unlimited options in choosing a career and then making a career change from the financial industry to the food business."

After almost a decade of pleasing people’s palates, Desai happily says, "I’m where I should be."

-Suzanne Zack