By Melonie Magruder
Lookout Staff

February 28, 2012 -- If, as we are told by current political leaders, small businesses are the life blood of our economy, Santa Monica is host to at least one of those greater symbolic successes.

The Gourmandise School of Sweets and Savories opened in The Market at Santa Monica Place nine months ago, and its classes, including everything from techniques in mastering professional quality macaroons to opening a food truck enterprise, are full, with waiting lists dangling.

Three of the school's students have already opened their own businesses; and regular Skype consultations are held from student bakeries as far-flung as Taiwan and Ghana.

And such expansive achievements did not stem from a flushly funded corporate chain. Gourmandise was launched by two local women with little business training and no formal institutional training at all.

Their business philosophy hinges on ideas that are sort of like throwing spaghetti against the wall to see if it’s cooked: if it sticks, it’s good to go.

Clemence Gossett is the original brainiac. She wanted to teach cooking classes and first rented a space in Culver City to open a functioning commercial kitchen. One of her students, Hadley Hughes, kept signing up for classes.

When Gossett asked if she worked in the food industry, Hughes replied no, she was in marketing, but that cooking was her passion. Gossett knew she had found the perfect partner.

“Hadley is the yang to my yin,” Gossett said recently in a break between classes. “Cooking is my heart, and I can’t look impartially upon it. So she handles the business and P.R.”

Gossett is French by birth and spent her early childhood shadowing a grandmother in the kitchen of an auberge (a country inn) in the south of France.

“I would spend every summer working in the kitchen with her,” Gossett said. “I grew up cooking for my grandparents’ guests so I just never had any fear around a pastry table. You learn a lot of technique in a working kitchen.”

Gossett attended film school in New York, where she met her husband, before moving to California and starting a family. Even with three young children, she manages a full-time schedule of classes, along with her other business-owner duties. She enlists her 15-year old son, Malcolm, to help with cookie sales.

Students come from as far away as Morro Bay – weekly – for classes as simple as the perfect Mac & Cheese to Pro Chef: Meat. Gossett’s dessert classes are always full (she limits class size to 12) and the school hosts visiting chefs, including Josiah Citrin of Melisse and Joe Miller of Joe’s Restaurant, who lead a string of students around the Farmers Market before bringing them back to the kitchen to work.

The schedule of at least two classes a day are becoming so loaded, Hughes said, they are looking to expand into a larger space within two years and will start filming demos to post on the school’s website. They even offer a Chef’s Hotline to call if panicky cooks run into trouble with a béchamel sauce (310-656-8800).

“We’re also looking into launching merchandise this summer/fall,” Hughes said. “It will be ‘kits’ that people can purchase… to complement certain classes. I don’t want to give too much away, but I’m really excited about it.”

How do the Gourmandise girls account for such accomplishment at a time when many businesses are just struggling to keep heads above water?

“I think people enjoy being deeply invested in something,” Gossett said. “Food is tactile, and good food requires proper preparation. You can lose yourself in the art.”

Such was the case for students Sara DeLeeuw and Marie Santos, who traveled three hours on a recent morning from the Inland Empire for Gourmandise classes, conducted in a glassed-in kitchen that permits observers strolling The Market to watch the fun.

DeLeeuw and Santos are not professional chefs. When asked what they like about the classes, they pull out iPhones with photos from past classes of homemade ricotta cheese and salmon poached in oil.

“We both work at Starbucks,” DeLeeuw said. “But we have a passion for cooking classes, and Clemence offers the best around. We started coming last June and were hooked.”

“You also get to take home whatever you don’t eat in class,” Santos put in. “That’s great value, and I’ve never found it at other cooking classes.”

Gossett and Hughes run a very egalitarian ship. Everyone hired must know how to do  and be willing to do – everything.

“That’s how I started,” Gossett said, laughing. “You want to teach a class? You better be ready to wash dishes as well. We all pitch in.”

Their Buy Local philosophy is paramount – they source almost all of their supplies from the local Farmers Market and extra material from Fair Trade vendors. It’s working. A receptionist was so busy taking phone reservations that she could barely answer questions.

“Hadley is good at tying our school to a brand,” Gossett said. “But I think it’s something more intangible. Food is more than just eating. Food is life."