{"id":15209,"date":"2016-09-07T18:09:21","date_gmt":"2016-09-07T22:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=15209"},"modified":"2016-09-07T18:09:21","modified_gmt":"2016-09-07T22:09:21","slug":"food-in-motion-hits-uncharted-waters-to-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/food-in-motion-hits-uncharted-waters-to-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Food In Motion hits \u201cuncharted waters\u201d to success"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hollywood arrives in city this week for the annual Toronto International Film Festival and as the stars get ready to walk the red carpet, Aurora\u2019s John Cosentino will be a man in motion.<\/p>\n

In partnership with DiLiso\u2019s Fine Meats, a St. Lawrence Market staple, Cosentino, 34, and his chefs will be hard at work feeding over 3,500 industry and media insiders from 9 a.m. to 4 a.m. throughout the span of TIFF.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are going to be in uncharted waters,\u201d says Cosentino, founder of Food In Motion, the Aurora-based catering business on Vata Court. \u201cCooking for this many people in a seven-day span is new to us and it is going to be a huge learning experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is shaping up to be a busy week for Cosentino and his team. Not only will they be caught up in the perfect storm of glitz and mayhem only TIFF can provide, they are also preparing to mark their first anniversary on September 14 as a local success story. <\/p>\n

While TIFF might be a huge learning experience, Cosentino has never shied away from a learning challenge.<\/p>\n

The Richmond Hill native was once a professional baseball player, a pitcher studying global management. Travelling to Italy for a one-year stint playing pro ball in Europe, however, threw him an unexpected professional curveball. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I showed up at the airport, there was a team representative and he handed me a manila envelope with directions to my flat from the airport, directions to the field from my flat, and the keys to a standard \u201989 Ford Escort I didn\u2019t know how to drive,\u201d he recalls. \u201cWhen I finally got to my flat after a 15 \u2013 20 minute drive which actually took me about three hours because I had to teach myself how to drive standard that day, I got to the flat and found just a mini-bar fridge.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to teach myself to go out every day to supply myself with the produce, literally just shopping for the meal. I said, \u2018I can do this\u2019 and got the chance to start cooking a lot more for my roommates and teammates in Italy and by the end of the season I was actually cooking for local families and that was really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

From there, he barely looked back. Finishing his undergraduate degree in West Virginia, he came home and went to chef school at George Brown College. He credits his degree in Global Management to helping him understand the importance of building the right kinds of relationships but says the transition from that world to the kitchen was relatively seamless as there too you need order to be able to function on a daily basis.
\n\u201cBaseball got me my education and then it got me to what I now consider my career,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

With his fianc\u00e9e, a native Auroran, Cosentino set out to chart these uncharted waters, eventually zeroing in on an Aurora-based catering company.
\n\u201cThe number one thing people in the industry would tell a young apprentice is, \u2018Listen, if you don\u2019t really love this, get out,\u2019 because financially it is a bit of a struggle, especially when you are starting out,\u201d he recalls. \u201cA lot of times you\u2019re working for free so you can put on your resume that you have experience working in the kitchen with a well-known chef who is established already.\u201d<\/p>\n

He chose a slightly different path, leveraging his undergrad degree and his culinary degree to get the money flowing in as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

For the past six years, he has been a regular fixture at the Toronto Food Terminal, cooking hearty breakfasts that are more akin to lunches for the 125 employees regularly working through the night. It has proved to be a steady gig and something he credits to keeping Food In Motion \u201cafloat\u201d during the lean years and also providing invaluable experience. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt still took me five or six years of learning under chefs from north of the city, but I really took everything I learned and it was like completing a puzzle,\u201d he says. \u201cYou take the very best things from all these different chefs in order to build your own puzzle and make it work for yourself. I thought catering would be the best way to support myself financially.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is still an uphill battle. Some people may want to plateau. Other people may want to climb and I think that what is really cool about catering is because it is a new venue with new clients every single day, you\u2019re dealing with new menus all the time, sometimes three menus a day; you can continue to be creative so you never plateau and always climb. That is more rewarding than the financial reward. I am definitely happy with my choice and where I am right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

And where he is now is a beautifully equipped \u201cKitchen\u201d just off Industrial Parkway South where the behind-the-scenes magic happens very much in-front-of-the-scenes with a seating area that comfortably seats 20 and is open to private events, including catering parties and team-building corporate exercises.<\/p>\n

If all goes according to plan in their second year and beyond, Mr. Cosentino will soon look for another location to incorporate either a sandwich bar or an appetizer-and-wine bar in the Aurora area while simultaneously sticking to their catering roots. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have been fortunate in the first year to be able to hire some very competent, intelligent and hard-working staff,\u201d he says. \u201cWe have met so many people and have been overwhelmed by the support we have got from the Town, Chamber and local community. We are very thankful for all the support, we\u2019re here to stay and we just look forward to feeding the local public every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more, visit www.foodin
\nmotion.ca.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hollywood arrives in city this week for the annual Toronto International Film Festival and as the stars get ready to walk the red carpet, Aurora\u2019s John Cosentino will be a man in motion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/2016-09-08-05.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3Xj","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-23 16:30:04","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}