Meet Terri Heekin Davlantes, an entrepreneur starting JAX Cooking Studio. She’s also a member of the Jacksonville Aviation Authority Before that, she was executive director of The Epic Program (Entrepreneurism, Policy, Innovation and Commerce) at Jacksonville University; a professor, executive and vice dean at Florida Coastal School of Law; an associate attorney at the Rogers Towers firm; and a registered nurse.
I was at JU for close to 2 ½ years. I left the program in good hands and I left the school with good graces from President Tim Cost. He was interested that I wanted to start a business of my own and he’s fully supportive of it. I turn to him often for help and entrepreneurship because he’s one of the best entrepreneurs I know.
I wanted to start my own company for a while and I’m looking at what would be the best way to utilize my skills in both health care and new program development. I have an interest in healthy eating. We are eating out an astronomical number of times per week. When we’re eating out, we’re less attuned to eating healthy. By and large, we’re eating food that has too much sodium, too little fiber and too little nutrition, and that’s gotten us into a pretty sad state of affairs.
My concept is to bring this teaching kitchen to the consumers, who are the people that need to be the most empowered to watch out for their health and then to bring in some behavior modification techniques to help people. Down deep, people know that they shouldn’t be eating hamburgers and french fries at every meal but it tastes good and you see other people doing it. You are what you eat.
That’s one part of the business. The other part is once people get a chronic illness the No. 1 thing they want to know is, how do I eat? I will employ dietitians and chefs who will teach you what your diet should look like to achieve the best health outcome when you are going through your medical treatment and as you progress through your disease. And once you’ve progressed through it, how you eat to stay healthy.
I’m currently shopping for a location. It’s going to be a home-ec lab. There will be four or five kitchen appliance workstations.
I anticipate about 20 people in a course at a time. It has to be a fun experience, too.
It’s called JAX Cooking Studio. I got tired of looking for a name and just said, OK, this is going to be it.
I’m one of nine children. It’s eight boys and me. At the time it was challenging, although they’ll tell you that I had my own room and the boys were in barracks-style conditions in the back two rooms, bunk beds all over. That’s why most of them entered the military, they’ll say. We do get together. I have Christmas Eve dinner at my house and usually have 50 or 60 people that are able to come.