Our team is kind of a big dill.
Our talented cooking class franchise team has been busy Cultivating 'Cool'inary Curiosity in Kids® for thousands of children in online classes, schools, camps, and special events since 2011. Meet the leadership team that helps our home-based franchise owners achieve financial success.
Erin is a serial entrepreneur with an extensive background in the food and wine industry. She’s a cookbook author, founder of Sticky Fingers Cooking®, and, together with her talented husband, co-owns the internationally acclaimed Barolo Grill in Denver. Pretty much every day of the last 30 years, Erin has been thinking deeply, curiously, and creatively about how people experience food.
As a Mom, Erin made sure her three kids grew up appreciating everything from kale to cupcakes. Lucky for us, that’s her goal for everyone else’s kids, too! Accordingly, Sticky Fingers Cooking® offers hundreds of cooking classes each week in multiple cities, both in-person and online. As of January 2024, Sticky Fingers Cooking® has taught over 125,000 kids how to cook and feel comfortable in the kitchen. Sticky Fingers Cooking® recipes and curricula bring together fresh ingredients, global flavors, math, geography, nutrition, food history—and a big dash of tasty fun! Erin also writes terrible jokes about food that make everyone groan. Speaking of which…
Kimberly graduated from UCLA with a degree in International Development in 2010. In college, she came to realize how multi-faceted the culinary world really is and became fascinated with all things food. After working in the food industry for over a decade and traveling across Europe, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America, she moved to Denver and was able to combine her passion for healthy cooking and working with kids via Sticky Fingers Cooking®.
Kim and her husband are world travelers, spending the better part of two years traveling together through four continents and completing a year-long trip in an adventure van. During non-nomadic times, Kim loves mountain biking, skiing, reading, and cooking and baking of course!
Lania filters the world through numbers, equations, and algorithms! After graduating from University of Notre Dame with a double major in business and psychology, she worked for several years at large CPA firms. She found her niche in the franchise industry, building and maintaining financial forecast models, and worked for three years as Manager of Executive Finance for Quiznos Corporation.
In addition to being the friend who correctly (and enthusiastically!) splits a 10-top restaurant bill, Lania is known for feeding people food that is both healthy and tasty. She feels strongly that young people deserve access to healthy food and regularly volunteers with a food bank that provides teens with nutritious meals.
You’ll likely find Lania running around a lake, hiking on a Colorado trail, or exploring a new city with her husband, three children and their golden retriever.
Joe brings his savvy startup know-how and extensive experience in marketing and business development to Sticky Fingers Cooking®. He creates and implements innovative marketing strategies and tools to transform startups into sustainable, growing, and profitable ventures. An insatiably curious person who loves to learn about new things and then tell you all about them, Joe is the life of any party. He has played pivotal roles in widely varied startups in sectors that include: solar, computer-aided design, golf, health & wellness, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
Joe is excited about helping Franchisees utilize our extraordinarily effective in-house marketing tools and support systems to bring the Sticky Fingers Cooking® magic to even more communities. A bit of a foodie, Joe makes a mean San Francisco Seafood Cioppino and an extremely tasty Vietnamese Carmel Simmered Chicken.
As our Chief of Staff, Katie has a hand in every SFC pot! A graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder, Katie has infused our operations with efficiency, organization, and smarts since 2014, designing systems to make us the best kid-focused hospitality company we can be. You just won’t find a more committed, tenacious, make-it-happen teammate.
In the kitchen, Katie enjoys watching her husband cook and claims that their two kids are his biggest critics.
Sam, a Cal Poly-SLO Computer Science grad, joined SFC in early 2024 and quickly became our engineering whiz, especially for the Sticky Fingers Cooking franchise website. He publishes monthly blogs, manages domains, and enhances our website’s functionality. In addition to his work with Sticky Fingers Cooking, Sam serves on the national board for Hack4Impact, a nonprofit organization that helps other nonprofits by building free software solutions with student volunteers!
Worried Sam’s squandering his youth behind a screen? Fear not! As we speak, Sam is working remotely and babysitting his 7-month-old niece in Lyon, France! #LiveLikeSam
When he’s not coding or changing diapers, Sam loves to travel, read, practice photography and yoga, and sample the world’s cuisines, especially French food!
A former preschool teacher and speech pathologist, Amanda has been with Sticky Fingers Cooking® since 2012. She began as a chef instructor and now helps keep our database and virtual office in order.
Amanda lives way up high up in the Rocky Mountains (10,000 ft!) in an off-grid home that’s powered exclusively by solar and wind. She feeds her insatiable curiosity AND her family through her hobbies: a greenhouse and an aquaponics tank! And did we mention that she helps milk goats at a local dairy farm?
When she’s not tending to her three busy kids—and every other living thing around her—you’ll probably find Amanda on a frozen-over pond or playing ice hockey with Denver’s own Fly Girls!
Fun, energetic, approachable, here-for-you Julie! She’s in it for the people and the experiences! She’s up for travel, music, anything her kiddos want to do, and she’ll try any food you put in front of her! When you talk with Julie on the phone, you feel like you’ve been friends for years.
And she’s a great friend to have if you’re considering a franchise venture because she loves to play matchmaker to people and opportunities! With 25 years of extensive experience in marketing and sales, coupled with her passion for working with start-up brands, Julie is an excellent resource for anyone curious to explore franchising with Sticky Fingers Cooking® or learn how to create the best Mexican feast ever.
Get in touch with her — you’ll be glad you did!
Meet Chloe! Hailing from the East Coast, she now proudly calls Colorado home. With a rich background in child development and nutrition, Chloe has years of experience promoting kids’ health through fun and engaging programs. She adores working with children, especially the little ones. Despite good-natured eye rolls from her husband and three kids, Chloe is an unshakable champion of healthy eating, always grabbing the veggie tray at family gatherings. Chloe starts her days with sunrise swims, yoga, audiobooks, and a few too many cups of coffee!
Dylan’s passion for all things food runs deep! From the time he was five years old, Dylan could be found in the kitchen cooking with his mom. After working for many years as a gymnastics coach, he moved to Colorado for culinary school. It was there, at Johnson and Wales University, that he discovered Sticky Fingers Cooking®. Six years later he still can’t get enough of teaching students everywhere how to love to cook!
In addition to being a chef and dog-dad, Dylan is an avid gamer and video game collector. Dylan will happily spend an entire weekend geeking-out with his family over their newest video game, and he and his husband have even won international video game competitions!