Meet Deepal Patel

Today we’d like to introduce you to Deepal Patel.

Hi Deepal, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I was born in India, grew up in the UK just outside of London for a few years and then Wales. I finished my Sr year of high school in Canada then college in Indiana. My father moved us a lot for business. When I was a Jr in College my family moved back to Wales and I stayed to finish school. Eventually, I stayed for grad school, where I focused on Population Genetics and Molecular Ecology.

I started baking after Graduate school when I returned to Wales. I was going through a really tough time after my failed arranged marriage so I started baking and watching a lot of Food TV to distract myself. I had a cousin who was also interested in baking so she, myself and a friend of ours took some baking classes at a community college. It started off simple – cake decorating, cookies, cupcakes. Eventually, I realized I was baking more and more elaborate cakes and spending hundreds of pounds on baking tools. I was also baking so much I running out of people to feed! It was on Fathers Day in 2013 – I spent a week on all the sugar work for my Dad’s cricket-themed father’s day cake when I just knew I wanted to be a chef. I already loved cooking and was good at it. I wanted to learn more about baking and I wanted to do it all the time!

I visited a few culinary schools stateside that summer and decided on enrolling at NECI in fall of 2013. It was obvious when school started that I was under experienced and a lot older than the other students. I kept my head down for a while and didn’t say anything about already having several degrees. Those don’t mean anything in the kitchen and I wanted to prove that I could keep up with the 18 years old that had worked in professional kitchens for the past three summers (or longer!).

I took a lot of short-term and seasonal jobs all over the country before I accepted a job offer at the Crown Center Sheraton and Westin. It was my first kitchen as the Pastry Chef. It was such a diverse experience! I got to lead a pastry team to serve events for 10,000 people and got to do chefs tables for 20 people. It was always different, fun and exciting.

After a few years downtown, I was ready for a change. Work-life balance and autonomy over my work became more important to me. I also felt like I needed a change to shake off feeling “stale”. I decided to go back to my roots – small business ownership. I’d watched my parents for years living a scrappy, exciting small business life. The idea felt comfortable for me too.

I asked a coworker who was looking to leave hotels if she would like to join me in opening a bakery and she was thrilled to. We established The Pantry KC LLC and opened the doors in July of 2018.

I wanted to bake foods I grew up with and missed. I wanted to introduce Kansas City to British foods. I feel like I’m making all the food people in KC hear about on the Great British Bake off!

I also want to cook with real ingredients in a classically European style. For example, we NEVER use shortening and we think even a tiny cupcake should be as good as a wedding cake – so we use Italian meringue buttercream on EVERY cake not just wedding cakes. We even make our own “Johnsonshire Clotted Cream” for our traditional British scones.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The road was never, is never and will never be “smooth”. No kitchen ever is. Margins are small in food service so there’s never much wiggle room – we always have to run a tight ship to survive. But we are survivors. We survived equipment breakdowns, staff shortages, HVAC replacements, Break-Ins and most frighteningly – COVID 19! We lost international supply chains in the wake of the pandemic and have had to compete for supplies. We still are! We call several suppliers and spend days running around town to make sure we have the tools, packaging materials and food we need to open the doors.

Since more and more time is being devoted to the background of the business, I decided to change the hours to opening only on weekends. Its been amazingly successful for us. We are meeting more and more new folks every week and we are booked up for custom cake orders into February of 2022. We are now people’s weekend routine and honored to be!

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Baking is a science and an art. My background as a scientist helps me be a better baker. I had no idea the amount of knowledge in chemistry, biology and engineering I would apply to make “pretty cakes”. I try to teach my interns the science of why as well as the how. This week alone, we discussed the many properties of sugar. How the temperature of a sugar solution is a mere indicator of its water content. How it’s hydroscopic so it matters to the outcome of a recipe when it’s added into the mixture. How to prevent crystallization in a sugar solution by adding acids or inverted sugars.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
I have had amazing support throughout my baking career. My cousin for indulging me and attending the amateur classes in the UK. to the fleet of chefs at the New England Culinary Institute that taught by creating a curriculum of real world experience. I went from no experience to being the most proficient cook at every internship I entered. I also feel like I chose NECI because I connected with a very special counselor that listened, treated me like an individual that mattered and supported me through the very difficult transition into campus live in my late 20s/early 30s. (it was a co-ed campus/ dorm and the kids were MUCH younger than me) (i was going through a divorce). I think she was the first person that was really a stranger that just believed in who I was and what I was capable of as a woman and a chef. She was a remedy for pangs of self-doubt.

I’m also thankful to my Aunt. One of the reasons I moved to Kansas City. She was the first woman I knew that was a bad-a** business boss chick! She started her small business in the 80s and has come a LONG way from then. She has always been a great pillar of strength and positivity when I have felt tapped out.

I wish I could write an entire book about all the people that I have met in my life that showed me kindness and emotional support when I needed it. The truth is that I have had a very rocky journey and I have met a LOT of very good people at all those important times. I’m also so honored that they have almost exclusively been other women.

Contact Info:

• Email: thepantrykc@gmail.com
• Website: ThePantryKC.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patel_deepal/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pantrykc/