Kevin Binkley

Growing up, Binkley had an interest in music, and in his early teens he decided that he wanted to save up for a guitar, so at fourteen, he started his very first job—at TCBY.

“I tell people that and they’re like, ‘Really? TCBY?’ And I say, ‘You know what?—I learned some very important things there that still hold true in what I do day-to-day’.”

Namely, hard work. In every form. Hired as the low man on the totem pole, Binkley earned his keep (a meager one at that, he admits—it was going to take a long time to buy that guitar) sweeping, mopping, sanitizing, and doing dishes. Learning to spin yogurt into ice cream and make crepes were fun things to learn, and rudimentary though it was, he found that he really liked his first taste of the culinary industry.

“And from that point forward,” he says, “it seems like every job that I ever got was, for the most part, relative to food. I like the restaurant business because there are so many different positions you fill, or different ways you approach it.”

After high school, Binkley attended East Carolina University in North Carolina. When he was a junior in college, his guidance counselor gently but firmly told him that he really needed to declare a major.

Binkley and some friends found themselves in New Orleans, a veritable smorgasbord of flavors, cooking styles, and exciting culinary experiences.

“I ended up staying and getting a cooking job,” he says. “A good friend of mine (Richie Brandenburg) who was also there, had just graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park New York, which was ranked the best culinary school in the U.S. This was before Food Network, before real celebrity chefs and things of that nature.”

When Binkley wasn’t working, he’d ask Brandenburg to teach him some of the techniques and dishes he’d learned at school. He was keenly interested in learning more about food, and the care and preparation of it.

After New Orleans, Binkley moved to Scottsdale, where his mother and stepfather lived, planning to go back to college at Arizona State University and finally focus on one area: music, which he still wasn’t completely excited about. It was at this time that Brandenburg (still one of Binkley’s best friends to this day) asked him a pivotal and life changing question: Had he ever considered culinary school? It was obvious Binkley loved cooking and had a knack for it, and he was now fortuitously living in the same city as the number three-ranked culinary school in the nation, the Scottsdale Culinary Institute.

“It’s like a light bulb went off. I’d never even considered it as a career. I just really liked cooking, and I love food and love to eat.”

Binkley recalls his experience touring the institute (known today as Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts Scottsdale): “I was shocked. It was amazing! It was like going to summer camp—you know, like a cool summer camp that you were excited about going to, not like one your parents forced you to go to.”

He was amazed and delighted that he could go to a place where they cooked food, ate food, and earned an Associates degree doing it. He joined the culinary institute, and was off and running, meeting some tremendous friends and mentors along the way.