Growing up in Wisconsin the oldest of six children, Shawn McBride developed a strong work ethic from an early age, with jobs ranging from helping care for her siblings, to working at the family bakery, where she pulled all-night shifts on the weekends and in the summer during her high school years.
“From age nine on, I had some kind of job and it was never just one job,” she says. “If there was something to be done, the expectation was that you were going to do it.”
McBride’s diligence made a lasting impression on chef Paul Prudhomme, for whom McBride worked in college at a resort in Estes Park, Colo., where he was executive chef. McBride and a friend signed on to work in the dining room, serving lunch and dinner to conference attendees from around the world, but when Prudhomme had to terminate his baker for showing up drunk to his shifts, McBride agreed to work the middle-of-the-night hours in the bakery, in addition to those lunch and dinner shifts.
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