Everything in its place: Love, family and young chefs in a Sandy Springs kitchen
On Saturday mornings at Young Chefs Academy of Sandy Springs, kids arrive in chef coats, trade high-fives and secret handshakes, then crowd around the ingredients table angling for clues about what they’ll be making. A team of teaching chefs preps stations, industrial tables gleaming in the morning light.
There are always two dishes by the end of class. Early arrivals get a taste, paired with the class-favorite lemonade.
Some Saturdays it’s a straightforward breakfast lesson. Others it’s a movie-day menu built around old-school snack-bar classics, or five different ways to break down a mango. Favorites skew sweet, but a chicken-orzo pasta has quietly worked its way to the top of the list.
Whatever’s on the menu, class starts the same way: mise en place — French for “everything in its place.”
It’s the rule Chef Cameron Williams repeats before anyone picks up a knife.
“It’s built into the structure,” Williams says. “We start off with the central concept of mise en place. We take it step by step: how do you approach your recipe, how do you prep it, how do you put it all together. That format never changes, no matter what we’re making.”
Over the next 90 minutes, a room full of kids — some barely tall enough to see over the counter — learn to sauté, plate a dish and describe exactly what they tasted.
They learn that mixing and folding aren’t the same thing, that eventually the plastic knife gets replaced by a real one and that they don’t have to like everything they cook — but they do have to try it.
Williams and his wife, Chef Arielle Jolly-Williams, own the Sandy Springs location of the national franchise Young Chefs Academy, where they are developing more than young cooks.
Their approach is rooted in a simple belief: Give children real skills and real expectations, and they will rise to meet them.
“It honestly comes down to believing the kids are capable,” Williams says. “And then, to some degree, demanding that they rise to it.”
It’s a philosophy the couple is putting into practice while building a business of their own.
That approach applies to every child who walks through the door.
“People don’t realize there’s as many boys as girls,” Jolly-Williams says. “All walks of life. And children are treated with respect.”
Kids come from all over the city, some traveling up to an hour each way.
Young Chefs Academy gives kids real cooking skills
The instruction gets more demanding as students move through Young Chefs Academy’s system, progressing from Kinder Cooks to Junior Chefs and Senior Chefs before reaching Master Chef. Along the way, they are tested on real culinary techniques and expected to use the language that goes with them.
Shay’ne Murphy, whose daughter Regan spent four years in the program, says the vocabulary alone tells you this isn’t a themed birthday party dressed up as education.
“You can’t just say ‘I am mixing the batter,’” Murphy says. “You have to say ‘I am folding the batter,’ or ‘I am whisking the batter.’ All these culinary terms.”
Students also have to explain to the room what they’re doing and why. And no matter their age or what they’re cooking, one rule holds.
“You don’t have to like it,” Jolly-Williams says, “but you do have to try it.”
From pastry and savory to business partners
Williams and Jolly-Williams didn’t set out to run a business together. Jolly-Williams started at Young Chefs Academy of Sandy Springs in 2015, teaching pastry, the specialty she’d trained in at Le Cordon Bleu.
Her path into a kitchen started decades earlier, at home. Her mother, Syreeta Jolly, says baking ran in the family before it was ever a career, and Arielle grew up alongside her, making cookies and cheesecakes for fun. By high school, Arielle was bringing cheesecakes to her mother’s jobs, where co-workers soon started asking to buy them.
Williams came a year later, fresh off an externship at a restaurant in Barcelona, with a culinary diploma from Helms College in Augusta and an MBA from Hampton University.
He still remembers the first time he saw the woman who would become his wife and business partner.
“I remember she was right there, digging in the fridge,” Williams says. “Purple shirt, jeans, and Sperrys.”
“And I remember him coming in,” Jolly-Williams says. “But I was so in the zone working.”
They found a rhythm almost immediately. Jolly-Williams ran pastry; Williams handled savory.
Friendship turned into long conversations after closing on Saturdays, and eventually into something more.
When Jolly-Williams mentioned, half-dreaming, that she might own a Young Chefs Academy of her own someday, Williams didn’t hesitate.
“You want a business partner?” Williams remembers asking.
For Jolly-Williams, the possibility grew slowly before suddenly feeling real.
“It was just a thought, a constant nurturing of a possibility,” she says. “And then it got wheels — like a little bike with flames coming out of it, zoomed down 85. That’s what it felt like. Exciting, unexpected, nervous, but worth it.”
The timeline didn’t go the way they planned. They intended to buy the school in January 2020, but COVID delayed the purchase for roughly two years.
“That was another sit-down, readjust, before we could stand back up,” Williams says.
By the time they finally took ownership, their personal lives had accelerated, too.
“We got married, had a baby, bought a business, in the same year,” Williams says. “Twelve months, all of it.”
Now they’re raising two children inside the same building where they met and fell in love — including their youngest, born while Williams ran the floor solo so Jolly-Williams could recover.
Their infant daughter has a play area in the office but often ends up near the greeting desk, where students spot her bouncing in her carrier, teething on a vegetable or playing with a Sophie toy.
They call out the nickname they’ve given her: Chef Baby.
Arielle’s mother, Syreeta Jolly, has watched them build all of this together, crediting teamwork and patience for their success.
“They just connect,” she says. “They know what the other needs, what the other’s about to do. They support each other.”
Building confidence one meal at a time
For Williams, owning the school means setting the tone for children from the moment they arrive.
“I’m proud of it, because it feels like I can set the tone and expectation. I care about you starting your journey with cooking off on the right track, because I know if it starts off rough, you might not come back.”
That philosophy can be seen in students like Regan Murphy.
Regan started at Young Chefs Academy in sixth grade. About a year later, she was diagnosed with ADHD.
Her mother, Shay’ne Murphy, says the family wanted something that could build Regan’s confidence rather than become one more thing she had to manage.
Cooking became that thing.
“Chef Arielle and Chef Cameron have fostered a love for culinary arts in a way that let her mature and become a leader,” Murphy says. “As she moved through the levels, she was able to help the younger kids coming in. That was a confidence booster too.”
Williams kept raising the expectations.
Eventually, that meant telling Murphy it was time for Regan to move beyond the plastic knives.
“She’s got to take the knife skills class,” Murphy remembers him saying. “I can’t have her using a plastic knife anymore. She’s got to get her real knife.”
He kept pushing until she passed it.
Four years after she first walked into Young Chefs Academy, she finished as a Master Chef, the program’s highest level.
But before her graduation ceremony, Regan had a request: She wanted both Williams and Jolly-Williams there.
She was willing to wait and reschedule until they could be.
Jolly-Williams brought flowers and a card signed by both chefs.
“That extra effort meant a lot,” Murphy says.
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