Print Solutions December 2006
off Hours
Sweet Relief: A Print Industry VP Pursues Passion for Pastry
Emma Zumberge, VP of sales and marketing at Capture Business Cards, and several of her cupcakes.
Warm, vanilla cupcakes swirled with marshmallow-like frosting, topped with salted peanuts dipped in caramel sauce? Or Mexican hot chocolate cupcakes, dashed with cinnamon and cayenne and finished with chocolate-cardamom frosting and rich whipped cream? Emma Zumberge, vice president of PR and marketing at Capture Business Card, can’t pick a favorite.
The good news is, she doesn’t have to. Zumberge, a certified pastry chef and inventor of both cupcake recipes, could whip up a batch of both flavors any time she likes. Although these days she’s more busy with her family’s Edina, Minn.-based manufacturing firm, Zumberge still pursues her passion for cooking and baking.
When Emma was a child, father Gary Zumberge (president of Capture), communicated with his children by cooking: fried egg sandwiches for a bad day, tomato soup for sickness. “My dad’s language has always been food,” she says. “A huge portion of our family time is spent in the kitchen, and as a kid we’d have Sunday brunch at Grandpa’s every week.”
As a teenager, Zumberge started experimenting with food—reading cookbooks, watching cooking shows, and spending time in the kitchen. She was on vacation at an aunt’s house in Vermont when she discovered the prestigious New England Culinary Institute (NECI) and applied for their program her junior year in high school. They invited her to leave school and come immediately.
Zumberge’s parents thought she should attend a traditional four-year school before pursuing cooking, though, and she turned the institute down, as well as Georgetown University and NYU.
So she ended up at Carleton, a small liberal arts college in southern Minnesota not far from Minneapolis. There, she double majored in political science/prelaw and studio art/photojournalism. It was a rewarding, intense experience, she says, but still the kitchen beckoned.
"The only thing I could do to zone out was bake," she says. "I would make copious amounts of muffins, cakes, everything. It got me through a really hard year." After graduation, Zumberge found herself back on vacation at her aunt's house, where the lure of NECI proved irresistible. "They had just started a certification program in bakery, and I knew right away. I had my parents ship my stuff and I just never went home."
The kind of people attracted to culinary school, Zumberge says, have manic, vibrant, workaholic personalities. She should know: a quick glance at her resume reveals that in the ten months she’s worked at Capture Card, she’s moved through a handful of positions from administrative assistant to chief marketing and promotional authority. She’s also done stints at a real estate appraisal firm, on political psychology research projects, as a campus campaign director, and in a number of kitchens.
Twelve-hour days in cooking school prepared Zumberge for the 3 a.m. start of her next assignment, interning at a brand new Minneapolis bakery/restaurant called Cupcake. This was during the cupcake craze, she says, and the single-serving pastries flew out the door. “I was incredibly fortunate,” she says. “Mostly interns do prep work. I was given free range to dictate a menu, and it was our restaurant’s specialty.” Of the 38 different cupcake flavors offered, Zumberge created 14 on her own and stayed on long past her internship. Cupcake was featured in Bon Appetit, Elle, and Saveur.
Interested in exploring kitchen management, Zumberge took a job at a franchise bakery, which was not, unfortunately, all that she’d hoped. “It was a difficult experience, and I realized that there are so many other things I’m interested in. Why not explore them?”
She’s immersed herself in learning about the printing industry, but Zumberge still finds time to cook. “I’m a totally devout foodie,” she laughs. “I make preserves, sauces and marinades. I crave Asian food and I collect salt from all over the world.” She’d like to open a bakery someday, but for now, this Reniassance scholar focuses on cooking up projects for the printing industry.
—Rebecca Trela
