Chef Kimberly Portman provides culinary support throughout our territory in the form of pre-sale demonstrations, product and recipe development, post-sale training, trade show live cooking demonstrations, educational workshops and more. She has assisted several of our chain accounts with product development ranging from the perfect breakfast sandwich in an accelerated cooking oven platform, to yucca chips in a combi-oven. She loves a challenge!
Chef Kim brings over 30 years of industry experience during which she has worked every part of an operation from Front of the House Manager, Dining Room Supervisor, Sous Chef, Bartender, Hostess, to Kitchen Manager. She owned her own catering business and specialty cake shop. Chef Kim has worked on the manufacturer's side of the commercial equipment industry for over 15 years and has developed cookbooks and cooking guidelines for equipment ranging from Fryers to Combi-Ovens. She has been a key player in product research and development for multiple manufacturers.
Chef Kim constantly pursues continued training through ACF cooking and baking classes, as well as those offered through our many cooking equipment lines and maintains Serve Safe certification. Chef Kim enjoys working with operators, as well as Dealers and Consultants seeking to expand their equipment knowledge. She relates easily to chef colleagues and novices alike with her energetic, friendly personality. Her love of cooking and attention to quality and detail shine through all of her interactions.
Chef Kim is always willing to respond to questions from existing customers about their cooking equipment from one of the WB Marketing lines. Our relationship with customers is on-going whether you are contemplating the purchase of one of our lines, or have been successfully operating it for many years. If you would like to contact Chef Kim, please use the request form below.
Our Corporate Chef is available to assist our current customers with their culinary questions, as well as prospective customers with equipment decisions. She can make sure you are getting the most and best use from your equipment! Please fill the form below with any question or to request an appointment for demo.


The 3 main types of carbohydrates are sugars, starches and fibre.
Sugars: Sweet, short-chain carbohydrates found in food. Examples are glucose, fructose, sucrose, lactose etc.
Starches: Long chains of Glucose molecules attached to each other, which gets broken down into glucose post-digestion.
Fibre: It does not provide energy directly, but it does feed the friendly bacteria in the digestive system.
Carbohydrate can be a simple carb or a complex carb based on their chemical makeup. But since most foods have a mixture of both types of carbs it can be tricky to identify what's healthy and what's not.
What makes a carb Good or Bad??
Whole carbs are unprocessed and contain the fibre found naturally in the food, while refined carbs have been processed and the natural fibre stripped off. Refined carbs are also lacking in the essential nutrients, so they are empty calories.
Refined carbohydrate consumption is associated with health problems, on the other hand, consumption of high fibre foods is linked to improved metabolic health and lower risk of disease.
How to make the right choice??
As a general rule carbohydrates that are in their natural fibre-rich form are healthy while those that are being stripped of their fibre are not. If its whole single ingredient, natural food then it's probably a healthy food. With this in mind, we can categorize most carbs as 'good' or 'bad' But these are just general guidelines.
Sugary drinks / carbonated beverages.
Fruit juices even homemade, unsweetened.
White bread and other bakery items.


And that was that, no explanation and no way to improve my supposed fate, this was what those terrible little lines said and that was the way it was to be. It didn't matter that I was happy with one child and that my goal was marriage and partnership, or the agonizing personal growth and soul-searching I did to make myself suitable for partnership, it was all fate and I felt defeated and angry.
It is true that at that point in my life maybe I didn't deserve or wasn't ready for lasting love, and maybe it was more likely that I have another child rather than find a suitable life partner. This is because I needed to understand myself, my needs, and how to communicate in an effective manner to be ready for a lasting relationship. But the belief that a person's life-path is set in stone (whether through cards, stars, lines or other tools of divination) is destructive and dangerous. Each of us, always, have a choice to grow and to challenge ourselves from within a difficult state and to work toward our highest self-actualization. Or we have the choice to repeat patterns that don't get us what we would ultimately find rewarding and satisfying.
In a fate-based reading, it is as if destiny is coming for you! Watch out and hold on, this is happening to you. You are but a victim. In a karmic approach your attitude, emotional memory/state and mentality are fundamental in the way your life plays out. The purpose is to achieve objective perspective on how you are creating the circumstances of your life for positive or desired outcome or not. The power is in your hands.
You may not have the power to change other people and understand whether they may return to be in your life, but you certainly have the power to improve your outlook and become a more loving/lovable person. This approach will lead to a better quality of earned life as opposed to feelings of being out of control or a victim.


High performers have the ability to present with impact, handle difficult people with elegance, bring a problem and a solution and leave everyone else standing in the art of developing customer relations.
Individuals who are not stretched remain average. They never quite nail that pitch, solve their own problems or find better ways to bring value.
But what if you want to be more, do better and contribute brilliantly, but you're just not there yet? We work extensively with individuals like you. We use our own experience and skill, together with our years of observing talented people. We know what makes the difference between good and great and armed with that knowledge, we can help you get there.
Workshops covering a range of subjects – never standard, always designed freshly for you. We can also cover all of these in one to one sessions.
Insulate yourself from stress in the long term and in the short term use techniques to lessen its impact.
Higher productivity as time is saved because everyone is working towards the same end point.
More gets done and not just to keep things ticking over, you'll make progress.
Higher performance through people being open to learning and gaining valuable new experiences as they go.


Front-door and back-door is a phrase I came across when reading a book about the knowledge era (The Knowledge Society by Marc Luyckx Ghisi). Front-door/back-door is a term that describes a characteristic of the way many scientists, engineers and technologists think. Basically it means that choice is reduced to two options: either we continue forward along the path we have previously followed, making so-called progress (i.e. we go out of the front-door), or we turn back, and resort to some earlier less sophisticated existence (i.e. we go out of the back-door). No thoughts here of walking different paths, just one path to follow, regardless of the consequences. This is social Darwinism at work, and most scientific, engineering and technology types are social Darwinists, and a frightening lot they can be. Truly mad, yet many would dare to say so – something of a modern day heresy to do so. And what one can say about people caught up in dogma, is that for them, heretics are dangerous people, for they sow the seeds of doubt, and raise questions for which the dogma has no convincing answers.
Having worked with scientists, engineers and technologists for most of my professional life, I have encountered this simplistic front-door/back-door belief many, many times, so much so that it has become a recurring theme in my writing (see for example my novel Moments in Time which is due to be published in early 2014).
Back in 2012 I attended a lecture (organised by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers) entitled "Is the World Running out of Energy?" Of course, this is not so, we are just using too much energy, and of the wrong kind (e.g. fossil fuels). At the end of the lecture, making my way out of the room, I stopped and told the lecturer that the title of her lecture was the wrong question to ask, and what we should be asking is: "Are we using energy that we do not need to use?" The reply, was of course, that this is true, as we are indeed ridiculously inefficient when it comes to energy use. My reply was that this was not my point. What I wanted to communicate to her, was that the way society is structured, organised, and operates creates demands for consumption that can be avoided and which are also unsustainable, which was the underlying reason for my question. What we need to do is to change structure, organisation and modes of operation.
The problem with not thinking is that your awareness of this circumstance is virtually non-existent. So, the problem gets ignored; which is why I write. Is anyone taking note, or am I Cassandra?
We have as a civilisation reached a point where we need to begin to walk a different path, to reinvent some of the foundational aspects of our societies: religion, science, technology, engineering, free market capitalism, and so forth. Yet you will not find consideration of such matters among the bulk of people who, one can say, are the practitioners in these various domains. What you will find however are a lot of collective delusions (like for example the thought leadership claims of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and that other engineering institution, the Institution of Engineering and Technology). This is what happens when people become caught up in ideologies, start to believe their own propaganda, engage in hubris, and live the story of the emperor's new clothes.
This is why I wrote my books Encounter with a Wise Man, A Tale of Two Deserts, and Moments in Time, which highlight the ideological tendencies, delusions, and madness that are creating a world that no sane person would want to be a part of. It is also why I urge people to stand-up now and take peaceful action to bring this madness to an end. We have the means – your vote, your wallet and your lifestyle choices. And people should act soon, as time left to avoid the inevitable consequences of our present path grows short.
There are choices, and also far better worlds, which, we as individuals have the power to make happen. And if you think this is about socialism then you are indeed a lost soul, caught-up in a world that long ago ceased to be relevant. This, one can also say, is the story of progress; somehow finding a way of handling all those people that for reasons of fear, lack of vision and imagination, ideology, and vested interest, will try to stop an evolution towards this better world. And about how to do this, I have said a few words in my book, A Tale of Two Deserts, and I will say much more in due course in future blogs. Self evidently, one cannot build a better world by resorting to the traditional methods for dealing with opposition used in the world one is trying to replace.
Fracking – It's that Prometheus Syndrome Again!


Whenever advisors talk about a powerful new generation of investors, the assumption is they're referring to millennials. In fact, women are the "new" investors that will have the greatest impact on financial wealth in Canada in the near term.
Over the next decade, a massive amount of wealth is going to be managed by women of all ages. By 2026, women will control almost 50% of all financial wealth in Canada. Currently, Canadian women control $2.2 trillion of assets. By 2028 that will almost double to $4 trillion – and with real estate included it could be far greater, according to a recent CIBC Economics report, The Changing Landscape of Women's Wealth.
That's why it's so important for advisors to connect with this powerful new group of women clients. Not only will women need to manage the money they earn themselves, they'll ultimately benefit more than men from the massive transfer of wealth on the horizon. They typically inherit money at least twice in their lifetimes … from their parents, and through divorce or being widowed.
Barbara Stewart, an expert on the issue of women and finance, wrote about daughters as the rising wealth influencers. She pointed out that women are more likely to be the caregivers to elderly parents than sons. Let's call this daughter care. Women provide nearly 2/3 of the care for their aging parents and even their in-laws – in fact, they are 28% more likely to care for a parent than sons.
Elder care includes elderly parents or in-laws handing over investment responsibility to someone else, usually daughters. And, thanks to wealth transfer and people living longer lives, investing will become a larger and larger part of daughter care.
So we're not just witnessing a transfer of vast amounts of wealth to women, but also a transfer of crucial authority and influence over wealth. For advisors looking to grow their practice (and retain valuable clients), women are the demographic with the greatest potential in the immediate future.
As a result of the continuing wealth transfer and the surge in daughter care, we will see a shift from a male-centric to a female-centric investing environment. As an advisor, you not only want to build relationships with your women clients, but also keep your clients' daughters on your radar.
In addition, approximately 80% of an advisor's existing clients in managed relationships are couples. Often, one person in the couple relationship will take the lead in client meetings. It's important as an advisor to endeavor to include both partners in your conversations, particularly the women.
You want to build relationships with these women clients as one day they may be the ones controlling the assets and making the decisions. You want to increase the likelihood that they'll stick with you if anything happens to their partner.
Women, unlike men, aren't interested in amassing money for its own sake … they're interested in what the money is for, what difference it will make, and what joy it will bring to others.
Women see money as a means to an end. Focus less on the details of the investment and more on the impact to them.
Women prefer a collaborative approach. Encourage them to speak up and talk about what matters to them about money. Acknowledge their opinions and engage them in the conversation instead of simply disseminating information.
Make sure to tie the investment information to their real-life goals and aspirations. Focus on how earnings (or losses) will affect their ability to achieve what's important to them in life.
Advisors who want to to benefit from the impending wealth shift to women are wise to incorporate a more female-centric approach into their practices now. Look to build stronger relationships with your women clients by focusing on their goals and talking to what matters to them. And don't forget about their daughters!