Lauren Bolan
Lauren Bolan is a certified pastry chef and the café manager at Life Time Fitness in Deerfield, Ohio, where she oversees all aspects of café operations. From creating prep lists and managing customer service to handling administrative tasks such as ordering, tracking labor, and monitoring revenue, Lauren ensures that her café runs smoothly and efficiently. What she loves most is engaging directly with members—making smoothies and coffee, remembering their favorite orders, and building genuine connections, which has earned her strong appreciation from the Life Time community.
Lauren’s journey in the food industry began long before her formal education, but in 2015 she returned to school at Cincinnati State to earn her Associate’s degree in Baking and Pastry Arts. Her path to this career was non-traditional: she initially studied musical theater at Arizona State for two years before pausing to focus on her family. Cincinnati State prepared her thoroughly for the professional culinary world, teaching her not only technical pastry skills but also critical business concepts such as profit and loss, financial accounting, menu creation, and labor and cost-of-goods management. These lessons have been foundational as she manages her café and develops her leadership skills.
Looking forward, Lauren views her current role as a stepping stone toward her ultimate dream of owning and operating her own café and bakery. Driven by a lifelong passion for baking and a commitment to her faith and family, she aspires to create a welcoming space where she can share her pastry skills, delight customers, and run a thriving, community-focused business. With her extensive hands-on experience, business knowledge, and dedication to excellence, Lauren is building the foundation to turn her vision into reality.
• Arizona State University - Musical Theater (2 years)
• Cincinnati State - AAS in Baking & Pastry Arts
What do you attribute your success to?
Honestly, part of it is I grew up in poverty, and I have a daughter who just turned 18 and is about to graduate. Most of it has been that I want to be able to provide my daughter with a better life than I had. But also, if I stop learning, then I stop growing. As long as I continue to learn, I continue to grow. There's nothing I'm not willing to learn in this industry, or another one. I work in a business here where it's a lot of different departments, and anytime I have questions, I ask them because I want to learn more.
What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I’ve ever received is that I can’t do it all by myself. I need to trust my team and delegate responsibilities, even when I feel compelled to handle everything on my own. Recognizing that leadership isn’t about doing everything myself, but about empowering others to contribute, has been essential to both my effectiveness and the success of our team.
What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Our industry is actually getting taken over by women a lot more. It's really lovely to see that the managers of restaurants and managers of kitchens are women, but it is still sometimes hard to be taken seriously, because it's mostly a man's profession, still. My advice would be don't show fear. And you can do anything you set your mind to.
What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
One of the biggest challenges I have right now is just with how expensive everything is. Food is expensive. Coffee is expensive. Everything that we purchase is expensive, and our customer is kind of shying away when prices go up, because their bills have gone up. Everybody's bills have gone up across the board. Getting those people to still walk through the door is my biggest challenge right now - to see growth where we are in our cafe, and to keep going in the right direction, even though things are being a little tougher economy-wise.
What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Being kind. In school, a lot of chefs would look at me and be like, you say please and thank you? I say, absolutely. Anytime I ask somebody to do something for me, I say please. And then when they're done, I say thank you. Because I feel like that just goes - that little bit of kindness goes a little further, and it makes people feel like you're not barking at them. In a culinary kitchen, sometimes you'll just get barked at by culinary chefs, and I never really liked the way that felt, so I don't want my staff to feel that way when I talk to them. Going that little bit beyond kindness with them, and even with the members. It's always easier to be kind. It takes way more energy to be mean. I take that over into my personal life.