Sweet science of pie coming to Myrtle Beach

Students at Horry Georgetown Technical College’s International Culinary Institute of Myrtle Beach may soon have the option to major in baking and pastry arts.

The area commission voted Tuesday to offer the associate degree in applied science, which Senior Vice President Marilyn Fore hopes will be available in the fall of 2017 pending approval from the state.

The institute currently offers certificates for baking and pastry arts, but not a full two-year degree.

“We brought Geoff (Blount) down here to build the best program in the region, and he’s got the background and the credentials to do it,” said Joseph Bonaparte, executive director at the culinary institute.

Blount is an award-winning pastry chef and educator who heads the institute’s baking and pastry arts program.

“It’s great that we have a certificate, but people want a little bit more,” Blount said. “When they go to a lender to open up a business, that degree holds a lot more weight than a certificate does if they’re looking for a $150,000 loan to open up a facility.”

An employment-needs assessment conducted by the school showed over 300 jobs in the baking and pastry industry over the next three years in Horry and Georgetown counties.

Some of those jobs are entrepreneurial, and Blount said one of the biggest features of the program is a student-run bakery called Layers. The bakery will be located in the new culinary institute building, which features three rooms devoted to baking and pastry arts, including one room devoted to chocolate.

“Close to half of this project is really baking and pastry stuff,” Bonaparte said of the new building.

The bakery will be open to the public, and will give students the opportunity to learn how to manage a business, Blount said.

“Layers bakery will allow them to practice that at the school level and not go out and open up a $200,000 facility and two months into it, go ‘this didn’t work,’” he said. “Now you can bake, decorate a cake, train someone else to do it and more importantly, understand how to run that business. I think that’s a huge part of the associate degree that adds that soft skill that everyone is looking for.”

This story was originally published August 11, 2016 at 3:03 PM with the headline "Sweet science of pie coming to Myrtle Beach."