ATLANTA – Otis Weary Jr. appeared on season 3 of OWN’s “Put a Ring on It”. He & his fiancé Charlana Brown welcomed their new baby boy the end of June. After coming off the show he is now adjusting to being a new Father and balancing family life and his company Velvet Hospitality Group, LLC.
Celebrity Executive Chef and culinary artist Otis Weary Jr. is the principal of Velvet Hospitality Group, located in Atlanta, Miami, Los Angeles, New York City, and Houston. Although his professional training began at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts, ranking as one of the finest hospitality management, culinary arts, and gastronomy institutions in the world, Weary says his inspiration for cooking began at a young age.
Born in Atlanta in a Christian household, Weary was heavily influenced by his Louisiana-born father and his mother who hails from Atlanta. He began showing interest in cooking at age 5 while spending summers with his paternal grandmother renowned for her home cooking. As Weary’s skills grew, he started catering for various church functions.
“A church member worked in admissions at Le Cordon Bleu and was impressed with my cooking,” he said. “She thought I had been trained professionally. Later, she then introduced me to the school of culinary arts. I had no idea that such a school even existed in Atlanta.”
Weary added he fell in love right away when he saw the test kitchens and laboratories. After completing an externship and a few years at Walt Disney World in Orlando, he later worked for Houston’s, Arizona’s, The Pecan, The Avila Country Club, Sodexho Catering, among other small and large restaurant groups.
Armed with the entrepreneurial spirit, Weary started a trucking company in order to make enough money to fund his cooking passion. However, the sports enthusiast realized the importance of healthy meals and began focusing on offering consumers an alternative.
“Healthy meal prep services are now at the top of my culinary chart because our culture is now so much more conscious of our health and fitness lifestyles,” Weary noted. “We have seen the effects of unhealthy diets for years now, and many of us have suffered loss of family and loved ones due to our dietary choices.”
Weary advises that if you seek weight loss, you would be to seek a strict Vegan or vegetarian diet with little to no carbohydrates.
“The excess fat weight will naturally fall off. If you have a very active lifestyle, I would recommend adding carbs to your diet. Consume carbs only in the morning up to no more than eight hours after you wake up from bed.”
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