The Chopping Block built a booking experience customers trust

About The Chopping Block

For almost three decades, The Chopping Block has helped home cooks feel more confident through hands-on cooking classes, Culinary Boot Camps, wine and cocktail experiences, kids' programs, private events, and more.

With so many kinds of classes on offer, the main challenge is helping customers find the right one. A parent looking for a class for their teen wants something different from an experienced cook after a technique-heavy boot camp. We spoke with Andrea Miller, Marketing Manager for The Chopping Block, about her experience.

Adults aren't one big group. Some are total beginners. Some love global cuisine. Some only want grilling classes. Others are looking for healthy or gluten-free options.

Rethinking how customers find classes

That challenge became particularly important in 2025, when The Chopping Block redesigned its ten-year-old website.

The team wanted to make it easier for customers to get around a big, always-changing class calendar. Occasion's custom calendars became a big part of that.

Instead of one master calendar, The Chopping Block set up separate calendars for groups like Level One Foundations, Level Two Skill Boosters, Global Flavors, Healthy & Special Diets, Grilling, Kids/Teens/Family, and Wine & Cocktails.

If you put every class on one giant calendar, students have to scroll, filter, and hope they stumble onto what they want. With Occasion, we can create separate calendars that guide each type of student directly to the classes that fit them.

Turning a booking calendar into a discovery tool

The Chopping Block also built a system of hashtags, so each class can show up in more than one group. When a class gets the right keywords, Occasion puts it on the matching calendars across the website on its own.

Instead of searching, they're choosing. And that tiny shift leads to more confidence and more bookings.

After the new site launched, The Chopping Block saw customers find their way around the classes more easily, especially beginners who needed a clear place to start.

Keeping The Chopping Block brand front and center

The Chopping Block also wanted browsing and booking to feel like one smooth experience.

Occasion lets the team set their own colors, fonts, logos, and more, and a custom domain keeps thechoppingblock.com in the booking link. So, customers go from browsing classes to booking without ever being handed off to a third-party site.

We've put a lot of work into building a brand that our customers know and trust. The booking experience should reinforce that. We don't want someone clicking on a class and suddenly wondering why they're on another company's website.

Easy for both employees and customers

The Chopping Block has chefs, instructors, customer service staff, and managers who all use the schedule in different ways. Occasion lets each of them find what they need without much tech know-how.

Its mobile-friendly checkout also lets customers go from spotting a class in an email, on social media, on Google, or on the website to signing up right on their phone.

The best technology is the technology people don't really have to think about. Our staff can use Occasion easily, our customers can use it easily, and that lets the platform do its job without getting in the way.

A platform that keeps getting better

As a longtime Occasion partner, The Chopping Block regularly gets new features and chances to beta test them.

There are constantly new features being released. I love that Occasion is always looking at what experience-based businesses actually need next rather than treating the platform as a finished product.

The Chopping Block, for example, beta tested Occasion's loyalty tools, built to reward repeat customers and bring them back. For a cooking school where customers might move from Knife Skills to cuisine classes and advanced programs, bringing people back again and again is essential.

Support that feels like a partnership

Occasion's customer support has also been a big part of the relationship, especially during the website redesign and setting up the custom calendars.

The Occasion team has always been incredibly responsive. Whether we have a question, want to try something new, or are figuring out how to make an idea work, there's a real person there who understands our business and wants to help.

The result: technology that feels like part of the brand

For The Chopping Block, what Occasion really does is give customers the smoothest possible way to book.

Customers see The Chopping Block branding, find classes that match their interests, and book from their phones, while employees have the tools to manage it all behind the scenes.

Our customers shouldn't have to think about our booking software. They should be thinking about which class they want to take. Occasion lets us create that kind of experience while still giving our team the tools and flexibility we need behind the scenes.