Second Acts: A retiree’s unlikely culinary journey

Michael Olert retired as a salesman for Procter & Gamble and headed to culinary school at Johnson & Wales. In the last 6 years, he's sold 70,000 crab cakes to hungry customers.

Editor’s note: Are you curious about people who have taken bold steps to redefine their lives? This week, we’re introducing you to inspiring journeys of individuals who have embraced change, pivoted careers, and pursued new passions — even later in life.

He went from sales to sizzle to help build Charlotte's Baltimore Crab Cake Co. Here’s what he learned.

by Amber Veverka

Sometimes you launch a new career because you get fired. Sometimes you launch a new career because you get bored. And sometimes, you do it because your little brother has a really cool idea.

Charlotte resident Michael Olert was in his early 60s when his brother and a friend started the Baltimore Crab Cake Co. and Olert signed on to run the company’s Charlotte food truck.

Olert, who turns 69 this spring, retired in 2015 from a 36-year career in sales for Procter & Gamble. He went on to earn a culinary degree from Johnson & Wales University and then studied at the Alain Ducasse Culinary School in Paris. None of that was a path aimed toward a bright red truck that drives around Charlotte, selling what Olert unabashedly claims are the only decent crab cakes in town.

“I always cooked — always loved to cook,” said Olert. “I never had an interest in having a restaurant.” 

After he went to Johnson & Wales, that’s what everybody asked him: Are you going to be a chef? “Absolutely not,” Olert would say. At the most, he imagined cooking some private dinner parties as a hobby.

But then Olert’s brother Stephen called him one day with an idea: Let’s make the kind of crab cakes we love and sell them out of a truck.

Michael Olert helped launch and run the Baltimore Crab Cake Co. food truck in Charlotte in his 60s. (Photo courtesy of Michael Olert)

Stephen had built and sold a very successful flooring business and was casting about for his own next career. Olert admired his brother’s track record and loved the crab cake idea. They and their friend Dan Evensen forged big dreams: A franchiseable model. Trucks in multiple cities. Crab cakes shipped by mail. Deals with grocery stores.

“We took about a year to figure out the name, concept, recipes, to design the website and design the food truck,” Olert said. 

They quickly saw that making their food truck business sizzle would take extreme attention to detail. In other words: A whole lot of stainless steel. And no French fries.