amanda hesser is so into a racket sport i'd never heard of and i’m so into her building a 9-figure food brand
So Into That
Caro Chambers
5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 December 2023
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Amanda Hesser founded one of my favorite food and lifestyle brands, Food52. It’s one of my go-to sources for recipe and gift inspiration… and what’s crazy is that building that hugely successful company is just a small part of Amanda’s life story.
She was also a food writer and editor at the New York Times for many years, and she’s written cookbooks and a memoir called Cooking for Mr. Latte which I just love.
Today Amanda and I talk about what she’s into right now (padel, anyone?), what she’s out on (do sweatshirts really need to be cropped above the belly button?), and the time she may or may not have taken her kids on a prison tour on one of their birthdays.
We also get into:
* The recent habits that have been improving both our day-to-day lives (mine is a lot more superficial)
* Amanda’s ideal sneaker
* How we dress when working from home
* Her brilliantly simple go-to meal when she doesn’t feel like cooking
Links:
* Food52
* Adidas Women’s Ultraboost shoes
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Transcript
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| 0:18.6 | Hello everyone I hope you are having a fabulous Wednesday. I just spent the most lovely afternoon chatting with Amanda Hesse who is one of the co-founders of Food 52, a brand that I love. I use for gifting all the time, I use for recipe inspiration, and now I'm just inspired because I want to create the next food 52. |
| 0:29.7 | If you don't know who Amanda is she has had such an insanely action-packed career in the food space. |
| 0:35.4 | She was a writer and a food editor at the New York Times for many, many years. |
| 0:41.3 | She's written best-selling cookbooks, many two of which are on these shelves right behind me. |
| 0:46.3 | And she's also written, by the way, a fiction book, which I really wish we could have talked more about, but I had so many other things to ask her about but she |
| 0:55.4 | wrote a book called Cooking for Mr. Lautte that is truly one of the most beautifully |
| 0:59.7 | written and just like loveliest quick read but in a good way you just like want to learn |
| 1:06.3 | more about this relationship and the way it's unfolding and there's all this |
| 1:10.0 | like gorgeous food imagery it's a story it's the story of how she and her |
| 1:13.6 | husband started dating and fell in love living in New York City and it has food |
| 1:21.1 | imagery woven into it in the most beautiful way. |
| 1:24.0 | There's like tons of recipes throughout the pages. |
| 1:27.0 | Anytime she cooks for him, she then shares the recipe. |
| 1:30.6 | It's just fabulous. |
| 1:32.0 | It's such a great read and I have tried to find it online many times to send it to friends yada yada |
| 1:36.0 | And I guess it's out of print it's very hard to find but I will try to find a link and link to it in the show notes |
| 1:41.8 | Anyway, that's like it's shocking because it's this wonderful book and it's just this like absolutely tiny miniscule part of her career. We don't even talk about it in this episode. All of that was just the beginning though, all of her writing. She then went on to found Food 52, a food media, and e-commerce business that when a private equity invested 83 million dollars into it in 2019 and became majority stakeholders, |
| 2:11.0 | it was valued at $100 million. It is now reported to be much greater |
| 2:16.1 | than that. You'll also hear about the very simple practice that is making my days |
| 2:21.0 | better and just like more enjoyable and just kind of |
| 2:27.1 | making me feel more confident and you'll hear the life philosophy that Amanda |
| 2:30.9 | learned from a friend and now uses to put her life and her priorities |
... |
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