How I Built This with Guy Raz - Food52: Amanda Hesser

Episode Date: April 5, 2021

In the early 1990s, as Amanda Hesser's college friends were interviewing for their first cubicle jobs, she chose a different path: one that led straight into the kitchens of Europe, where she cooked traditional recipes and learned the rhythm of the seasons from a crusty French gardener. By 24, she had landed a book deal and one of the most coveted jobs in journalism: writing about food for the New York Times. But over time she grew restless, and in 2008, gave up that dream job—and the stability that went with it—to become an entrepreneur. When her first business fizzled out, Amanda took a financial risk by pivoting again to launch a new company: Food52. Part food blog, part e-commerce site for all things kitchen and home, Food52 is now valued at roughly $100 million and achieved profitability for the first time in 2020—during the pandemic.How I Built This Summit - information and tickets at:http://summit.npr.orgSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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It had tall windows, beautiful old details, and plenty of space for all of us. And being in that home on Airbnb, right in the middle of Vienna, walking distance from so much of the city, made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.com slash host. Did you guys get to the point where you were almost out of cash? Yeah. You know, that was tough. Yeah. We had a moment at Roberta's Pizzeria.

I love Roberta's. Yeah, we cried over pizza. and, but really good pizza. And, you know, we needed to have a conversation of like, where is our breaking point? Because it felt like we just, it wasn't that we had no traction. We definitely had people interested, but we just couldn't get that lead. And then I actually, like, often with things that are bad memories, I sort of shove them into a drawer somewhere in my brain. Sure.

And I don't know, maybe it was a good pizza that we were just like, yes, we're going to keep going. From NPR, it's how I built this. a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz and on the show today, how Amanda Hesser walked away from one of the most coveted jobs in journalism to build a digital media company for recipes and kitchen gear called Food 52. Some of my favorite people to hang out with are reporters.

They generally tend to be fun and interesting and a little snarky, but usually with the best intentions. And because I used to be one myself, I understand where they're coming from. Reporters actually have a lot of the same skills and qualities required to become a great entrepreneur. They're curious, they know how to become experts pretty fast, they know how to ask questions,

how to get around insurmountable obstacles, how to spot an opportunity. And some of them are pretty big risk takers. They stand in waste-deep water, in the middle of hurricanes and jump into the middle of war zones. But for all the entrepreneurial zeal embedded in the profession, there is one thing that many journalists share that is not conducive to starting a business. Reporters are deeply skeptical people. They have to be.

They're trained to doubt and debate everything they're told. Unlike many of the founders I've met, the very best reporters are generally not. not fake it till you make it type of people. They're meticulous about getting the facts straight and making sure they're not getting spun by a source. And years and years of doing that, well, it can make you kind of cynical, suspicious, even a bit jaded, none of which is helpful if suddenly you decide you want to start a business. So when a story of a former journalist-turned entrepreneur crosses my desk, I get excited because it's a reminder that it takes a lot of courage to

leave a prestigious job in a newsroom. But that is essentially what Amanda Hesser did. For a little over 10 years, Amanda had one of the most coveted jobs in journalism. She was a food critic and writer at the New York Times, testing recipes, writing reviews, and compiling cookbooks. It's the kind of job a lot of people would have stayed at forever. But around 2009, Amanda decided to take a big risk and start her own venture, a food blog called Food 52. With a limited amount of money and using her own apartment as a test kitchen, Amanda and her co-founder, Merrill Stubbs, gradually and sometimes painfully built Food 52 into a digital media company, which today reaches about 25 million users a month. And along the way, Amanda sort of combined the best of two careers, the relentless drive and intensity of a New York Times reporter and the improvisational instincts of an entrepreneur.

Instincts she actually learned from her dad. In the 1970s, when Amanda was a kid, her dad owned a Chevy dealership in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Her parents took out a massive loan to buy that dealership, and Amanda remembers her dad as a smart and smart and. scrappy businessman. One of my memories around that is he created something called the Jello Jump, and it involved filling a garbage dumpster, a clean garbage dumpster, with orange jello, and putting a bunch of numbered keys in the bottom of the dumpster. And so every number correlated with a prize, and one of the prizes was a car.

And so in order to get your key, you had to jump into the Jello dumpster. And, you know, he just instinctively knew that this was funny and also would energize people. And the local news media covered it. And lots of people came. And it was like, you know, a hot summer day. And it's a perfect day for jumping in a dumpster of Jello. But, yeah, he was really good at getting attention. Yeah, getting attention.

And there was definitely a sense in the household of, you know, I felt like we felt as a family kind of like the pressures of what it was like to build a business. And it wasn't easy. You know, there was the oil crisis, so gas prices were up and people weren't buying cars. But there was also, you know, a few years after my parents bought this dealership, it went up in flames. And the whole building burnt to the ground in the middle of the night. And it was just a giant fire because, you know, when, when. a building filled with cars that are filled with gasoline catches fire. It's just,

it's a pretty big disaster. So he, you know, they lost most of everything. They had some cars and a lot across the street that hadn't been damaged. And, you know, it was a very sort of defining moment for, I think, me as a child in that, you know, my, I think a lot of people could really feel quite defeated. And, you know, my memory is that, you know, my dad did. You know, my memory is that, you know, my dad didn't pause for a moment. He, you know, immediately rented a trailer so that he could have a temporary office and, you know, continued selling the cars that weren't burned. Wow. What were you like as a teenager?

Were you a good student? Were you well-behaved? Like, to tell me what you remember about what you were like. So I was a good student. And I, you know, I was a very, like, you know, involved. in a lot of school activities. I played basketball. I, you know, ran track. I played tennis. I was very active. But I, you know, I think that a couple of things, like, heavily influenced, certainly my teenage years. When I was 11, you know, my dad, he had a massive heart attack.

And from, from, you know, he survived this heart attack, but it severely diminished his health. And it was a pretty intense period of my life. And I think that, you know, at that age, I was, I just had a very different feeling about my parents than most teenagers. You know, I think, you know, I had a real appreciation for the fact that they were alive. And it was very clear that to me that, like, you know, life was precious. And this was, we were lucky. Yeah. Wow. How did you, how did you kind of discover your interest in food? But how did that, how did that start? You know, it's always, been there, I think it took me a while to realize that. It took me leaving home to realize that. You know, even though I come from a family with very kind of like work, like I would say, like a very

kind of like working class, like values, the food was always a really important part of our family life and kind of everyone cooked or contributed in some way. You know, I think about like, you know, when we would go to my grandparents in Maryland, we would go crabbing, and then we would cook the crabs, and we would eat them with tomatoes that they grew in their garden. And we never had a store bought cake. It was always made from scratch. My mom, you know, she would even bake her own bread, and, you know, she always made jam in the summer. And like, when my mother would go to the grocery store, I'm very, you know, list oriented. Like, I want to get things done. So I would always be like, okay, mom, what's the list? Let's split it up. And she said, well, you know,

I have a couple of things on the list, but I just want to see what looks good. She didn't go in saying, like, we're going to have steak. She would go in and look at what she deemed, you know, good quality and then decide on what we were going to have from there. And so I think there was a lot of influence that was built in to my upbringing. And, you know, and it was even something that I think was a little weird back then. Like, I remember, you know, one of my best friends coming over and her crying at our dinner table because my mom was serving asparagus. And, you know, that's not an unusual vegetable now, but certainly in, you know, in Pennsylvania in the 70s, it was nobody was really eating asparagus.

I know, Amanda, that you went to college at Bentley University near Boston to study finance. But I guess when you graduated, you decided that you wanted to go into food, into the food world and maybe become a chef. Was that your ambition initially? So I just want to back up a minute because between my junior and senior years, my dad died. And that was a big, obviously, you know, it was a devastating moment. And, you know, put me, you know, in a place where I felt, you know, quite lost. But I also, looking back, I realized that it was, it was this moment of like, liberal. from, like, I felt so lost that I felt like I did, I really didn't have to conform to

anybody's expectation about what I should or shouldn't do, um, after college. In large part because of his death, because. Yeah. Like, I was so unhappy and, um, and, and, you know, really wrecked by it that I just, in, in a, you know, odd way, it, it, it freed me up because I just wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't driven to please anyone, you know. I was really, I think I understood that I had to find my way and that I had to find my way to happiness, even if it meant following an unconventional path. You know, and I remember a bunch of my college friends were getting ready to, like, do interviews, and they were all buying kind of work clothes. And I just thought, oh, that's the last thing I

want to do right now. And it was just one of the many signals to me that I needed to push myself to to find what interested me. So what'd you do? I wrote letters. I wrote to my favorite chef in Boston, Jody Adams, who at the time ran a restaurant called Michaela's. And I just said, like, I'm really interested in working. I'll work for free.

I just want to learn. And so, you know, she hired me and I was like a kitchen runner, basically. You know, I got ingredients for the line cooks. I helped plate desserts, I strained stock, I did whatever. I was just thrilled to be there. I also worked at a bread bakery, and I, it was a, like, three women, and I was one of them, and we would, you know, get the ovens heated, we would mix the bread, shape it, bake it, and then I would drive a truck around Boston in the middle of the night.

You're like in the early hours, I would say, delivering the bread to hotels and restaurants. And so, and then also I took. this food history course at Radcliffe. And I was so in over my head, but what was fascinating about it and so lucky was that in my class, where I was Corby Commer, who's a longtime food writer and just editor and writer at the Atlantic. Also another student was Cheryl Julian, who is the food editor at the Boston Globe. And, you know, I was just like this kid in the class. And they took me under their wing and kind of showed me the way. And it was really the first time that I saw that, oh, food writing is this is a, is actually a job. And I guess in the meantime, you were noticing

that, you know, like a lot of young American cooks were going over to Europe and and doing these like short training stints at restaurants there. And I guess you, you, you know, decided that that sounded kind of interesting? Yes, I, you know, it was an alternative way to really, you know, to become a chef, but also to immerse yourself in a cuisine. And I spent my spring break actually traveling. I went to Europe and I knocked on doors because, you know, not to age myself, but at this point, there was no email.

And, you know, the only way, I mean, I wrote letters to these restaurants and bakeries and said, hi, you know, like, I really want to come work for you. And either I got a response or I didn't. And so I would show it up on the doorstep to say like, hey, you know, I was the one that wrote that letter and I really do want to come. So from what I have read, you managed to get, find a scholarship of a grant to enable you to spend a year overseas like apprenticing in a bunch of different kitchens. And where was your first stop? My first stop was in Germany in a small town in the black forest called Beingarten. and I worked in a bread bakery there.

And I worked there for a few months, and it was a very old school bakery in the sense that in the front, the people who sold the bread were all women who wore these kind of like nice dresses. And everyone who worked in the bread bakery was a man. And so I lived above the bakery in the bakery owners. He had a spare apartment up there that was filled with. his taxidermy prizes from his trips to Africa.

And so, yeah, and so I would sleep there with these kind of giant animal shadows looming. And when the head baker would come in and turn on the oven, the whole building vibrated. And that was my wake-up call to get downstairs. And, you know, it was, I would say it was not the most pleasant place to work. But it was really, you know, I learned how to make. you know, pretzels and all sorts of different grain breads. And also, it was such a weird place. You know, the owner had a very fierce temper. And if things didn't go the way he wanted them, he would often come in shouting. And sometimes he would hit people over the head with a loaf of bread.

And, you know, it was, it was, these are the sort of beginnings where I feel like I was, the sort of writer part of my soul was starting to come alive. And, I mean, you must have been, I mean, you know, I'm imagining you as a young woman college graduate, recent college graduate, going to these places and wanting to learn cooking, but probably also pretty isolating. Yes. I, you know, this, again, this was a time that was not that long after, you know, my dad had died. And I, I was doing this thing that no one I knew was doing. And because communication was so different then, the only way that I could really stay in touch with my friends and family was to write them letters. And so that's what I did. And it awakened this part of me that I didn't even know existed and that I think I would say I actively resisted previously. I really never liked writing.

I never really liked my English courses or I never valued them. And suddenly I was just writing all of the time and really enjoying. it and also getting interesting like sort of positive feedback from it. And again, it was just a seed that was planted, but I wasn't really intent on doing something about it. It just happened to be something that I was really like a muscle that I was forced to develop. I was very lonely and I could, this was my, my sort of lifeline to people who I cared about. All right.

So you're kind of bouncing around Europe at this time, I guess, like working in restaurants. and some bakeries. And I guess eventually you land in France at the cooking school, La Verren, the famous cooking school there. And I know you kind of went there as part of like a work study program where you sort of worked for the owner of the school and then cooked for a family. This is Anne Willen, right? Anne Willen, yes. And tell me about what that was. I mean, did you like did you live in her house or would you show up every day or what?

Yes, I, well, she had a giant chateau in Burgundy that it was sort of wonderful in that it wasn't that fancy. It was actually kind of falling apart, but, but this very beautiful old 17th century chateau that she lived in and that the cooking school was also in. And so, yeah, anyone who worked there also lived there. And I stayed there for two or three years. I had only intended to stay for kind of a few months, but then she worked, she was working on a new cookbook. And so I decided to stay on and help her with that. And it was during the course of that project that I started to really see how food writing worked. I felt like my attraction and interest in it started intensifying.

But more importantly, I felt like I was getting to a point where I felt like I had knowledge to share, And I had stories to share. And I had one in particular that I really wanted to tell, which was her gardener, Monsieur Melbert, who also lived on the property. He grew many of the vegetables and fruits that we used in the kitchen. Oh, wow. And it was like a walled garden, right? It was a walled garden.

And had been there actually, I think, even longer than the chateau. It had, you know, there was a found, like the foundation of an old ice house. house, it just like was this whole place was like this museum of French life from hundreds of years ago. And he also seemed like this relic of the past. You know, he rolled his own cigarettes. He planted according to the moons. He was this very kind of cranky, grumbly gardener who had this tiny little dog named Puss who would follow him around. And I just loved him. I just thought, well, this is the France that I've been looking for. These are the people who, like, I want to get to know. But at the same time, I was also really cognizant of the fact that even though I grew up with the,

you know, upbringing I had where, you know, my mom cooked seasonally, we, you know, we ate a huge variety of food and everything was homemade, you know, made from scratch. I didn't understand fully the cycle of the seasons and, like, how it influenced, like, what you, you know, if you cooked seasonally, like, genuinely seasonally, like what that really would look like. And so my idea was to write about getting to know. Basically, my idea was first just a project. You know, I asked Anne, like, can I stay another year and just follow Mr. Melbert around and get to know him and what he does and continue cooking?

And she agreed to it very nicely. And Mr. Melbert reluctantly agreed to it. And, you know, then once I started, you know, following him around and just keeping notes and I could very quickly see that there was a story to be told. And I felt like there was a story that, like, I wanted to preserve. I wanted to preserve in like some tiny way, this way of life. And I felt like my sort of understanding of how to put, at that point of how to put together a cookbook as a way, a framework in which to tell the story made sense. So I, you know, developed this idea to write a book that was, you know, each chapter was a month of the year. And, and I told

stories about Mr. Milbert and, like, what I was learning from him and what I was cooking in the kitchen. And I didn't really think there was anything necessarily innovative about it. I was really focused on this, the preservation aspect. But, you know, it really is, it was one of the earlier cookbooks that, that celebrated seasonal cooking and kind of made a point to say that it matters and that it's a better way of approaching cooking. And what did you do? I mean, you're in your early 20s, and I'm assuming you don't, you have no experience or you have no book agent. So what did you, how did you pitch this idea to publishers?

I looked up cookbook agents and then I, you know, wrote a proposal and sent it to all of them and followed up by facts. And phone call. And one day a fax came through from an agent named Doe Coover, who's based in Massachusetts. And she said, you know, I'd love to work with you. I love your proposal. And I soon had a contract. Wow. And had the realization of like, okay. You got to write a book. I guess I'm going to, I guess I'm going to write a book now. And I have to assume it was probably a small contract because it was your first book. It was $10,000, I believe. Which probably for you was like crazy money. It was huge. I was just totally thrilled. And now you've got to write the book.

But around that time, I guess you somehow kind of got on the radar screen of the New York Times. How did that happen? Yeah. So, you know, while I was working on the book and I think even leading up to the proposal, I had started pitching newspapers and magazines. You know, and I think that what I was imagining was going to happen after I finished my book was that I would then become a freelance writer. And I actually moved home to Pennsylvania and I lived in my mom's house for a year and wrote my book. And towards the end of that, I decided

I was going to move to Los Angeles because I had a boyfriend who lived there. And I felt like that would, that would be a boost to my freelance opportunities because the woods of Pennsylvania was not going to do much for me. So I started making a plan to leave. And four days before I left, I got a phone call from an editor at the New York Times, you know, saying that he had heard about me and was interested in talking with me, which was quite a shock. You got this call from an editor at the New York Times. Who was the editor?

Rick Flast. And Rick says, hey, do you want to come to New York to meet? Yeah. And, you know, I explained I was moving to L.A. And he said, well, could you come before? And so the day, I think it was the day before I went. The day before you were supposed to move to L.A.? To move to L.A., yeah.

Wow. And it was a warm spring day, an unseasonably warm spring day. And I didn't, the only nice clothes I had were wool pants and a suede jacket that I'd bought when I was a student in London. And so I wore them, and I just poured sweat the entire time because I was so nervous. And he was an editor at the dining and dining out section? He was actually creating the dining and dining out section. Okay, this is before it even came out. Yes. And so they were really, they were staffing up. They were really investing in it. And I, you know, I did the interview. And then I moved because I thought, well, like, I'm not going to get this job. And so about a month later, they said, you know, we'd like to fly you to New York for a day of interviews. And so they did that. And I needed, you know, help from, like, I didn't have a car. I didn't have, you know. So my mom drove, you know, drove me to the city and.

You flew back to Pennsylvania and she drove you to New York. Yeah. Yeah. She drove me to New York. And then because I thought, I had this idea that, oh, the New York Times, it probably has this, like, beautiful lobby and there are sofas. And she can, like, hang out down there while I go upstairs and do my interview. They have that now.

Definitely not in 1997. Oh, my gosh. So we walk in and it's like, you know, these, like, it's this tiny little entry way. And so I had to call up and say, like, you know, can I, I brought my mom? Can I bring her? And so I ended up, you know, they ended up sitting my, you know, welcoming my mom and being completely gracious about the fact that I was bringing my mom to my job interview. And, and of course, you ended up getting the job, right? And so presumably you moved to New York.

Yeah, I moved to New York City. And meanwhile, I'm assuming you're still working on that book based on the time that you were in France, which would become the cook and the gardener. And you were, I think you were like, what, 25 or something at the time? I was 24 and all of a sudden I started a job in an office and I had a cubicle. And, you know, at the New York Times, you know, the first day I had an assignment. They were like, yep, you're going to write about mushrooms. And so I just was like, and I had never written really a news story before. And I remember after I handed in my first story, Rick Flast was editing.

and he said, well, where's your nut graph? And the nut graph is that paragraph. If you look in a newspaper story, that's usually like, you know, the second or third paragraph and it's basically what the story is going to be about. And I said, what's a nut graph? And he literally just slapped his forehead and turned back to his computer because I think he was like, oh my God, what have we done? You know, we've hired this person who knows nothing about this business.

And that was true. But again, it was sort of liberating. because I just figured it out and also kind of found my way towards, like, you know, writing the kinds of things that, you know, I felt like I as a consumer wanted to read about. And, you know, the Times hadn't really been doing up until then. You know, I did, you know, I did product reviews. I, you know, I did these, like, intense tests of, like, how to cook duck a million different ways. I, you know, and it was, it was a dream job. Did it feel super competitive?

Did it feel like, oh, my God, all these other writers? are like Ivy League kids and here I am from Scranton. And I don't know. Did you, did you feel any of that? I think people were interested in the fact that I had an unconventional background. And so I was, I didn't, I didn't mind. I actually don't think of the times as a, as a particularly, like, snobby place about, like, your resume. It's really about the work you're doing.

Right. They're really focused on, like, what you're producing. It is incredibly competitive. It's not warm and fuzzy. And that was a little bit, that was challenging because not only was I not, like there was, everyone was like much older and had like, you know, kids and just different, you know, they were in a different stage of life. And so it was hard to feel like you were really fitting in. But on top of it, no one was really mentoring you. You know, I, like, we never had team meetings. I can't think of like a formal one-on-one that I had with anyone. It was, it was very much like sync or. swim. It was a little bit of a tough love culture and you were you were pushed to raise your game, right? So there were good things too. And I think I guess I'm a fan of some struggle. But I think for me, like what I found over time was that, you know, when you are writing about other people, you are,

ultimately you're an observer. And then actually over time what happened was I became more of an editor. I moved to the magazine. I started editing there. And, you know, an editor, you're kind of helping nurture the observers who are observing the doers, right? And I finally, I think, came to the conclusion correctly that I'm a doer and I needed to get back to it. I know that Ruth Reischel, who was a famous restaurant critic at the New York Times when you were there and later became the editor at Gourmet, described you in her memoir as, quote, frighteningly ambitious. What did you make of that assessment? I, you know, I didn't love it, obviously,

because everyone in the food world wants to be liked by Ruth Reichel. But I also understood it. It was, you know, I was ambitious. And I think I've been that way since I was, you know, I started talking. I don't think I've been shy about it. it. But did you in your mind think, what's wrong with that? Well, exactly. And I, but I think it goes back to, you know, things that I picked up very early on in my life, which were that where I grew up, you know, and I don't say where I grew up, but really like in my, I would say my family, it wasn't, women were not necessarily celebrated. And there was a lot of sexism. And I picked up on it really early and felt like I'm not going to, I'm not going to let this hold me back. And so, you know, I just very quickly, you know, as a child,

I didn't want to play softball because girls played softball. So I played hardball with the boys. And I, you know, I just was, I felt very determined from a very early age that I was going to prove them wrong. So when it came time for my career, I guess it was just ingrained in me that I felt like it was okay to be ambitious. And, you know, I've done a fair amount of therapy. And so actually when I saw that comment, and I really like Ruth, and I think that, like, you know, people make these kinds of, you know, have this sort of subtext in what they're saying often. But, you know, I felt like frighteningly ambitious. well, maybe it is frightening to Boulder who sees someone come along, who's doing things differently,

and who isn't, you know, isn't conforming to the kind of norms of how they express themselves around their career. And I really, I have empathy for that. I understand that. It must have been sort of strange. Like, why is the Times hiring somebody like this who seems really so focused on success? And, you know, isn't she going to kind of like wait for her turn? I've seen you describe yourself during that period as, and I think this is a direct quote, I managed to find ways to piss people off in new ways. Do you think that that is true? Because I mean, I wonder if maybe people, you know, like you and were happy with what you did and that was it. Well, I like that version.

I look back, you know, what I think my perspective now is, you know, with some distance is simply that, you know, the New York Times is this storied institution, but it's also a corporation. And corporations, most corporations, you know, things are done with a lot of, you know, there are a lot of layers. There's a lot of bureaucracy. Things take time. And this is, you know, this is none of what I, you know, what I had understood. You were a young person in a hurry. I was a young person in a hurry. You know, I, again, I came from a background that was very different.

But also, you know, I worked, I had worked in kitchens and bakeries where, and, you know, in a very different work environment where you really had to kind of ask for what you wanted. And you had to be direct. and you had to just kind of go and get things done on your own. So it was very outside of my understanding and comfort zone to like to realize that if I wanted to do something like, quote, the proper way, I needed to, you know, talk to a bunch of different people first and kind of get their buy in and then, you know, sort of let the process unfold in the way that it does. I just, yeah, I really didn't have patience for it because I felt like whenever I see kind of a good opportunity, opportunity, I want to go after it.

When we come back in just a moment, why Amanda left the safety of the New York Times to start her first online business. And what happened after that business hit a total dead end? Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So by the mid-2000s, Amanda Hesser had become a star food writer at the New York Times.

And she decided to take on a really big project, a collection of recipes that would eventually become a classic and a bestseller, the essential New York Times cookbook. It was an idea I came up with. I, again, was itching for something new to tackle. And I was thinking about, you know, a cookbook. But like a comprehensive cookbook that had recipes from the Times. That's right. The Times has been writing about food since the 1850s. And in the 1860s, 70s, 80s, they wrote about food all the time. And it was actually mostly crowdsourced from readers. And it was really detailed and really just like filled with personality and also very surprising. There are things like there's a recipe from the 19th century for Dulce de lece. There's a recipe. There's a, um, a recipe for raspberry granita, which honestly will rival the River Cafe Strawberry Survey. It's so good. And there were just a lot of like sort of surprising gems in there. What I didn't realize

at the time was just like the depth of the archives and that it would take five years of work to cook really through the archives. And the first thing I did was ask readers in the New York Times what their favorite we called it your most stained recipes that was the headline and we asked people to send them in and let us know and I got thousands and thousands of emails

and then people actually sent me in their yellowed newspaper clippings or the clippings that they had marked up and then photocopied for me and that became the foundation of what I used for recipe testing for the book. Wow. in that project you also met somebody who would be pivotal later on in your career, Merrill Stubbs,

who was, I guess, brought on to also work on this book. So once I started, once I realized, oh, I have a full-time job and I've just signed up for this giant book project, I'm going to need help. I asked around, you know, if anyone knew, anyone who was, you know, who had, you know, who had, some cooking experience. You could help me with recipe testing and research and a colleague of mine at the New York Times introduced me to Merrill. And Merrill had, she had gone to cooking school in London. She'd gone to La Courtaudan Bleu. She had had her own catering business. She had worked at a flower bakery in Boston. And, you know, we had some parallels in our training. And she had just moved back to New York and was looking to figure out what she wanted to do next. So it was this kind of

amazing timing. I hired her to help me with the research and recipe testing. And we spent, you know, five years working together on it. Wow. All right. So you're working on that book. And in meantime, I guess this is this is around like 2007, 2008. I'm clearly you were restless. You are restless at this point. And you sort of start to think about starting a business around this time. And this is a business that I should mention had nothing to do with food. And you got kind of serious about this idea. You were still at the time. Tell me what this idea was. Yeah. So I think that there was a piece of me that felt limited by being defined by only like my food expertise. And I felt like I wanted to do something more. And there's a thread in my

writing that's about documenting time and history. And, you know, it came up in my first book, you know, documenting this year with this gardener, certainly is a huge threat in the New York Times cookbook, which is, you know, this sort of document of cooking over time. Like, I've always been really embraced technology. And so I was really fascinated by the fact that our lives were being recorded in really intense detail in ways that had never been done before. Like whether it was the music we were listening to or the messages we were sending to each other, the news we were reading, the photos that we were taking and sharing. But it was very fragmented. And I felt like at the time, well, you're going to want to have this all pull together into some kind of seamless package

that you can so that you can distill your, you know, you could look back on, a year or a day and see, you know, what music were you listening to? What were, you know, what were the photos? What were, like, get a fuller picture of your life history. And it was a very big idea. And so I left the Times in 2008. To pursue this idea. To pursue this idea. And it was called. It was called Sea Winkle. And just again, to kind of describe it, it was going to be like a social media platform where people could pull all their digital photos. together? No, it was going to be this a dynamic timeline

where you could like hook in your Twitter feed, you know, you're any, like now you could hook in your Instagram feed, you're the news sources that you read and you could like, you know, zoom in to a day, you could zoom out and it would, you know, highlight like, you know,

if you zoomed out for a year, you know, and maybe it would show you like the most important, what we're deemed using technology, the most important sort of five photos of the year or the five songs. that you listen to most or, you know, important moments, seemingly important moments based on, you know, distilling the data, right? So it was a very, like, a big sort of data play. And I became fixated with this idea. I decided to pursue it. So I started going to, you know, start up meetups and I, you know, I used my reporting skills, right? I just started calling people.

And New York's tech culture then was kind of, you know, it was like a small neighborhood. Yeah. It was really kind of cozy and people were friendly. And, you know, you could get meetings with people pretty easily and people were generous with their time because they were, everyone was just kind of like figuring it out. And there wasn't the kind of like intensity and that there is now. From what I understand, you also something quite fortunate happened, which was the New York Times, just the beginning of the financial. crisis, they were offering buyouts and you took it. So, which I think was kind of, I'm imagining, kind of scary to leave the times, but also kind of helpful because you got a little bit of cash to

live off for a while. Yeah. And, you know, I talked a lot probably ad nauseum with my husband about it, about what I should do. And, you know, he felt really strongly, and this was such great advice. He said, you know, because there's such a strong pull when you're at the time. So it's so hard to leave. And he said, you know, you're never going to give anything like the time and attention it deserves unless you just cut the cord. And I just, I so love that he had that bravery and trust and belief because, you know, here we were. We had twins who were like one and a half. You know, he's a writer. He's a New Yorker writer. Yeah, he's a New Yorker writer. And we really had no safety net, but he understood that, like, I had, like, I wasn't going to be happy if I stayed.

And I think he was totally right about, you know, my time and attention. And so I decided to do the buyout. And of course, it was totally lucky because it helped kind of help keep us financially stable for a few months while I went down this path. Yeah. When you, when you made the decision to leave the times and go off and start your own thing. Because that's, that's, you know, that takes a lot of courage, right? It's a really good job with a really good retirement plan, and they probably match some of your retirement money. And it's kind of like if you don't mess up,

it's sort of like a tenured professorship. Like it can be a job for life. And going out and leaping out and starting something on your own can be scary. A lot of journalists are scared. And many of them end up staying in their organizations for that reason. What do you think gave you the courage to do it? I just was feeling frustrated.

And I think I was at a point in my life, you know, where I was no longer the, like, young kid on staff. If I wanted to have the interesting career that I had yearned for, like, I needed to make it happen. You know, I love reading obituaries. And I always love the obituaries of people who have, you know, done like multiple, like, distinct things in their career. Because it takes that leap. It takes that bravery and also that sort of belief in yourself. And, yeah, I think there was just something inside of me that instinctively knew that I wasn't going to be happy if I stayed. And I didn't know what was going to happen on the outside.

But it was worth taking that risk. Yeah. So by this point, you had found, I guess, some people to help with the tech side of building C-Winkle. And how did you fund it, by the way? Yeah. So I essentially just funded it with my savings. And I look back at that year as my startup grad school year because I did nothing but spend money. But.

And how much money do you remember how much it was? It was, you know, it was in the tens of thousands of dollars. Like 30, 40,000? Yeah. We very, you know, quickly realized, like, this is a big thing to bite off, especially with just the state of technology then. I mean, I had almost nothing to add on the technology front. I was really focused on the sort of concept business side.

And at that point, there was no business side because there was really no business. It was just about trying to get people interested in the concept and sort of trying to learn what we didn't know. and help kind of pave the way so that we could build this prototype and maybe, you know, raise our first round. So that was the way I was thinking about it. And, you know, I look back and I, you know, I met with BetoWorks. I met with Fred Wilson. I met with all these, like, amazing investors who you could never get access to now. These are kind of well-known investors in New York, yeah. Yeah. And they were so nice and so supportive, but also not going to put money into it because they're very smart. And they were like, this is not going to go anywhere.

exactly you know it was it was not an easy year you know I because I of course I was feeling sort of nervous about what I'd gotten myself into but I was also so energized I felt like oh I found my people right I was surrounded by people who had ideas and and the sort of guts to pursue them and you know I just felt like oh I know I'm on the right path whether or not this is the right company. We ultimately kind of came away at the end of the year feeling like, well, this is a really interesting project. We don't see where the business is. And to really build what we're trying to build is going to take a really big technology team. And we're not really the team to raise the money to do that. And one of my co-founders had to move to California. And it just

became this kind of like natural, actually kind of seamless parting of ways. So this idea, it's just not going to work. And while you had this idea, you are still working on, I mean, you let the Times, but from what I understand, you're still working on this Times cookbook, right? You were still kind of working on that project. And with your partner who you were working with on this cookbook, Merrill, were you guys starting to talk about a business idea? or were you really pretty much kind of focused on the C-winkle thing and just doing that? Well, we were talking, you know, we spent a lot of time testing recipes, which meant just being in my kitchen cooking,

and there was a lot of time sort of in-between steps to just chit-chat. And one of the things that really interested in us in the Times was this, was the old archive and how the parallels between what was happening on Twitter and what was happening in the newspaper in the 19th century was really, like, fascinating to us because it was user-generated content. Recipes were written in a very tweet-like form in the 19th century because people already knew how to make a pastry dough. So you just had to write a shorthand instructions. And we thought, oh, well, that's so fascinating. It's kind of like history repeating itself.

And, you know, it made us sort of talk, you know, we talked casually about, like, where to, like, what sites we like and, you know, where we're, where we're going online and kind of just what's happening in the food world. And, you know, I had this idea and about a way to, you know, crowdsource and curate. And, you know, I told Merrill about it and got her thoughts and then decided, you know, I think there's something in this. And so I went to her and asked her if she'd like to, you know, start this company with me. So once the Sea Winkle idea kind of fizzled out, it sounds like it sort of like dovetailed into this new idea of a food website. And I guess with this new company, you were going to be going in a completely different direction than you had been going with Sea Winkle. Yeah. So one of the takeaways that came out of CWinkle was that

I felt I could see that there were two kinds of founders. There were founders who were just great at selling an idea. And the idea might not have much substance or they might not know a lot about whether or not it can work, but they can really just like spin a yarn, get people engaged. And then, you know, they have the confidence that they'll figure it out as they go. Right? And I unfortunately do not have that DNA. But the other kind of founder tends to like want to, like do proof of concept, you know, bootstrap. They want their, they're the students who sit at the front of the class. And like they want to, they want to know what they're doing before they tried to sell it. And I just understood because I had tried to do the opposite with C-Winkle.

And in process, realized, okay, no, we've got to really like build a prototype. And no, you know, like I found myself gravitating towards like wanting to prove something out before I took anyone's money because I take that really seriously. It's not, it's not a game to me. I don't, I don't want to waste anyone's money. And so knowing that when it came time, just try to, to, start a different company, I felt like it was very clear that we wanted to bootstrap as much as we could so that we could prove that there were legs to this idea. And then we could go and raise money. And just to be clear, Amanda, I guess your initial idea was to do a website where you would crowdsource ideas for recipes. And as I understand it, in order to help you launch this

as a business, you wanted to start it by writing a cookbook? Yeah. And one of the things that I knew how to do was to sell a book. And because I felt like there was a kind of clean way to test the concept of a new kind of business and a new kind of food media company by using the construct of a cookbook. And that you could create a cookbook through a website, have it be crowdsource, test out ways of curating it, and really see if people, if it resonates with people. And I felt like even if the idea did not resonate as a business and we did not see the other

opportunities that we were hoping to see, I knew that we could come out with a good quality cookbook. But I really, you know, we were betting on it becoming a business. And but we didn't want to have to try to raise money. And so that's where we use the advance money, which is what you usually use to pay yourself as an author. Sure. You know, while you're writing the book, we spent all of that on building the site and operating it for the first 18 months. I read a quote that you gave to somebody back at the time, you're like, hey, you know,

listen, the economy's tanking. I just had twins. What better time to start a business? Yeah. You know, like obviously we're saying that as a joke, but it was kind of a crazy time. 2009, to start a business? Kind of nuts. Yeah.

But not, not really. We know that, that we now know that like, I mean, Airbnb and Slack and all these companies started around that time. But our instinct is to say, oh, what a terrible time to start a business. Yeah. And I think that there were two things that were key here. One is actually that I am, financial security is like an obsession of mine. Yeah. And it's really important.

But I do think. that I also really understand that it's, well, there's two other pieces. One is that I am also equally obsessed with doing things that I care about and that I feel inspired by. And I think from growing up and seeing my parents take this risk, I could see that you can't, like, if you want that financial security, like, you have to put in the work. And you have to take the risks. And so that's really like I think what I was, you know, believing. Like I knew it was it was a giant financial risk for my family, you know, in the, in the situation where we were with two young kids and a mortgage.

And my husband with a writer with no, who was a writer with no benefits. You know, neither of us had benefits. So we, you know, we had to just, you know, pay for those on our own. And so our bank account was just like, it was just like this ticking time bomb. It was just dwindling. But again, I was really determined and I just kept, I sort of really. kept that in the background as much as I could. It was definitely like, you know, inspiration to get me out of bed every morning. But like I really needed to focus on like building something

great and not focusing so much on either our dwindling bank account or how we were going to pay for things in the future. Yeah. And I mean, I'm trying to, trying to imagine how you would describe this to people. Like if I saw you in 2009, I was like, hey, what are you working on? And you would describe it to me and I'd say, oh, okay, so it's a website. with recipes? Is that what people would say to you? They would say it's a blog. A blog. Okay. Yeah. I got it. And, you know, that's, I'm really glad you brought this up because it's something we still talk about at the company that it's hard to describe what we do. And I spent a lot of time reminding people that that's okay because actually when you're building something that's new

and that's different and it's going to be that's going to really feel natural in the future, like people aren't going to necessarily have an easy way of describing it. They always want you to be the Uber of something or they want you to be something that's already just familiar to them. But we were trying to build something that just didn't exist. Yes, there are components of what we do that are sort of timeless, right? Recipes, helping people with their cooking and home life, you know, connecting people to each other.

Like our mission is timeless. But the way we're executing on it is very different. And so, yes, we spend a lot of time. And sometimes I would just kind of. You know, certainly socially, I was like, yep, it's a food blog. You know, but, you know, when it came to, like, investors and, you know, really trying to sell it from a business, you know, from the business perspective, it was, it was challenging. And, you know, and sometimes it still is. Like, I still have to defend.

Like, people are like, yes, are you a commerce business or are you a media business? And I'm like, we're both. And we're also many other things. So, I mean, so clearly you were setting out to build a different kind of media company. But but what exactly would that be? I mean, what were you imagining it could be at that time? Yeah. So we felt like the flaws of traditional media were very apparent, right?

Like having a single revenue stream was not going to be lasting, which would, you know, in traditional media is just advertising. we also felt like traditional media was really just broadcasting at people and that with the digital age, people wanted something different. They wanted an interaction. And separate from kind of technology and media, just in the food world itself, food had really gone through the sea change from being this kind of niche area of interest for some people to, becoming threaded throughout our culture and really threaded into people's identities. And we felt like no one was really acknowledging that. Where you saw it was online. There were all of these bloggers who were, you know, now these blogging platforms developed

in the mid-2000s. And people started all of a sudden, out of the wordwork, you know, traditional media was kind of like, we are the gatekeepers, we are the experts, and you're just, you're kind of a home cook who follows us. Then all of a sudden you saw all of these people who know a ton about food and who are like lawyers by day or, you know, who just do this on the side or who just, it's like their total life passion. They just don't like make money off of it, right? And they have a lot of stuff to share. And we felt like that was really interesting.

It was like this constellation of creators and knowledgeable people who did not have a platform. And so that was really where our heads were. We were like, okay, we want to give those people a platform to express themselves, but a place that's centralized so that it's like it becomes this hub where you can connect with other people. You can get a bigger audience. You can create the sort of foundation of a really powerful media company so much more efficiently because you can do it through user generated content as long as you figure out a way to curate it. How did you pitch this to potential investors? What were you, I'm an investor and I'm like, okay, nice to meet you. And tell me what you're doing.

What would you say? We described it as we're creating this hub for people who care, who see food as, you know, as a central piece of their lives. And, you know, it's a place where, you know, you can connect with others. You can discover, you can learn, you can figure out what to cook for dinner. You can go for inspiration. And I think it's one of the things. I just want to point out is that we did, yes, when we launched, we were super focused on recipes and specifically recipe contests as a way to generate content.

Contests. Yeah, contests. You would submit recipes and you would cook them or you would judge which recipe was the best. Yes. Anybody was welcome to participate, right? It wasn't this like this kind of gatekeeper mentality that, you know, we had sort of, we were responding to. I want to note, though, so we launched in September. 2009. And by December, we launched a shop because we wanted to put a steak in the ground and say,

like, this isn't just going to be recipes or content. This is like we're just getting started. We're going to also be a place where you can discover like a new ingredient or a new piece of cookware or something, you know, beautiful for your table. And that this was like this was taking cooking and really like playing it out in every kind of scenario of your life. And to, So that was, it was like an important piece. Now, we didn't transact with customers then. We just had a shop where we had a friend of ours who would curate every day. She would curate like a new product.

And then it would go into the shop and it had, you know, categories just like any e-commerce site. But if you clicked on a product, we would tell you about it. And then if you wanted to buy it, we would send you off to another site. Now, that's really common now. And there's a whole people get affiliate, you know, commissions for that. But we didn't do that. Because we did, A, affiliate systems, like, well, they sort of barely existed and they were wonky.

B, we really, it was so important to us to build trust. You wanted to be like neutral, like journalists. You didn't want people to say, oh, they're just getting paid to promote this. That's right. We wanted them to, like, trust our aesthetic, trust our point of view. And that was something, I feel like so much of traditional, like the amazing parts of traditional journalism informed how we built this company. Sure. And that was, like, you have to early.

earn your authority. You have to earn the trust and and the way to, and you, you need to have like a really like distinct aesthetic in voice for people to recognize you. We wanted it to feel like a home. Like you, like you come, you come to the site and you're like, oh, yes. Like I know, like, if you saw a food 52 photo out in the wild, you would know that it was a food 52 photo. And food 52 refers to 52 weeks of the year, right? That's right. Like we're with you 52 weeks of the year. Right. But, you. But, you. You're like, let's say I was an investor, right? And you were going to come to my office because you went to investors in 2010 looking for funding. And I would ask you, and I hope this doesn't like reawaken traumatic experiences or long buried bad experiences. But I would say, okay, well, how are you guys going to make money? Right? You've got a website, but like, are you going to do advertising? I mean, I'm assuming initially that at least that that was the plan, right? Yeah, we were absolutely focused on that as our initial primary revenue stream and that commerce would come later.

And, you know, there would be cookbooks and there would be events and there would be other things. We didn't have like a big track record to prove this. And we were also, I think most, more importantly, we were two editors coming from traditional media. and media was just not like it was in 2009, 2010, like nobody wanted to invest in media. You know, there's just there are these shifting winds in venture capital. And I think that like every time we went out to raise, we were always at the like bad side of the shifting wind. But I think that in, you know, in retrospect, you end up kind of with the right investors, right? because you get a lot of nose, but you push, you know, if you can push through, you know, you end up with the real believers.

Were you, I mean, I have to imagine this, you know, by the summer of 2010, you're pitching and pitching and pitching and from what I understand, you were not successful. Did you guys get to the point where you were almost out of cash? Oh, yes. And we were also putting our own personal money into it. So, you know, that was tough. Did you get to the point where you were like, maybe we should pack this in? I mean, you'd been through Seawinkle. You saw that that wasn't working, that that wasn't going to work. Did you ever get to the point where the two of you were like, maybe this just isn't going to work?

Yeah, we had a moment at Roberta's Pizzeria. I love Roberta's. Yeah, we cried over pizza, but really good pizza. But, you know, we just had a conversation. I think, you know, we needed to have a conversation of like, where is our breaking point? Because it felt like we just, we had, we didn't, it wasn't that we had no traction. We definitely had people interested, but we just couldn't get that lead. We couldn't get that one person to be like, I'm going to like, I'm going to champion this round.

There were a lot of people who were like, yeah, I'll put in 25K or I'll put in this or that. And then I actually, like, because I'm often looking forward, I feel like sometimes I'm not fairly good at being reflective. and often with things that are bad memories, I sort of shove them into a drawer somewhere in my brain. And I don't know, maybe it was a good pizza that we were just like, yes, we're going to keep going. When we come back in just a moment, how Amanda was slowly able to build Food 52 out of her apartment

where she did photo shoots in the bedroom and tested barbecue recipes on the balcony. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Hey, welcome back to how I built this from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So by late 2010, Amanda Hesser and her co-founder, Merrill Stubbs, had had no success pitching their idea to investors and were just about out of cash. And it all led to a sad conversation at a pizzeria where they almost called it quits. But they didn't.

And six weeks later, they finally managed to secure an investment. And it was 750,000. And this is from friends, family, angels, anybody you could find. Actually, it wasn't really friends and family. It was actually mostly institutional or professional angel investors. We wanted this vetted by people who do this all the time and who could be really adding to the business. And with that $750,000, were the two of you finally able to pay you? yourselves a salary? Because I imagine that you were, you know, you probably were making a pretty

good salary at the times when you left. Were you now finally making the same salary? Oh, no. No, you know, at this point I was like financially gasping for air. You know, it wasn't pretty. But obviously having the funding felt like we were heading in the right direction. But, you know, we didn't want to be spending the money on ourselves. Like we, you know, so we gave ourselves $50,000, which is what I made in 1997 when I was hired at the New York Times. Wow. And what were you able to do with the rest of the money? Were you guys able to hire people?

Yeah. We were able to begin hiring. We hired sort of engineers and editors. And yeah, we just, we were able to then start, like, building more because we had, we had nice traction. But we also, I think, you know, we understood that we were up against, we were going to build the company differently than what the expectation in venture capital was, which was that, which is to put a lot of money, well, at the time, and I, again, this is probably a gross generalization, but the, it was to, you know, you'd put a lot of money into paid marketing.

And also you would crank out content at an insane rate. You know, this was, this was the beginning, this was the age of Huffington Post when these like sort of new kinds of media organizations started really gaining steam and they were they were just the increasing content volume you know yeah by the such a great magnitude and and we didn't want to do that like we we wanted to build a brand and a relationship with people and we wanted to do it organically and we knew it was going to take time and so we were really careful about how we spent the money because we didn't just make a bunch of hires or spend a bunch of money on marketing in fact I don't even think we spent any money on marketing for years because we just didn't have it.

It was we were really focused on just keeping the business going while we, you know, built this new path. Now, here's the thing. I mean, you are, I'm trying to figure out how you guys were kind of building, building out the site and, and the, the aesthetic of it. Because you had to make recipes, you had to make things and then photograph them. Did you guys do this in your own kitchens? Did you rent a kitchen? Where did you start to do that? So we did this in my apartment where I still live.

Every Tuesday was our photo shoot day. And so we, and that, you know, in the beginning it was Merrill and me and I think one other person. And we would, and a photographer who we hired. And we would, you know, cook all the recipes and style them and then shoot them in my bedroom. In your bedroom? Yes. Because that was where the best natural. light was. We had the northern light. And so we would clear off one of our bedside tables and set

it up. And it was really important to us that it was done in a home environment, that it wasn't overly styled, that it had style, but it wasn't, it felt real. Because I think we were trying to get across the message that this is really about like real people in their homes. And, but we're with the sort of elevated, you know, a little bit of elevated styling and, you know, really, really. beautiful photography that you, that you can get. What were you making? We were cooking, you know, recipes that our community were uploading to the site and, you know, that we were, you know, kind of vetting through our curation process and...

Like cakes or... Oh, yes, everything. It was, oh, sorry, it was like everything from, you know, salads to cakes to stews, brazes, grilled food. You know, I had a little grill out on, we have a little terrace, so we have a little Weber grill out. there. And so sometimes we'd have to go and shoot out there. And, you know, but it ultimately, it's really, it was stuff that can be cooked in a home because that was, that's our premise, right? We're

really all about the home. In that first year or first two years, most people were going to the site, presumably just, not just, but to get recipes, do you think? Recipes, food articles, yeah. And given that you didn't have budget for marketing or you weren't spending money on marketing, were you able to get attention because you, you're you were Amanda Hesser of the New York Times? I think it helped in the beginning. We had a very lucky thing happen early on, actually before we launched. We had a splash page up where we could collect email addresses.

And we did a video that was just a video tour of my kitchen. And because we wanted that was another element. We wanted people to be able to upload their own videos, show us what they were doing, show us their kitchens. again, we were just trying to sort of plant little seeds of the different things that we felt like, you know, could be done. We put that video up on Vimeo and didn't put a password on it because we were like, you know, nobody knows that. Nobody knows working on this. We just felt like food people aren't on Vimeo necessarily.

Well, it turns out that somebody from Sirius Eats, which is another website, was on Vimeo and found it and published it. And that was, and it was essentially like, hey, you know, Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs are up to this on this. They're working on something new. And, you know, we've got like the first scoop on it. And it was sort of this gift because what happened was thousands of people signed up on our splash page. And so which allowed us to do a closed beta where we could let like a couple hundred people in per day so that when we finally launched, we already had, you know, like 10,000, I think community members. And we got a lot of good media coverage. In fact, I remember, um, Goop wrote about it on our launch week and Daily Candy did and both of them broke our site. Like our site went down because we obviously didn't have the most amazing technology at that point. When did it become clear to you that advertising was not going to, advertising alone was not going to be able to sustain it? I think that was clear very early. And I think that there are a lot of, a lot of people actually still say to me,

like, oh, right, so you, you know, you added a shop so that you could, you know, have like a different revenue stream. And it's like, well, no, no, that's not, that's not why we did it. We really were focused on like what, like, if we're going to say this as a hub, we're creating a real hub, we have to be able to serve people in a lot of different ways. So we focused on how we wanted to serve them and then we figure out how to monetize them. In the beginning, it's just like advertising was an very established mechanism for funding media, right, on. online. And it was, of course, we needed to develop that as a core revenue stream. But if we were only going to build our business around that, we were just going to be a media company. And that

wasn't our goal. And of course, over the years, you've, I think, largely moved away from ads. And you now get the bulk of your revenue, I'm assuming from your online shop and your partnership with hundreds of brands where you like sell food and home goods and you do videos and podcasts and events and all kinds of things. And I'm assuming that that's meant that throughout the years you needed to raise a lot more money, right? I know around 2017, you started to raise money for a series B round. And from what I understand there was a little bit of a crisis because one of your

lead investors at the time basically pulled out, right? And from the quote I read, he said something like, like you guys weren't. weren't focused and I guess this investor kind of ghosted you. What happened? I don't know fully what happened because I haven't heard the other side. I can sort of only glean from the signals. But we had previously tried to understand what our board, like how they thought about exits and like what were like what was on their mind and it's always a delicate conversation and I think um that conversation for this particular investor like signaled that like you know somehow like perhaps we wanted out which wasn't the case so then when we wanted to raise

money I think he felt like it was like those were those were maybe for him confusing messages and you know it was it was a very strange experience because I think up until that point we'd had very supportive investors. And so it was really just like, I think somehow we, we like lost his gaze. And, you know, he just checked out. I mean, this is 2017. You lose the confidence of a former lead investor. That must have been, I would imagine, stressful at the very least. It was really stressful. I mean, I mean, I was on, like, winter break with my kids, and I just had to, like, forge on and try to, you know, put a smile on my face and for them and, like, have a good time that day.

But I was really tortured inside. We've had so many, like, honestly, like, gut-wrenching, terrifying moments. It's like, you know, I think that in some ways that you can't, you do build up a thicker skin for them, but they're also in some, like, they sort of hit you harder over time. time because you just like they're I fully expect that like we will have other you know other challenges in the future too it's like I'm I'm ready for them but but and I probably am more steeled for them but they're they're they're pretty horrifying because they really can change the fate of a company Amanda by your own account and I say this as somebody who

totally identifies with this and I appreciate your vulnerability on this you have said that In the early days of this business, you gained a reputation for being difficult, hard driving, and not at all warm, which is a reputation, not a reflection of reality, of course. How did you discover that that was your reputation or that your perceived reputation? Well, I would hear about it, but I would, you know, once we started doing employee surveys and I, you know, reading through them, you know, could sometimes be quite painful. And I don't think I even realized it. It was just, you know, again, like it certainly was how I was raised, you know, it was definitely not a, like, you know, it wasn't super, it was a lot, there was a tough love element to like how I was raised, but also, you know, my work experience to, and before starting the company was, you know,

at the times, which is definitely not a warm and fuzzy place. And I've always been, you know, kind of assertive and ambitious and so it just took me a while to understand that how I think as a leader you have a different impact than you do when you say something than you do when you're a colleague

and I think once I started to see that it just you know it was very clear that I should work on it I just there was one employee survey that were Someone referred to Merrill as the nice one. And I thought that was, I mean, we joke about it still, but I'm not something I'm proud of, but I can laugh at it at least, you know.

You guys did eventually raise money for a series B round. By this point, you had like more than 50 employees. You know, it's expensive to create a content site. You've got photographers and videographers. I mean, I have to imagine you were still had to be super careful with money. Yeah, we've always been super careful with money. And I think through the B round, we had raised only $13 million. That's a really small amount. I mean, it's a huge amount of money in my view. But it's, you know, in this world in the industry, it's a pretty small amount to fund a company of our size. And but yeah, so we've always had to be just, you know, really pretty scrappy. And, you know, we've never been that sort of shiny new object that, like, you. where everyone wants to, you know, where we were never the employer who was like paying the most or who had the most, you know, the snazziest perks. Pinkpun tables?

Yeah, we just, you know, we had good snacks. But, you know, we didn't have the other, all the other kind of accoutrement that, you know, that certainly people look for in startups. In 2019, a big part of the business was purchased, a majority stake was purchased by an outside investment group. And I think you guys were valued at $100 million, which and also in a huge infusion of cash into the business. This happened before the pandemic, shortly before the pandemic, a few months before. But I have to imagine that really has enabled you to actually supercharge your growth. Yeah. The structure of that investment, you know, meant that, yes, we got a bigger, certainly a bigger infusion of cash than we had ever seen.

But it wasn't the total investment amount. A lot of the investment went into buying out existing investors, former employees who had vested stock and things like that, which were amazing and really great to be able to do at that what I really feel was a turning point for the company. And yes, but it has given us funding to grow our team, you know, invest in more senior leadership. which has been really amazing and to be, you know, invested in new areas of the business. Bearing in mind who listens to this show, which is, you know, it's a big audience, but it's also a lot of people are starting up their own businesses are looking for inspiration. Did you guys eventually, were you able to reach profitability or not quite yet? So in 2020 we did.

Wow. So that was the first time you guys, that's pretty great. I mean, it's a reminder that this can take a long time. It takes a long time. It can take a long time to get profitability, especially with a media company. Yeah. And every year we'd have kind of more profitable months than the last, but we weren't entirely profitable. But we, you know, we were definitely on the path toward it.

And, you know, in 2020 was a really, you know, for companies that are focused on cooking and home, naturally, those were companies that people were very interested in and needed help from and support from during the pandemic. So, you know, we had a lot of really strong organic growth last year. So it takes a while. I mean, you know, and to stay with it for 11 years until you get become profitable, that also takes a lot of grit. I mean, right? because, you know, it can't, that idea can be stressful. Yeah, I think, again, though, I really am focused on the long game.

And I think it's important to, I don't, we, the way we've run the business is really, like, focused on, like, writing, running it as lean as possible, but really staying focused on the long game. Because there are going to be years, you know, even if you're profitable, you might decide, well, in order for us to get. grow to that next stage, we're going to intentionally spend and invest in that growth. And that means the next year we're not going to be profitable. Companies do that all the time. And it's just so I think that I'm focused on the health of the business and not overly obsessed on profitability yet. I know that in last November, your co-founder, Merrill stepped down as president. I think she's still involved with the company and is on the board.

How about you? I mean, I know that you're committed to this, and, you know, you've gotten an investor on board who wants you there. But imagine at some point, you know, you will probably want to move on and maybe start something new or maybe not. I don't know. What do you think? I'm so happy doing what I'm doing. And I'm sure that anyone who's listened to, like, my history, you know, yes, I had been restless many times and I'm always looking for things that are different. and new and ways to innovate.

And I'm, but that's the beauty of, of starting a company, right? Is that every, like there are new problems to solve every day. And there are new challenges. And,

you know, I think that in the beginning, you know, I mentioned earlier that I had wanted to, like, do something that was outside of food initially. But I think, you know,

I've come to really value that I have domain expertise in an area that really matters to me and matters to my, like, my life outside of work too. And so it's really, I'm excited to push this as far as we can. And Merrill, she left at sort of this perfect time.

You know, it was like she left when we, you know, we got into a point where it felt like we had built something really great together. And, you know, and she wanted to take some time with her family and, like, kind of figure out what's next. So, you know, not everybody, you know, can or decides to leave at. you know, at sort of an ideal time, I feel like we, we both lucked out, right? She was able to leave at a time when she can feel like, wow, you know, we did build this great thing. And it was at a time when I, you know, like, we had this, we had new funding where, you know, I could really, like, build up my leadership team. And, you know, because when, with her leaving, you know, there was definitely going to be, there were going to be some gaps. I know that you kind of, you had this,

you kind of grew up in this entrepreneurial family and with your dad who was, you know, as you described him, this kind of charismatic, more of a risk taker. But, and of course he passed away when you were so young. And I don't know. I mean, do you ever think about what he might have thought of seeing you as, you know, running a business and having started this business and where it's gone? I think he would have been super excited. And that's sort of devastating because he never got to see it. And I was pretty, you know, like in a not a great state when he died.

And but I think, you know, he was always like a, he was such a like conflicted person in that, you know, yes, he was sexist, but he was incredibly supportive of me and always told me I could do whatever I wanted. And, yeah, I think that he would have been so pleased. And, yeah, I'm sorry, he can't know. But your mom, who was like, why are you? Because, right, she was like, what's my daughter doing in life? Then you got this job with the New York Times, and she was so proud of you. And she must have been so concerned when you left that job.

Yeah. She was. I mean, she, I think she was really afraid and unhappy that I left the Times. My mom is just, you know, she's of a generation where women weren't encouraged. And my mom is a really, like, ambitious, smart, savvy person who, you know, unfortunately, like, hasn't gotten to pursue her dreams. And so I think, you know, she's been a great supporter. She definitely has, like, a tough love way about her. But I also think that's been really inspiring for me.

And I think that, like, yeah, part of my goal is to, like, you know, prove that, you know, women can can do these things, right? and show my mom and like kind of take advantage of the fact that I, you know, like of the opportunities that she didn't have because I think that's what she would want, right? And so I think that's why when I left the New York Times, she thought like, what are you doing? Like, you like you have this amazing job. Why would you ever leave? And so she, in her way, she would refer to Food 52 as my project, even when we had 20 employees. Your project. Now she calls at a company and she's very happy. But, you know, it took a few years. I ask pretty much everybody who comes on the show this question. And I'm in the process

of modifying it, but I'll ask you a version of it, which is when you think about your story and your journey and the success you've had, how much of that do you attribute to how hard you worked in your skill and how much do you attribute that to luck? And how much do you attribute that to, I don't know, other things? You're a lot in life, the advantages you might have had. What do you think? Yeah, I think it's really a blend of all of that. I definitely believe that in luck. And I think you have to show up in order to be there to be lucky.

And so that kind of, like they're all tied, right? They're all, to me, like, so tied together. I even think, you know, like my birth order has a big impact on, like, what you end up doing. Like, I was the last child, you know, in. My siblings were all born right in a row. And then there was a five-year break and then I was born. And so, like, I mean, the joke in the family is that I was the mistake. But because my parents had sort of been done with parenting, they took much, I was sort of like this kind of fun, oh, right.

You know, parenting is fun and it's interesting. And now we have more time to pay attention to you. And like, so I think that that had a big influence on my feelings of that I could do things and that I was empowered and that I didn't have to follow all the rules. and I think that really kind of fed into my entrepreneurial side. What are you cooking these days? Actually, it's funny, I'm making a cake tomorrow. I find that doing cakes these days is very gratifying and sort of soothing because, you know, I can measure. And it's like, and then this magical thing happens in the oven and it poofs up and it becomes something that, you know, that pleases everyone.

And, yeah, I have found that cakes are, I wish I could tell you that I was, like, still keeping my sourdough starter from early in the pandemic alive. But I haven't been. That's Amanda Hesser, co-founder of Food 52. By the way, if you've ever seen the movie Julie and Julia, there's a scene where Amy Adams, who plays the food blogger Julie Powell, is freaking out because a certain famous New York Times writer is coming to dinner. What if she doesn't eat pork? She's a food writer. Of course she eats pork. You'll be fine.

Was she early? She's right out of time. That writer was, of course, Amanda Hesser from the New York Times. Yeah, come in. Who played herself in the film. And in that scene, turned out to be the perfect dinner guest.

Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you're not a subscriber to the podcast, please do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to write to us, our email address is H-I-B-T at npr.org. If you want to follow us on Twitter, we're at How I Built This or at Guy Raz. Our Instagram is at How I Built This NPR, and mine is at guy.orgh. Where I often post my food recipes.

This episode was produced by Rachel Faulkner with music composed by Reptine Arablewe. Thanks also to Liz Metzger, Farah Safari, Darif Gales, J.C. Howard, Julia Carney, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Janet Ujung Lee. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This. This is NPR.