Welcome to Episode 17 of This Is Yu Podcast.
This Is Scott Stewart and Carole Yu
Today, we speak with Julie Resnick, who has built the Feed Feed, with her cofounder and husband Dan, into a global crowd-sourced food and lifestyle media company. She is a trained chef, journalist, business woman, mom, wife, and deeply passionate about the world of food. Her community of home cooks, bloggers and chefs bring over 15 Million views to the Feed Feed’s social media platforms and website.
We talk to Julie about her different instagram feeds, and how she developed the Feedfeed’s online community. We explore the company event spaces, The Feedfeed’s future facing perspective, and how the company plans to get there.
If you are looking to up your instagram game, then this is the podcast for you!
One-Pot Creamy Spinach Pasta – TheFeedFeed.com
After our conversation with Julie, we have a new segment, “Recipe Substitutions.” How do you bake a cake without eggs, milk, butter or sugar? What to do when you’re without any fresh herbs or have run out of spice blends? We also talk about healthy substitutes for sugar and butter, or eggs. And finally, we give you alternate ingredients for paleo and gluten free diets.
Have you already entered our $25 Amazon gift card giveaway? Listen up to hear how you can be the winner!
Thank you so much to Julie for joining us in today’s conversation. We really appreciate your unique social media and business expertise. We loved learning about your company’s exponential business growth. and now we’re so excited to explore all your social media outlets so we can find brand new inspiration for our meals. It’s reassuring to know that we’ll be able to choose any ingredient and peruse hundreds of recipes crowdsourced from your expansive and diverse community from across the globe.
TheFeedFeed.com
We are all stuck in our houses at this time of Corona, and try to stay out of public contact as much as possible. This means that many of us can’t run to the grocery store every few days to pick up all the ingredients we need. Subsequently our pantries are running low. Today, we have some great ideas for ingredient substitutions including paleo and gluten free diets! Make sure you check out our substitution list on our “Recipe Substitutions” blog post at ThisIsyu.com
So, you’ve gathered all the ingredients to bake something comforting, and realize you are missing just one ingredient. Here are some ideas. We will name the substitutions, but all the specific amounts could make for some tedious podcast listening. Get some ideas here, and then get the specific ingredient ratios in our blog post “ Recipe Substitutions” on the This Is Yu.com website.
Who doesn’t like free money! Have you entered our giveaway already? Through May 19th, 2020 enter our giveaway for a $25 Amazon giftcard! It’s simple! All you have to do is go to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to and leave a review of This Is Yu Podcast. We will choose our favorite review, and announce the winner on May 19th on the podcast.
Give us your feedback. Leave a message for us on the This Is Yu Hotline at 562-291-6037, it’s anonymous, just leave a message with your thoughts. You can also direct message us on facebook or instagram, or email us at carole@thisisyu.com or Scott @thisisyu.com
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Scott & Carole
Ep 17 – This Is Yu Podcast – Feed Feed – Julie Resnick. Begin Show Transcription:
Scott
Welcome to Episode 17 of This Is Yu Podcast. This is Scott Stewart and
Carole
Carole Yu. Today we speak with Julie Resnick, who has built the feed feed with her co founder and her husband, Dan, into a global crowd sourced food and lifestyle media company. She is a trained chef, a journalist, a businesswoman, mom, wife and deeply passionate about the world of food. Her community of home cooks, bloggers and chefs bring over 15 million views to the feed feed’s social media platforms and website.
Scott
We talk to Julie about her different Instagram feeds and how she developed the feed feeds online community. We explore the company’s event spaces. The feed feeds future facing perspective and how the company plans to get there. If you are looking toe up your instagram game than this is the podcast for you.
Carole
After our conversation with Julie, we have a new segment recipe substitutions. How do you bake a cake without eggs, milk, butter or sugar? What do you do when you’re without any fresh herbs or have run out of spice blends? We also talk about healthy substitutes for sugar and butter or eggs, and finally we give you alternate ingredients for paleo and gluten free diets.
Scott
Have you already entered our $25 Amazon gift card giveaway? Listen up to hear how you can be the winner.
Carole
Welcome to the This Is Yu podcast. Julie.
Julie
Nice to be here. Thanks for having me.
Carole
Thank you. Here’s a shout out to my sisterhood. I know you ladies all have this question. So let’s get the scoop from Julie. Julie, how do you train Dan not to talk back because I have a lot of trouble with Scott, and it really seems that you and Dan seem to work well together.
Julie
That’s funny. Um, yeah. I mean, I think for us, we work really well together because we do very different things at feed feed. So I over see the editorial team and the sales team. He oversees the technology. He does a lot with migrating and pivoting events from in real life events to virtual events. Um, we definitely come together and collaborate on, you know, the creative vision and the voice of the company. But we’re actually I think we’re really lucky that we have very similar tastes. So if we look at a photo or we read an article or we watch a video independent of one another. And then we come together to give someone feedback or, you know, just to discuss between the two of us. Um, we often have the exact same opinion, like, Oh, we think we should bump up the saturation here or, you know, these tacos are too far back into the background. We need to bring them up to the foreground. So we’re really lucky, Um, that we actually just have very similar tastes when it comes to photography and design and, um, even, like, you know, hosting an event.
Carole
Right. Yeah, it’s important to have that visual agreements. Scott, it looks like you want to say something.
Scott
This is what I get out of what Julie just said that it’s actually not me. That’s all I care about.
Carole
Uh, okay, I get it. Well, next.
Scott
Actually, I have what I call my hat story. Carole and I went to a feed feed event in Culver City a little while back, it was for Taylor Farms, and they handed out an awesome feed feet hat and at the time I had just started hiking. And I just wanted to tell you that I wear it all the time. I actually have it sitting here right in front of me because I tried to put it on my head during the interview, but I realized it’s not working because I have headphones on right now. When I’m out walking around the streets whenever I do hiking, I’m always wearing The Feed Feed hat, so I’m getting some awesome promo out for you guys.
Julie
Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, we definitely like to, um, you know, handout or mail out swag to audiences and community members. So thanks so much for repping the brand. Um, my daughter always makes fun of us because, Dan, where is a Feed Feed hat. He basically changes colors of the hat, but that’s about it. Right now he’s wearing a teal green. Um, his signature is usually the black hat, but we also have sweatshirts and T shirts and aprons. So, um, he often has a hat and a T shirt on which my daughter finds just, you know, very embarrassing.
Carole
You know what I should do? I should buy a hat and an apron. And wear only that.
Scott
Yeah, that would get some notice in the neighborhood. Yeah, And people can get these hats on your website. Is that correct?
Julie
Yeah, that’s correct. We do have an online shop, and we sell some products from some makers in our community that we really love. So we’ve got, um, some fermented mustards from dark horse organics. We have some humble cups, which are nice ceramic pieces by an artist friend, Lincoln Main. We sell the aprons as we mentioned in a bunch of other things. Um, on our website.
Carole
I was checking it out last night, actually, and making a wish list.
Scott
I looked over and I saw the teal hat and I went, Wow, I think I might mix it up there a little bit because I have the black hat. Now, that’s the one that I’ve been using.
Julie
You’ll have to give me your address. We’ll send you one.
Scott
Oh, thank you so much. I’ll just try and figure out how I can wear both of them at the same time. One frontwards and one backwards. Okay. What would be your elevator pitch for the Feed Feed?
Julie
Feed Feed is a community of people who love to cook that share their recipes on our website, that share inspiration and what they’re cooking on social media. And they use our hash tag, and that Feed Feed’s editorial team curates the best of that content and remakes a lot of it in our 2 test kitchens in Los Angeles and in New York, and then puts that out via little videos that are very educational. We lean in to education quite a bit for people who are learning to cook. Um, especially now. You know, a lot of people are doing a lot more cooking than they ever have. As well as more sophisticated content for people who have, um, been cooking for a while, but one of better their skills or, you know, maybe start baking sourdough bread, which we’re seeing a lot of these days.
Carole
You did mention that you have kitchens in Brooklyn and in Los Angeles, and you also mention your experiential space. So how can our listeners take advantage of those spaces?
Julie
Yeah, that’s a great question. So in Los Angeles, we have a programming coordinator, and she has, um, you know, up until recently, had a very full schedule of dinners, workshops, you know how toe how to make dumplings like how to fold grape leaves or, you know, a dinner where a chef, um, would come in and make, um, a full dinner, and it would be kind of like a special dinner that you could buy a ticket to. So some of those, all of the events are available on our website. Of course, we’re taking a pause on events in the real world, but in the virtual world were definitely bringing people together through zooms. And also, our content has pivoted quite a bit on instagram. So we’re doing a daily live every single day at noon…
Carole
I saw that.
Julie
giving our audiences you know, that scheduled time and those have been great because we’ve been partnering up with some of the same people that we’ve partnered with in real life events and then, you know, getting to know them in person and, you know, hosting an event together. Now we can comfortably bring them on to live and let them show. You know how they make their famous, you know, whether it’s a ragu sauce for pasta, you know, to our audiences on live.
Carole
Yeah, I was very, very excited to come to the EatChoFood dumpling class. Um, I’ve been speaking with her for a couple months, actually, maybe half a year and was so excited to come and see. And then… it’ll happen soon, right?
Julie
I’m hoping! If not, you know, we could always do a zoom class. I know it’s not the same, but, um, you know, definitely want to continue to provide people educational tips that you know have in her case, you know, we’re teaming up with her for a dumpling workshop, but we have seen, you know, a lot of the same educational pieces of content. In some cases, virtual events are actually you know, you can get more people, you know, you can get people from all over the U. S. Not just people from, you know, Los Angeles. In that case, that are locals. Yeah, but hopefully we’ll get together and have that dumpling workshop with EatChoFood.
Carole
Looking forward to that. But it’s great. You can expand your reach.
Scott
The Feed Feed grew from 1000 to 100,000 instagram followers in the second year alone. What growth advice do you have for a new blogger? Is there a magic bullet?
Julie
I wish. No, um, it’s a lot of hard work. It’s a lot of dedication. So if you’re looking to grow really anywhere, whether it be on Instagram or LinkedIn or Facebook or Pinterest. It’s really about spending time on that platform or even tick talk. We’ve been focused a lot on tick talk in 2020. But in terms of instagram growth, we had to find a lot of great accounts to follow. Engage with those accounts, which means, like, and comment on their posts with thoughtful post. Make sure you’re using good trending hashtags that are relevant to the content that you’re putting out there. Um, I said, find accounts to follow. I want to kind of follow up with that again. I think there’s a lot of people out there that don’t like to follow. You know, several accounts, hundreds of thousands of accounts. Um, we do not subscribe that, anyone who creates good content, we like to follow them. We want to see their content. And, um, you know, in our case, we asked people to share in our hash tag, so I think that definitely helped with visibility of our accounts on Instagram. We now have seven accounts on Instagram, and I believe across all of the accounts close to three million followers. You know, it’s been several years now, and you mentioned the first year was 1000 to 100,000 and then at the next year, I think our main account was right around 1,000,000. So we went from 100,000 to a 1,000,000 in the second year.
Carole
It’s amazing.
Scott
Yeah, exponential growth.
Julie
Yeah.
Carole
So by the end of that second year, how many people were working with the company to be able to get you to that 1,000,000. I couldn’t imagine you staying up 24 hours a day getting a 1,000,000 Instagram followers and commenting on a 1,000,000 post.
Julie
Yeah, it’s a good question. Probably. You know, it was really still Dan and I, um, and probably just wanted 1 or 2 other people at that point. You know, someone Molly who has been with us from the beginning. Molly Adams. Um and then we always would have an intern. Molly and I went to the same culinary school, the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. And so that’s actually how I found Molly. When I was looking to hire my first person, I wanted to find someone that had also gone through culinary school and had, you know, kind of a similar approach to cooking that I have, um and so we would often look for interns through Ice Career Placement, Institute of Culinary Education. And so it was usually just Molly and myself and Dan and, you know, one or two interns.
Carole
We love watching your Feed Feed TV channel because of your hosts. But what are some of the personality traits that people are interested in?
Julie
Yeah, that’s a great question. We’ve talked a lot about education. I do think that people are, you know, and, um, Molly, I mentioned her before. I think she comes at it from a really approachable way of educating our audience. So I think, you know, trust is a big one. They want to be able to trust the host. Humor. also, you know, that definitely brings in a lot of eyeballs and a lot of engagement. You know, some people who are funny, um, you know, but also know their stuff, you know, that’s something that’s important to us. Um, also people who you know have one thing that they’re kind of always there’s a theme that they really love, like Rachel Gurjar. Who’s one of our senior editors. She’s Indian, and so for, you know, for she has a show which is The Spice Is Right. And so it’s always about spice with her, and it’s not necessarily always Indian spices, but people come to trust her recipes and know her through her love of spices. In fact last summer we sent her on a trip to India with a spice partner, Simply Organic, and she got to go to a couple of different regions to see how they grow, black pepper and tumeric, um, and ginger. And so she’s really been able to tell some amazing spice stories just based on, you know, going to that going back to India and going on that trip with a spice partner.
Carole
Wow, that’s amazing. I love traveling in India. I’m gonna go back and watch her shows.
Julie
Yeah.
Scott
When you’re looking at company sponsorships, how do you discern how you’ll mesh with them? Like, what is the most important thing to you? What are the reasons to choose a sponsor and how do you get behind them?
Julie
Yeah, that’s a great question. So, um, basically, it’s whatever is in my fridge, in my pantry, in my freezer. If I don’t like a brands products or I wouldn’t serve that particular product to my kids for breakfast, lunch or dinner, then it’s probably not a good brand fit, you know, personally, I shop, um, organic, local. I go to Farmer’s Markets. Um, I like brands that have really interesting founder stories and missions that they support. Um, so, you know, getting to know a brand and what its priorities are and what its mission is and how it’s sources or how it gives back. That’s sort of what we’re looking for in terms of a brand partner. Um, there are definitely times that, you know, brands have come to us that aren’t necessarily a great fit for The Feed Feed, but they’re actually a great fit for some of our influencers. You know, not every, um, you know, not everyone has is always looking to, for example, shop organic. So, you know, that’s when sometimes we tap influencers who are open to working with some of the brands that maybe aren’t a good editorial fit for us.
Scott
Right.
Carole
So you really spreading the love in the community.
Julie
Yeah, absolutely. I was just gonna say, And that’s actually, you know, you had asked the earlier question about the personalities on The Feed Feed TV. Um, that knowing the people in our community is, you know, and their personalities is actually how I’ve hired all of our staff. So someone like Jake Cohen, who is our editorial director. You know, I’ve known him from Instagram for years and years and, you know, watched what he was doing at other publications, but mostly what he was posting on his own instagram and on his stories. And, you know, I feel like I made a decision to hire Jake. Um, you know, before I even emailed him and said, Hey, are you looking for a job or would you be interested in chatting? Just as I knew his personality, I knew what he would bring to the table. I knew how hard he worked. And so, getting to know people and hiring from within the community has been really beneficial for us, not only just hiring our own staff, but also as we were just chatting about hiring influencers for brand sponsored campaigns.
Carole
Yeah. I mean, really, it’s great that we have Instagram out there now because you really do get to see a little view into everybody’s life. And, yeah, I’ve loved Jake for years, and when he came over to you, I was I I think I actually really went. Oh, my God, Yes, It was really, really exciting. What has the Heritage Radio Network brought to The Feed Feed.
Julie
Yeah. So, Heritage Radio Network is the organization that supports our podcast. So they published our podcast. They are in Bushwick, Brooklyn, which is right around the corner from our studio in Bushwick. They record out of Roberta’s the Pizza Place.
Scott
We’ve been there.
Julie
Yeah, it’s really fun to record in that particular location because there’s a window and people who are eating in the room in Roberta’s they’re actually watching you record the podcast. So it’s really fun. And they’ve been a great partner to us, and we’re just starting now, our second season of our podcast, The Feed Feed.
Scott
After moving to Long Island, you started participating in a C S A, which is farm share. You were looking to sort of think outside of the box with regards to getting your produce are you able to do that, also in Los Angeles now?
Julie
Yeah, absolutely. Like I said before, I shop at the farmer’s markets. So even threw this, you know, shelter at home orders Farmer’s Markets in Los Angeles are open. And so, you know, as long as you have a mask and, um, you are practicing social distancing, you’re able to shop at the farmer’s markets. We have always kind of gravitated to certain farms and farmers both on Long Island and also, um, just by walking around the farmer’s market, we got to know some of the farms that are up, you know, near Santa Barbara that come down and so we kind of know the farms that we like to go to and purchase in fruits and vegetables from every week.
Carole
Yeah, my daughter, who lives out in Joshua Tree. She does that. She has a farm share box delivered every week, and she’s getting to use all of these different produce and vegetables that she’s never used before that I never taught her how to use. So it’s actually a good education for me also.
Julie
Yeah, I mean, that was actually the inspiration for the organization of our website. So if anyone has spent any time on our website, TheFeedFeed.com you’ll see that we organize our content into what we call feeds. So those are basically ingredients or topics, um, or cuisines that we think are really interesting. So an example of a few might be chocolate chip cookies. But another one might be cabbage or broccoli or kale. And the reason that we do that is because I would say that you know, when I shop each week, um, at the farmer’s market here in LA, or if I’m getting my farm share back in New York, I’m basically just getting what looks good is in season is fresh is abundant. Maybe it’s what whatever is, you know, on sale. So, you know, if there’s a big you know, you noticed that a certain farmer’s market, they say, Oh, it’s five for five on cabbage. I might just, you know, grab five, um, cabbage and then realize what the heck am I gonna cabbage? So that’s you know, that’s when I would, you know, basically look to the cabbage feed on our website to run, you know, get inspiration around, you know, maybe I’ll make a sauerkraut or kimchi or, you know, do like stuffed cabbage of, um, you know, or maybe I’ll make some kind of, um, Asian inspired cabbage wraps. So there’s a lot of different ways in which you can, like cook by just starting with one ingredient and seeing where it takes you.
Carole
Right. And your your website definitely gives you so many options. So many, so much inspiration. It’s great. The next question I have for you, Julie is, are marathons a good place to get ideas?
Julie
I definitely like to run, um, and Dan and I chat quite a bit on our runs. We’ve run two marathons. It’s been a while since our last one, but we definitely put in quite a bit of mileage every week, especially when we’re here in Southern California. And we like to run, um, in the hilly neighborhood that we live in and, you know, kind of challenge ourselves. But definitely I mean, back home in New York, we run a lot on the beach, and, um, we’re often kind of talking about, um you know where we want to take the company or, you know, maybe what changes we want to make or a new, um, you know, feature functionality of the website or a new product that we want to put out. Um, you know, those ideas often do come to us on a run, and I think that’s because you’re away from your computer, where away from the kids were not distracted. We’re just having conversations, um, uninterrupted. And, um, you know, and it’s a good way to pass the time when you’re running.
Carole
Scott and I have a nightly walk, and we do have a lot of ideas come out during those times.
Scott
It’s good we’ve been taking our dog out for walks for, like, I don’t know, 45 minutes or something. But recently, he’s got kind of tired of doing that. So our walks are a lot shorter, so we don’t have much time to talk about issues. We’re trying to get him to walk more. Is that what the deal is there? When you worked in digital marketing, what was your focus?
Julie
Um, so my focus was mostly business development, so finding brands that are agency could partner with and then managing our team of producers and project managers and designers to basically bring those ideas to life. So, you know, I was responsible for developing a lot of fun websites and micro sites and even some early social media campaigns.
Scott
Right. And then, obviously, kind of what you built and learn from there you’ve carried over to the Feed Feed?
Julie
Yeah, exactly. I like to say that Feed Feed is a good sort of marriage of my passion, for all things digital and social. And then my love of food and cooking.
Scott
Yeah, absolutely. And it shows too on your website.
Julie
Thank you.
Carole
Yeah. And following up on that. So it’s really a joy to look through their website. I just love to look at all the photos. A lot of bloggers would love to get their photos and recipes on the Feed Feed. Does your company have any plans to expand your viewers photography knowledge, like maybe how to take photos? Anything regarding learning about photography?
Julie
Yeah, we have definitely put out sort of, like photo guidelines, and we’ve recently one of the features that Dan has worked really hard on, um, with our tech team over the last several months is registrations. So now you can log in and you can actually submit your recipes directly to our website. And for those people who do submit recipes, we basically tried to feature your recipes, whether it’s in an email newsletter or in our instagram stories or, um, you know, on our website as the recipe of the day, which also is published on Google Home through the Google assistant and Amazon Alexa, where we have voice actions and both of those places. So anyone who registers and then submits content to our website, um, definitely. You know, we try to feature and then, you know, in cases of people whose photography might not fit our aesthetic, our editorial team will remake some of the best recipes. But definitely we have given out some guidelines, and we do have blogger guidelines that we share if someone requests them. Um, sort of what we’re looking for in food photography.
Scott
And then getting more into, ah, personal note with yourself, Which hurdles have you personally faced and how did you overcome them?
Julie
That’s a good question. I think you know, um, not necessarily any challenges I would, you know, directly, correlate. But one thing that I would say is that, um, you know, we really try to keep like ego out of what we do, And, um so if we launch something and maybe it’s not working, you know, we decide to tweak it. Um, we really have followed that, like, lean startup models since the beginning. And that’s basically like, you know, you put something out there, you get customer feedback, you monitor how it’s performing, um, you pivot, you change, you adopt or you lean into it if it’s working really well. So we try to kind of follow that model. And so I think that you know the other thing. And I’ve heard a lot of other founders say this is that sometimes when we have an idea, for example, we might have an idea when we’re out on a run and then we’ll come back. And, you know, maybe I’m having a conversation like this one, or we’re talking to a brand about something that we could do. We’ll just say like we’re going to do this and when once you put it out there and you say that you’re going to do something like we’re just the kind of people that we do, whatever we need to do in order to make that happen. Um, so I think, you know, for me, I just try not to, you know, I just try to look at everything kind of critically and not, you know, have any sort of emotion or ego tied into, you know, the performance of something. If it’s working, it’s great. If it isn’t, how can we fix it? How can we make it better?
Scott
You’re not marrying any of your ideas. You’re just able to throw a lot of different ideas and you’re able to capture what’s working and just keep focusing and put more energy under what’s working. And then what’s not working. You just let that stuff go?
Carole
Yeah. You know, there haven’t been too many things that have stopped working. I think that what we’ve done is that we’ve just tried to build on things. You know, events is a good example of that. Like, you know, over the past couple of years, we’ve hosted probably over 100 events across the country, some in Canada, some even in Europe. And it, you know, if you had asked me four years ago, you know, would Feed Feed, be hosting events in a couple of years, I would have said, no, I don’t think so. I mean, you know, we’re a digital publication. We’re a social media community. Um, you know, that is who we are. And, you know, that’s how we’re able to partner with brands and, you know, and monetize, you know, But then they’re just, you know, basically just through our own personal travel, what we actually did was um we started hosting meet ups, so we would just if we were on vacation in a city, we would just go into our database and say, oh, we know a lot of people in the city and we would shoot a big an email out to people who were in our database, and said that, hey, we’re gonna be in, you know, Minneapolis. You know, we’d love to meet up, or Cleveland, Ohio, if you know we were there, Um, and it was amazing how many people would come out and, you know, meet us and, you know, also had told us about the ways in which they connected with other Feed Feed, community members and then, you know, very quickly we realized, you know, people love to get together outside of following people on social media. We could be, um you know, we could do that. And so it sort of the same thing with our Brooklyn space, like, you know, our It’s our office, but it’s set up more like a huge open loft apartment space. Same with our Los Angeles space so that we can have events or workshops or panel discussions or really anything to bring people together in real life. Um, and that was just something that we said, you know, we’re gonna start doing more events and then, you know, the first year we probably had 40 events. Um, and last year, you know, well, over 50.
Carole
So you’ve kind of merged, your social media experience with some experiential space is but social media is really about relationship building. And now that we can only have relationships on social media during this time and in the future, it seems like people will be going online even more. How can communities continue to thrive?
Julie
Yeah. I mean, I think that people can continue to thrive by, you know, having hosting and participating in virtual events. I think that, you know, it’s sort of the next best thing. And in some cases, as I mentioned earlier, you know, we could host a virtual, we have a virtual wine night coming up, for example. And we’re partnering with a sommelier, and we’re doing wine tastings and cheese and fruit and chocolate and…
Scott
That’s a great idea.!
Julie
Yeah, so we’re sending everyone a box of what they need and then sending through Wine.com the wines that they’re going to be tasting, and then we’re creating, like, a nice guide of, um, you know, from the sommelier that we’ve partnered with, and these people that are participating are influencers from all over the U. S. Now, if I had sold this program through to a brand in Los Angeles, for example or that wanted to have an event in Los Angeles, that would have been great. And we have gotten those people together in real life. Um, but the benefit of having a virtual event is that this brand sells their wine across the entire U. S. So why not, instead of just having an event in New York or L A, because we’re not able to right now, you know, get influencers together that are located in cities all over the U. S. on a zoom. Um, it’s actually pretty exciting because they may have followed those other influencers, you know, for the last several years on social media, but never would have had a chance to maybe leave Portland, Oregon, and go to an event in Miami. But here we are with an event where we’ll have someone from Portland and someone from Miami. So I think there’s some benefits to, you know, to virtual events. And, um, you just have to be creative. And, you know, as you mentioned, you know, we always have all of our, um event attendees walk away with a really nice gift bag. So now we’ll just be sending those out to the event attendees that are virtual event attendees beforehand. And, um, you know, it’ll be disappointing not to meet everyone in person, but at least we’re able to still connect in the digital space.
Carole
Right. That sounds really awesome. That’s a fantastic idea.
Scott
Yeah, it’s a great idea. And then that wine event, when exactly is that happening?
Julie
The next event that I talked about, we actually don’t have the date yet, but it will be in early June, so I’ll let you know.
Scott
Okay, Great. So people can just check on Feed, Feed the website and they’ll see upcoming events.
Julie
Yeah, there’s an events page.
Scott
Okay. Great.
Carole
Back in 2015 Dara and I, we had a meeting with the Food Network, and they admitted that the programs they that did the best were the ones that appealed to, um, you know, wide range of viewers. So people were interested in a new take on mac and cheese or on brownies or chocolate chip cookies. So the Feed Feed has given so many people the ability to be creative and to stand out. So what are some of the support resources that you find are available to help bloggers grow?
Julie
Yeah, that’s a good question. Um, I think one thing that bloggers do a really good job of, um is making relationships with other bloggers. So, um, you know, they faced seek out other like minded, um, cooks or bakers who were doing a lot of the same kinds of things that they’re doing, and they support, um, you know, the bloggers that we no well, that have launched cookbooks, and written cookbooks. They do a great job of sending their cookbooks to all of the other bloggers out there and supporting one another. When they’re cookbooks, launch. They do, you know, ah, lot of fun, virtual, I would say, like, um, theme nights. So maybe it’s like cupcake night. And like a group of bloggers will, you know, kind of teasing out for weeks like I’ve teamed up with these other bloggers and we’re all going to be on instagram, and we’re all gonna be making cupcakes or cookies or, you know, um, maybe it’s even like pasta, and so they’ll each be posting their favorite pasta or cupcake recipe, and they’ll ask other people to participate. And they usually get a lot of traction. Like if you look. I talked a little bit about growth on Instagram earlier. If you look at hash tags, even something like that, where it’s a group of, you know, eight or 10 bloggers that might come together and you know I don’t know, it’s maybe it’s like March 20th is cupcake night, and that’s the hashtag you look on the hashtag and then you look at the posts that have been posted on that tag, and then you compare that to the other posts on that same individuals account, you’ll see that they get a lot more traction. And so I think, you know, being creative and developing relationships and building out a community because blogging is hard. You know, most bloggers are doing it in their kitchens, and I think that’s the other thing, too. Is that you know, I think we try to provide, you know, photography, feedback and recommendations to our community, and I think they get a lot of that, um, from each other as well. So you know, they might send off a photo to their friend, who’s a fellow blogger and say, like, which one of these do you like better. And actually using social media, I see a lot of in instagram stories. It’s like someone will be saying like, today we I was shooting or we were shooting. If it’s like a group of two people that were blogging together, and here’s some of the photos that we shot, which one do you like better A or B and actually really love, um, seeing when bloggers air engaging their audience like that.
Carole
So, really, it’s just the same as in the real life. You know, virtual life, you’re communicating in real life, you’re communicating. So it’s just a new way of communication with everyone.
Julie
Yep.
Scott
If you could have anyone in history come to demonstrate in your Feed Feed community space, who would it be? And that could be alive or passed on?
Julie
That’s a really good question. I think, Um, if you know Sammy Tamimi and, um, Ottolenghi who you have restaurants in, um London and have published several cookbooks, probably the two of them cooking together would be really special.
Carole
So that’s really interesting, because I was telling you that my daughter in Joshua Tree gets a produce box. And for Christmas, I actually got her The Simple Cookbook and one of the other Ottolenghi cookbooks. So she actually, whenever she uses that, which is weekly, she’ll send me a photo of what she’s cooked out of those cookbooks. So let’s make that happen that you’ll bring them here and I’ll bring my daughter to your space.
Julie
That’d be amazing.
Carole
Okay, so now we have a lightning round. So just some quick fire questions. Just a few.
Scott
Yeah. They’re just sort of, like, one off answer kind of things. You don’t have to spend a lot of time on it.
Julie
Okay.
Scott
First band you were really into?
Julie
The Rolling Stones.
Carole
Oh, very cool. Best book you ever read?
Julie
Atlas shrugged.
Scott
What’s something for which you are deeply grateful for right now?
Julie
My three kids.
Scott
Your favorite meal?
Julie
That’s really tough. Probably homemade pizza.
Scott
What time will you wake up next Sunday morning?
Julie
As latest possible. Which probably means…
Carole
With three kids. What does that mean?
Julie
Well, they’re getting older, so that means probably eight o’clock.
Carole
Who was your favorite friends character?
Julie
Rachel.
Scott
Favorite place on Earth.
Julie
Southern France.
Carole
Well, thank you! Julie, if you could give us some ways that our listeners can connect with you, that would be great.
Julie
Yes. So I mentioned earlier. We have seven accounts on Instagram. The most popular is @TheFeedFeed where we publish all kinds of food content. But if you’re vegan, we have @TheFeedFeed.Vegan We also have gluten free chocolate cocktails and baking. Um, you can also follow us on Tik Tok and on, um, Pinterest and YouTube and Facebook. And our website is TheFeedFeed.com
Carole
Excellent. Thank you so much. We really appreciate your time, Julie.
Julie
Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me.
Scott
It was great meeting you. We look forward for some great things happening at Feed Feed.
Julie
Thank you. I really appreciate that. Looking forward, to seeing you guys again in real life sometime. Hopefully soon.
Carole
Okay, great.
Scott
Thanks so much. Bye now!
Julie
All right. Thank you. Bye.
Carole
Thank you so much to Julie for joining us in today’s conversation. We really appreciate your unique social media and business expertise. We loved learning about your company’s exponential business growth. And now I’m so excited to explore all your social media outlets, so I can find brand new inspiration for our meals. It’s reassuring to know that we’ll be able to choose any ingredient, and peruse hundreds of recipes crowd sourced from your expansive and diverse community from across the globe.
Scott
We’re all stuck in our houses at this time of Covad 19 and we try to stay out of public contact as much as possible. This means that many of us can’t run to the grocery store every few days to pick up all the ingredients we need. Subsequently, our pantries are running low. Today, we have some great ideas for ingredient substitution, including paleo and gluten free diets. Make sure you check out our substitution list on our recipe substitutions blog post at ThisIsYu.com.
Carole
So you’ve gathered all the ingredients to bake something comforting, and then you realize you’re missing just one ingredient. Well, here’s some ideas. We will name the substitution, but all the specific amounts could make for some really tedious podcast listening. But get your ideas here and then get the specific ingredient ratios in our blog post.
Scott
If you are missing baking powder, you can always substitute baking soda paired with cream of tartar.
Carole
Looking for something puckery and yellow but don’t have the lemon at home. Substitute vinegar for lemon juice.
Julie
If you want to make a cake, but you don’t have cake flour. For every one cup of cake flour, substitute one cup less two tablespoons of all purpose flour. Make sure you sift it to get a light cake texture.
Carole
So last week, Dara used corn syrup to make salted caramel shortbread cookies. I actually had to go to several stores to try to find corn syrup, but for every cup of corn syrup, I could have actually used 1 and 1/4 cups of sugar with 1/3 of a cup of water.
Scott
A lot of time sugars can be used interchangeably, but some require additions or different amounts to give a similar taste. For example, packed brown sugar can be replaced with granulated sugar and molasses.
Carole
If you need one cup of powdered sugar, did you know you can actually substitute one cup of sugar with 1/3 of a teaspoon of corn starch? What you have to do is blend it in the blender in batches to give it the lightness you achieve with powdered sugar.
Scott
If you’ve run out of sugar, here are a few replacements. You can use pure vanilla extract for cakes, cookies and brownies.
Carole
Of course, you can always use a sugar substitute like stevia. Stevia is quite concentrated, so for every tablespoon of sugar, you only need an eighth of a teaspoon of stevia.
Scott
Agave nectar is also a good replacement for sugar. I’ve also used honey instead of sugar.
Carole
Now let’s look at fat and oil substitution. The consistency of fats and oils matters. For butter, you can replace it with 7/8 of a cup of vegetable oil with 1/2 a teaspoon of salt or non fat Greek yogurt, in cakes, muffins and cookies. I’ve actually done this before, and I love the tanginess that the yogurt provides.
Scott
A lot of people replace oil with an equivalent amount of apple sauce in baking. This feels good in regards to your heart health.
Carole
Or for your sandwich, replace that butter with an equivalent amount of mashed avocado. Mmm I love avocado. This would be so awesome. There have been times when I’ve run out of eggs, and in the old days people would easily run over to their neighbors house to borrow one. But with social distancing, that’s not possible anymore. Here are some great ideas to use as substitution for eggs. When baking, eggs provide structure and stability in a batter, they help thicken sauces and they add moisture. Try these replacements when baking. For one egg, you can use water with baking powder or half a banana or quarter cup of apple sauce or pureed tofu with flour or 1/4 cup yogurt or 1/2 cup buttermilk. Or you can use vegetable oil or corn starch with water.
Scott
And just let you guys know there is no quiz on this.
Carole
There are a lot of great substitutes for dairy. I find this is a category that I end up doing a lot of replacements for. If you don’t have buttermilk, you can always, for each cup of milk or cream, add one tablespoon lemon juice or distilled white vinegar. Stir and then it starts to curdle like buttermilk. I make my buttermilk waffles this way, and I find no difference in the lightness or taste of them.
Scott
Buttermilk can always be replaced with plain yogurt 1 to 1.
Carole
Sliced mozzarella can be replaced with sliced tofu for sandwiches or crackers. And you can replace sour cream with pureed silken tofu.
Scott
For a yummy dessert, replace half a cup of ice cream with 1/2 a cup of frozen blended bananas. This is really delicious and tricks your taste buds. Woohoo!
Carole
When you need spice substitution, try replacing one tablespoon of fresh herbs with one teaspoon of dried herbs. Here are a couple spice blend substitution.
Scott
Allspice can be made from cinnamon, ginger and cloves.
Carole
Apple pie spice is made from, ground cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and a dash of ground cloves.
Scott
Italian a season is a 1/3 a ratio each of basil, oregano and a rosa mary!
Carole
Poultry seasoning is 3/4 ratio sage and 1/4 ratio time. One teaspoon pumpkin pie spice is made from ground cinnamon, ginger, allspice and nutmeg.
Scott
Chinese five spice powder can be replaced with equal amounts of cinnamon, cloves, fennel, and star anise, which is funny because it’s only four spices.
Carole
Paleo substitution is right here right now. Use coconut aminos instead of soy sauce. Use coconut sugar instead of granulated sugar. Use almond or oat milk instead of cow’s milk. Use pulsed cauliflower flower instead of rice. Zucchini or carrot noodles can be used instead of pasta. And finally use coconut oil instead of vegetable oil.
Scott
Finally, some gluten free substitution. Dara did a whole gluten free vegan cookie box in her deliveries this week. And man, were they good. She didn’t use a single egg, flour or butter. You can use pureed black beans for flower in brownies, you can use spaghetti squash for pasta, quinoa for couscous, tamari for soy, coconut oil for butter and tapioca starch for flour.
Carole
That’s a lot of substitution. Check out the blog post for many more. We’d love to hear what substitution is you make in your daily cooking.
Scott
Who doesn’t like free money? I do. I do. I do. Have you entered our give away already? Through May 19th, 2020, enter our give away for a $25 Amazon gift card. It’s simple. All you have to do is go to Apple Podcasts subscribe to and leave a review of – This Is Yu Podcast. We will choose our favorite review and announce the winner on May 19th on the podcast.
Carole
Give us your feedback. Leave a message for us on the This Is Yu Hotline at 562 291-6037 – it’s anonymous. Just leave a message with your thoughts. You can also direct message us on Facebook or Instagram or email us at Carole@ThisIsYu.com or Scott @ThisIsYu.com
Scott
Our home base is www.ThisIsYu.com
Carole
Instagram is @ThisIsYuOfficial
Scott
Not only can you belong to the Feed Feed community. Join the This Is Yu V I P Community on Facebook.
Carole
Thanks for being a part of that. This is you community. We are grateful for you.
Scott
Thanks for listening, guys. Say bye bye or something.
Carole
I know, But last time you said that I always have to get the last word and I don’t have to OK, bye bye.
