#menu stories

[feelingandform]

(Menu Stories)

[nomiku]

Lots of tasty prizes are on the line!

Last year, Nomiku was featured on Menu Stories as the 9th episode! Now our friends at Menu Stories are now 25 episodes deep. #squad

To celebrate, Menu Stories is giving away prizes to people who subscribe (at the link above) by 4/25 (get it, the 25th for the 25th episode)?

Prizes include apparel, gift cards and certificates, and a discount on a WiFi Nom!

Be sure to subscribe, listen to the stories behind the food and restaurants we all love (as well as the foodtech!). 

Happy almost Friday, The Nom Team

[rebeccasigo]

Passion projects & doing things because you enjoy them

A few weeks ago, I mentioned to a mentor of mine, Charles Hudson, that I was thinking about working on a podcast that revealed the stories behind the restaurants who bring us the food we love. I originally came up with the idea as a marketing tactic for the startup I was working on with my cofounder, which we decided to shut down. But, something about this podcast made me want to continue with it (a big reason was some incredible restaurants had already agreed to participate and didn’t care that it was no longer going to be related to Terrapn - I couldn’t give up the opportunity to speak with them). 

I found myself justifying the decision to Charles. I started pitching to him why this “made sense” for me to do. That it would maybe even turn into the beginnings of another business. That it had value. The money kind.

He stopped me and said, “Rebecca, it’s okay for you to do some things simply because you enjoy them. Not everything you do has to be a business.”

I should mention that Charles is a brilliant venture capitalist with an MBA from Stanford. He isn’t someone who exactly hates money or the idea of making a lot of it. Still, even he was there to remind me that life and our careers are not just about justifying everything we do in terms of monetary value. 

How did I get here? How did I, someone who studied creative fiction writing in college and (for crying out loud!) went to public health school, get so sucked into the money-hungry pits of San Francisco’s tech culture that I felt like I had to justify every move I made by its ROI? How did I get to a place where a (very wise and not exactly stereotypical) VC was telling me to take it down a notch?

Recently, Ryan Hoover posted something along the same vein, which really struck me:

So, I’m building and creating Menu Stories, a collection of multi media stories about the people and restaurants behind the food we love. As a side project. Not as a business. For myself. Because I like it. No, I love it. I get to write, I get to take photographs, I get to code, I get to design, and I get to do something else I really love: talk to people and listen to their stories. Some of them have even made me cry. All of them have made me laugh.

In studying fiction writing in college, I found I was more fascinated with the real stories that happen - and have happened - all around us, in our real world. There are too many stories that are truly stranger than fiction. Stories that need to be heard. 

Certainly, there could be a more dramatic focal point I could have chosen than the stories of restaurants in my own community, but I fell in love with this community through working on Terrapn and it makes me happy to learn more about it and get to know the people that comprise it. It makes me even happier to think I’m facilitating the telling of their stories to people who want to hear them.

Something I miss about my writing classes are the critiques. If you’re so kind and are into that sort of thing, I’d love to hear your critique of the Menu Stories podcast: hello at menustories dot com (and I’m also happy to take restaurant interview suggestions). I’m trying to keep a weekly release schedule, so look for fresh content at that rate, if I can keep it up. 

See you on Menu Stories, where I am reveling in the the fun of it all.