Tuesday, January 25th, 2011
It's been nearly two years after grad school and I'm finally figuring things out. The first year out, I searched for marketing jobs, Internet marketing positions, office support positions, you name it. As a temporary office worker, I worked in countless offices trying to see if anything struck a chord. Nothing. I was feeling like I needed something fulfilling since I wasn't being fulfilled by my career. I wasn't feeling passionate about a career in marketing which is what I thought I wanted. I decided to go back to the drawing board and I started pursuing some of my many interests. The first thing I decided to pursue was learning html because it was something I always wanted to learn and I wanted to start a webpage. My boyfriend who is a software engineer suggested that I start a blog if I wanted to learn because I would have a reason to keep updating it and in the process learn html and css. In the beginning, I started a blog on blogspot where I wrote about anything that came to mind. As I continued to post articles I could see that the majority of my posts were about food. I knew that successful blogs were focused on a specific theme or subject so I decided to focus on Japanese food. Although I love all types of food, it's what I know best. I also grew tired of blogspot because I didn't have a lot of freedom to edit the html so I decided I would become a serious blogger and started my website
umamitopia.
Cooking as always been a passion of mine but I never thought I would pursue a career in it because I saw it more as a necessity. I also thought I would be limited to being a chef at a restaurant, which I didn't want to do. It was about this time that I had an alumni event for my graduate program and I went hoping to forage some connections by networking but I ended up just hanging out with my friends. One of my friends told me she was starting a culinary program. My jaw dropped because I couldn't imagine going back for more school but the more I thought about it, it made sense for her. At the same time I started to realize that there are so many other jobs than just being a chef in the food industry. The wheels began to turn and I started thinking about all the possibilities. I was so excited because I finally figured out where I wanted my career to lead which was the food industry. (Yes, still vary broad but at least I had an industry.) It was weird because it was one of those things that felt was like an epiphany but at the same time it felt like it was sitting in front of me the whole time.
I called my friend in culinary school (the only person who I knew that could relate to me) and I told her about a dream I had to start my own business. She was interested so we decided to figure out a way to start our own food business. We spent countless hours researching ideas such as food trucks, carts, catering and finally decided on a bento business where we would distribute them at farmer's markets. With our idea ready to go, we decided to start developing recipes and hold some focus groups. Below is a photo of our Authentic Japanese bento at our second focus group event last summer.
Summer Japanese Bento: Chicken teriyaki over white rice, Earl Grey cookie with lemon creme, mini tomato salad, green beans with goma miso sauce, Japanese-style potato salad, mini tofu burger, soy sauce egg and carrot garnishes.
