We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Anïsa Lewis. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Anïsa below.

Hi Anïsa , thanks for joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I tell people I made this job up for myself, but in reality, this is the job I concocted for my mother, Michelle Lewis, who is no longer with us. She was a master gardener, she taught cooking classes and was very active in my hometown community. I would tell her about my dream job for her and she always said, “This sounds like something that you should do.” I always brushed it off because I didn’t believe that was my path, although I was doing very similar things to what she was doing. My mother was killed in a car accident in 2018 by a driver who was having a diabetic episode but got in the car anyway. I was in the Peace Corps at the time, and I of course came home to bury my mother, but I couldn’t go back to Armenia; I was completely engulfed in grief, and struggled a lot. There were a lot of days I would stay in bed.

I eventually went back to the restaurant industry, but when the pandemic hit, I was sure I had to find another life solution.

I started Unsolicited Cooking during the Covid-19 shutdown. My focus has always been healthy comfort food. I was just like everyone else in the fact that I was stuck in the house with nothing to do for a long time. I made a lot of sourdough bread, taught myself how to make pasta, baked cakes and cookies, etc. I started getting into making different styles of food like Vietnamese, Korean and Nigerian recipes. People kept asking me if they could buy my food or if I could teach them how to make what I was making. I didn’t think I knew what I was doing, so I joined a business group from someone I knew who came up with classes to do it (Business Sh*t with Laura Iverson). I am someone who likes to do things without having to completely discover the wheel, so I decide, after taking the workshop with Laura, to take it further with a free online business class from Operation HOPE (https://operationhope.org/). I knew I wanted to start a business because, after 26 years or so in the restaurant/hospitality business, I just didn’t really want to go back. I was burned out before the shut down, to be honest, working a high volume front of the house serving job. From my classes at Operation HOPE, I quickly realized that I knew how to do SO many things already: light marketing from my time at AT&T advertising, simple website building that I learned when I built a website for fundraising, and I had a big list of contacts and resources already. I used the resources that were available to me and that is how Unsolicited Cooking was born, but it is changing every year.

I started with cooking classes online that were free, but because people kept asking me to cook for them, I quickly expanded into a community kitchen, Leaven, a WOC owned business that focuses on women led food businesses. I focused a lot on meal prep and parties but I also started doing bigger group dinners and retreats. I started teaching cooking classes privately and also at a cooking school. I also began working for Community Farmers Markets as an Educational Chef. Even though I was doing all of this, it didn’t feel like I had a solid purpose. That is, until I started working at a school.

The school is also a farm that wasn’t using its certified organic produce in the school lunch program. When I toured the school, I immediately saw that I could personally change lives by doing exactly what I do best. I basically told them they should give me that responsibility, and my Farm to Cafeteria program was born. The school was already doing something that I always believed should be done in schools: they make the school farm part of the curriculum for all grades. Those kids learn how to grow food and it comes naturally to them. I turn a lot of the produce that is being grown at the school farm into lunch for the kids, grades Pre-k to 12th. So, just to keep it real, I am an Educational Chef, a Private Chef and a Gourmet Lunch Lady. I love it. And I won’t stop talking about it to anyone who listens.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I got into my industry because I didn’t want to work as a server in a restaurant anymore, and also, I couldn’t seem to get a job in the field that I thought I wanted to be in, which was copy writing and editing. Every time I was doing writing or editing jobs, I was wishing that I was doing something food related anyway, so this was a natural step for me. The services that I provide are cooking classes and demos, private chef work/meal prep and a farm to cafeteria school lunch program. The problems that I solve for my clients have everything to do with their having more creative, healthy meal options, whether it is for a workout meal prep client, a big party or a retreat. I also make the best carrot cake around.
I think I am most proud of the flexibility and diversity of what I offer. A lot of people get annoyed with having to provide gluten free, grain free, vegan and allergen free food. I take it personally, as it is a challenge, and it is one of my specialties. Making allergen free food or cooking food that is restrictive but still delicious is something that I take a lot of pride in.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn some advice I’d taken that just doesn’t work: “You have to do everything yourself, keep quiet about what you’re doing until you succeed. Keep all of your ideas to yourself.” People in many aspects of my life told me that growing up, and as an adult. It’s just not true. The best way to not succeed is to refuse help and refuse networking. Believing you can just do everything yourself is a nice easy road to burnout, first of all, and second of all, there is not one person on the planet that knows everything about everything. I briefly did that, but, like I said, I was getting burned out. I started talking about it and I tapped into my community. I found a mentor in an amazing established woman chef who I already knew. She was doing work that I admired so I asked her if I could call her if I needed any advice, and she quickly agreed. I realized that people were listening to me. I started getting more business and help. Now, I am pretty vocal about what I do, and I truly believe that is the reason why I have a good network. If something is difficult for me and is taking up a lot of my time, I now try to branch out to people who I’ve networked with and also people who are equally vocal about what they do. Not only do I get what I need, I also help other small businesses get what they need by becoming a client of theirs. I am, of course, not perfect at this, and I still have some unlearning to do, but when I stopped keeping what I was doing to myself, I had an easier, more productive and fun time.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When I returned from Peace Corps, I had to completely figure out what I was going to do when it came to just about everything in my life. I had it in my mind that I was going to use my time in Peace Corps to get more experience teaching English, then just do that. When my mother passed, it suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t want to be that far from home, potentially all alone. It just didn’t make sense anymore. So, I came back to the US and continued what I was doing before, which was waiting tables at a busy restaurant. I was also working through therapy to help me get a handle on my grief, confusion and anxiety. I was doing okay, not great, but when the pandemic hit, I had to seriously consider what I was doing in this new world we were living in. My whole entire industry as I knew it crashed and burned. Because of the shut down, the time I had not working proved to be an incubation period of what was to come; I did a lot of planning and studying, seeking out and manifesting what I needed. I went from not knowing what to do to stepping out and running a business in less than a year. It was a lot of work, but I had a lot of great guidance and also a pretty awesome mentor who helped me move forward when I was unsure or scared.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.unsolicitedcooking.com
• Instagram: @unsolicitedcooking
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/an%C3%AFsa-lewis-31157a28/

Image Credits

John Whittemore