We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Totinyana Pinckney a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Totinyana , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s jump to the end – what do you want to be remembered for?

I hope that my Legacy will be that I encouraged Woman Of color to have Faith in your dreams! Never give up and Remember what you prayed for and embrace it.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a Low Country girl from a small town in South Carolina called Pineville. My family on boths sides all knew to well how to cook just about anything so cooking has never been unfamiliar to me. My parents and grand parents would have me cooking full breakfast and dinners by 7 or 8 years old. Honestly my Chef journey was not a childhood dream of mines. I wanted to join the Military in hopes of becoming a State Trooper after a few years of service. I did join the Military but decided that I loved people so much that I wanted to help them Hands On which in turn lead me to the Healthcare field where I spent over 20 years. About 5 years ago I lost my job and had to find a way to bring in income, especially the kind of income that I was already accustomed to. I knew that I could cook well and that I had a lot of people who loved my cooking already so I started selling seafood boils and other seafood plates. Every holiday or special event folks would request that I make them something! This is when I fell in love with cooking and decided to cater and host other events part time until I found another job. I found another job in the Healthcare field over the years and tried to juggle both my career and catering business at once but it became to overwhelming for me….Thats when I made the decision to become a Chef full-time. This has been the BEST decision that I have ever made. Now I can focus completely on excelling in my passion and putting smiles on peoples faces with food. I would have never thought in a million years that I would be running my own business.
My business is a combination of Meal Prep services and Catering services. People often ask me what my “Specialty” is with food and I gladly inform them that I have none. My skills and talents are limitless and I accept the challange of cooking anything someone may request.

Allow Me To Help Take A Load Off!!

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

Yes. I began cooking and selling seafood boils and plates after I lost my job a few years ago. When you go from a steady paycheck to how am I going to get a check…..life forces you to use your God given talent and generational gifts if you are lucky enough to have any. After I began to sell plates and the word got out about how good my food was I couldn’t back out of it. One, because I became better at my quality and skills for cooking and Two, my clientle was so high that I started making more money on the side than I did full time. But my body got exhausted and I had to make a choice. I left my full-time job back in August of 2022 and that has been the best decision that Ive ever made for my Business.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

My social media page honeslty needs help so I cant really answer this. But the reason I responded to the question is in hopes of someone guiding me into the right direction.

As far as my current audience I think most of them were generated from friends that told another friend to tell their friends about it. I do also advertise my social media page info on my flyer and business cards.

@CarolinaKreationzllc on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok

Contact Info:

• Instagram: www.instagram.com/carolinakreationzllc
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/CarolinaKreationz