We recently connected with Alexandra Connett and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Alexandra thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Talk to us about building your team? What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?

When we launched, we didn’t have much room in our budget for employees. Instead we partnered with several colleges and designed the Foodist Internship Program. Interns spent one semester learning every step of recipe video production. At the end of the semester, each intern was paired with a food brand to conceptualize, film and edit a food video for. These videos were presented to the business owners at our end of year intern showcase party.

This program gave students hands-on experience and was a fantastic recruiting funnel for us. We ended up hiring several of our interns to become part of our team, one of which has been with us for over 3 years now as our Culinary Director.

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

In short, we make food videos and ensure they get seen. With our world-class kitchen studio and team of extraordinary creatives, we create recipe videos, stop motion films, cinemagraphs, and full kitchen studio shoots. Foodist Films cut our teeth in the hands and pans “tasty style” recipe video revolution. Creating these recipe videos for brands you see in grocery stores remains a core component of our business. But as food video styles evolve, we continue to push the edge of what it means to be a helpful accompaniment to someone’s shopping, cooking, and eating experience.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

Most people laugh when I say, “we were a match made in mustard”. Steve and I met driving the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. We were both hired right out of college and were partnered together to drive the 26 foot long hot dog on wheels across the country. It was a spontaneous and creative position that set the foundation for our decade long partnership, in both business and life.

Sometimes I feel like that year on the road, traveling together in such close quarters, gave us an expedited boost to our working relationship. While driving the Wienermobile, we learned how to navigate much more than just the hot dog highways of America. We planned events, connected with people in a new city every week, spoke on television and managed crowds of people everywhere we went. It required interpersonal skills, setting expectations with each other, taking risks and collaboration –all with a weenie whistle in-hand. After a year of spreading miles of smiles, starting a food business together seemed like a natural progression in building upon our strong and unique partnership that happened to begin with a giant hotdog!

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

I started experimenting with making food videos when I was in college and ended up being hired by the campus dining services to create a video series about easy recipes that could be made in a college dorm room. I never imagined that 12 years later I would be running a business that specializes in creating recipe videos!

I was never told that a job like this existed or could be possible, but I loved combining my 2 passions–cooking and creating videos. I started making them for fun and then slowly began to meet the food businesses and brands who needed the content. This was around the same time when “Tasty-style recipe videos” blew up on social media.

However, before this became a full time job for me, I did my fair share of side-hustling. I led grocery store food demos for several different food brands in Austin, TX and worked as a Production Assistant on any video shoot I could get my hands on. I immersed myself in as many food and video related projects as possible, while constantly trying to make my own food videos look more polished and professional.

The first film space I rented was 100 sq. ft. It was in an artist warehouse with no air conditioning, no windows, and no sink (see attached photo). As my video style was refined, I was able to work with higher paying clients and eventually transition to making recipe videos full time. As our client list continued to grow, my partner and co-founder, Steve Ray, provided structure to the business. In 2017, we moved Foodist Films to St. Paul, Minnesota.

Together we were able to grow Foodist Films to what it is today– the first farm-to-film solar powered food video agency in the WORLD! We just completed a restoration on a 115 year old building in Saint Paul, MN and converted it into our new kitchen studio (see attached photos). The space includes a large garden lot that will be the future location of our green house and herb garden. Our fresh vegetables will be featured in our food videos and our cameras will be powered by the sun. We can’t wait!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.foodistfilms.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/foodistfilms/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-connett/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@foodistfilms
• Other: We share most of our portfolio work at: https://vimeo.com/foodistfilms

Image Credits
Photo credits: Rachel Arnold, Foodist Photographer & Stylist