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

Alright, Briana thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

The biggest risk I have taken lately has been to go forward with a complete rebrand of my business after only re-launching the current version 5 years ago. After the pandemic I learned so much about my abilities as a business owner, and I learned how to push through slow times. Now rebranding is a big risk because since 2021 I have made a name for my business/brand and people were just started to know me, my business name, and my business values however I had to take a big risk of rebranding to ensure my business & brand matched each other and that my advertising would truly capture my target market. It took about 4 months of working with a design team, and another 4 months of figuring out all the background details for this new brand to come to fruition and I could not be happier with my choice to rebrand!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hey new readers! Everyone calls me Chef Bria and i’m a Anime loving, single 31 year old female that started my business from the ground up with no funds and virtually no support beyond my immediate family. I don’t come from a silver spoon and learned fast that I had to find a way to make extra money on the side and luckily for me I was given the gift of being a good cook. I took it, and ran with it to create a full service catering company and have now been in business for almost 10 years. Being a business owner isn’t all sunshine and rainbows like social media may make it seem but its worth every tear shed, and every aching back worn out in my opinion. The reward is worth the risk. I love being able to make my clients smile through food, and taking immense stress off their backs for all their events whether birthday parties or weddings. I’m set apart from other full service catering companies because I go all in for my clients and am always available for all their needs. I’m most proud of my ability to hire within my own community including hiring the youth at very high wages to ensure their success. I would love for my potential clients to know that when you book with me you’re talking to a real person not a big corporation and every penny you spend with me truly goes into helping the community and helping me achieve all my dreams.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The biggest lesson I had to “unlearn” is to not take everything so personal when you’re in business. From bad reviews to people not liking my food its not a personal attack, its an opportunity to learn from the feedback and improve.

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

In 2013 I had just got out of a divorce from an abusive and controlling person. While I knew I had to leave the reality was that person paid for everything for me and I wasn’t exactly sure how to start over. All I knew was that I needed money to live. My job history was all over the place and it was hard to want to get a day job when I was mentally in a tough space. So I had to figure out something I could do on my own schedule and the first thing that came to mind was cooking because that was something I did all the time especially as a wife. The first milestone was to decide what kind of food I wanted to cook, and from there I went to culinary school, then I started selling food from home, then I worked with a immigrant youth program to teach cooking classes, then I got into catering for non-profits and now I am a full time, full service caterer mostly for events, businesses, and weddings. It’s been a long journey of immense ups & downs for the last 10 years but i’m proud of all i’ve accomplished.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.briaskitchen.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/briaskitchenllc
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/briaskitchen
• Email: [email protected]

Image Credits
Katie Fletcher Photography