Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Cristy Kisner. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Cristy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

What is my mission? offer a safe space for all those people who for some reason have many food restrictions, but who also want to eat healthy, delicious, and nutritious. In our restaurant, people can find a place where the whole family can eat together no matter what diet each one follows. We want to unite families around the table. It is not just about removing ingredients from our diet, but about adding nutrients that can make our bodies work properly.

I also want to help those families who are far from the restaurant by sending them frozen, delicious, and super nourishing food to save them work and time in the kitchen.

And for those who want to cook from scratch, we also have baking mixes to send them; and next April my book Cristy’s Kitchen will go on sale with 135 recipes completely Gluten & Dairy Free (like all the food we prepare).

What is the story behind this mission? Well, the story is very long, but to summarize it: I am the mother of 5 girls, the oldest has a very rare autoimmune disease, the second has a gluten intolerance, all of them are allergic and the youngest was born with a congenital kidney problem. It is because of them that I began a long search to improve their health through food because conventional medicine was not working and making my daughters live taking medicines for life was not an option for me.
It’s been a long journey (and still is because I am still learning every day), and in some ways a very lonely journey because many many years ago, when I started looking for alternatives for them, the doctors weren’t supportive, and there wasn’t enough information at hand to learn what the best ingredients were, the best way to choose food and more than anything, I wanted to learn how the human body works to try to decipher the specific function of each food. I had to learn everything with trial and error, but I needed to follow that maternal intuition inside me that told me that this was the way.

Over time, I have managed to control the symptoms of my eldest daughter’s disease without the need for conventional medicines, only based on real food and the right supplements. My whole family now eats gluten and dairy-free because I find they are very inflammatory foods and best avoided.

The food saved my family, in many ways, not only did my daughters’ health improve dramatically, but it also saved us from ruin. In Peru we lost everything we had, our company went bankrupt and we lost our house and our only hope of survival was to come to America and start over.

We arrived just before the pandemic and everything got worse, and then our little restaurant in Roswell received a miracle when we appeared in a post on the famous blog Humans of New York, which has helped us to stay afloat and give our daughters a better future.

Now my mission is to bring back to life the miracles that it has given me, and that is helping people, moms like me who are going through a situation similar to mine, who feel alone in this search, and who have sick loved ones and are looking for healthy alternatives to feed their families. And also for all those who, like me, believe in the power of food to prevent, heal, and to live better.

Cristy, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I have always been a stay-at-home mom, my job and my passion have always been to take care of my daughters. But when our furniture factory in Peru began to collapse and bankruptcy was imminent, we had to think of a backup plan because my husband couldn’t get a job, he was always a businessman and I only knew how to cook and by then I had already traveled a long way through healthy cooking. So we started baking my gluten and dairy-free recipes and delivering them to stores, and then we opened a small cafe, but that didn’t work, the company could hardly pay the employees’ salaries and there was nothing left for us. But it gave us experience in the food sector, we learned a lot, and I was able to write a cookbook in Spanish which was a project that inspired me a lot.
Many people began to write to me and ask me for advice because just like me, they were going through health problems and needed to find alternatives, the support and care that they did not find in their doctors, and more than anything, hope.

I am not only proud of how much I have learned in the kitchen (because I did not go to culinary school), but of what we have learned about life as a family, because this has been a spiritual journey for us. We do not offer only muffins and pizzas, it is everything behind each of those recipes, it is my search for the best ingredients, the best nutritional combinations, and the best flavor so that when your family receives it, it also receives love and care.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In Lima, during our bankruptcy, we went through many things, my daughters had to do homeschooling for two years, because we couldn’t afford a school for them (and unfortunately public education is very bad there), my family suffered a lot, but our dream of starting a new life in America kept us hopeful.

Friends and family lent us money to buy our small business in Roswell and we arrived empty-handed but full of hope. We waited a long time to finally arrive in October 2019, we opened the doors in December with only $200 in our pocket that we used to buy ingredients and start baking, and then came the pandemic.

We worked from 5 am until sometimes 1-2 am, it was just my husband and me, and the girls helped us on the weekends. I suffer from my back, I have osteoarthritis and back surgery and there were days when I really couldn’t stand up. We didn’t have a single day off, because the days the bakery was closed, we used it for baking and shopping for ingredients and of course doing piles of laundry, cleaning the house, and cooking for the girls.

There were days when we really felt that everything was falling apart and we wanted to give up, but our daughters were always our strength, we would do anything for them!

But despite everything, we were always grateful for being here, for having this second chance to have a better life, we had waited so long to get here that we couldn’t give up.

Gratitude really makes a difference, when despite all the bad things you may be experiencing, if you start looking at it with eyes of gratitude, you will always find a light at the end of the road.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

After the miracle that happened to us when we appeared in Humans of New York, I received an offer from William Morrow – Harper Collins to write a cookbook in English. I have been working on this book for two years and it is very emotional for me because this book represents all the miracles that have happened to us in life, this book is a dream come true, it is my opportunity to carry out my mission of helping people to improve their health to all of America, and hopefully to many places around the world.

It has been a huge challenge and an honor for me to write in English, because I arrived here hardly speaking English, it was even very difficult for me to sell in the restaurant because I could not communicate well. Of course, I hope this is the first of many more to come becauseI really enjoyed writing it and I’m very excited for the release next April 2023.

For now, you can pre-order the book through all the platforms that the Harper-Collins website offers and I am very happy to share with you not only my recipes but many of our family stories and also a lot of information about the ingredients that I like, and for sure you will see a lot of my Peruvian heritage in my recipes.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cristyskitchenga.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cristyskitchenga/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cristyskitchenga/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/cristys-kitchen-roswell-6
• Other: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/cristys-kitchen-cristina-kisner?variant=40650764288034

Image Credits
Humans of New Picture, credits by Brandon Stanton