We recently connected with Kate Pauley and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Kate thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

Create Dinners started with an email to a small group of friends, asking them if they were interested in bringing their different creative talents to the table, quite literally – a florist did the arrangements on the table, a ceramicist made the vases, a stylist set the table, a designer printed menus, a chef cooked the meal, and I documented everything. We all posted photos, and enough people asked us about it that we decided we should host another one and open it up to more friends. I built a website and it kind of took off from there by word of mouth.

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 grew up in Dallas, TX where there was no shortage of southern hospitality. I have always loved food and gathering with others for various occasions. Celebrations and making people feel loved through details and events was something my parents and their community were really exceptional at, so there’s no question about where my love for all of this comes from.

Professionally, I worked at a marketing agency for nearly a decade producing photoshoots, styling, and art directing, and that’s where I learned a lot of my hard skills.

I got to do some really cool projects in my career there, but it was rare that I felt fulfilled on a soul-level, so on a whim back in 2016 I pitched an idea to a small group of creative friends with different skill sets asking if they wanted to produce a beautiful dinner event that would give us all content for our social pages and websites. I wrote some conversation questions for us to answer while we ate, documented the night with my camera, and the rest is history. We have now done over 70 events across NY, CA, RI, and VT.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Social media is my professional background, so I feel like I had a bit of a leg up here in terms of knowing what types of content resonate with an audience, how to create content, copywriting, and how to analyze analytics and whatnot. In terms of the audience, that really formed organically. Create Dinners has never paid for advertising or followers and because of that, every person who follows us is a real individual who’s interested in what we’re doing. We try to be responsive when comments are left, and quick to respond to direct messages. We try to talk to humans as humans and I think that’s the best approach when you’re running social platforms.

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

During COVID, we couldn’t safely gather, so I had to figure out a way to do that without actually bringing people together in person. I’m so grateful to live in a time where technology allows us to stay connected. We pivoted by creating a virtual series called The Lunchbox that functioned quite similarly to our in person events — we’d send out physical boxes filled with goods and gather on a zoom call with the female business owner or maker who made those goods. I would interview her, we’d do an activity of some kind (involving the goods in the box) and then spend time answering conversation questions. My personal favorite was a chocolate tasting with CRU Chocolate for a Galentine’s Day event.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.createdinners.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/createdinners/

Image Credits
Photographer: Kate Pauley