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

Hi Kenny & Stephanie, thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us the backstory behind how you came up with the idea?

Well, initially my wife and I had the idea to start our own food channel when some social media personalities that we follow ended up on the cooking show Next Level Chef. Most of the social media chefs we follow are more social media than chef. Despite not having formal culinary training or a background in food service, these social media personalities are able to put out some amazing looking dishes. Watching them inspired me to start my channel because I felt like my food was at least as good as the dishes that they presented.

I do have other interests and talents other than cooking, so I do get the question: Why food? Why is that what you choose to shar? I can sum that up in two points. Point one is every single person must eat to survive. If we don’t eat, we die, right? While I can’t control the need to eat, I can decide what I eat. If I must eat, why not eat the very best? Best being subjective… best could mean healthiest, tastiest, most extravagant, but however you define “the best,” isn’t that what you want every time you eat? That mindset is what pushes me to expand my culinary prowess and continue to expand the boundaries by introducing new ingredients and cooking styles. When I do find something new, I want to share that with everyone so they can experience it with me.

The second point to the question, why food? – I personally have convictions about politics, religion, the economy, etc. just as most people do. Food, for me, is the platform that I can use to connect people even if we don’t agree on some issues. I truly feel like food is the thing that despite a person’s age, background, beliefs, skin color or gender; people can make a connection through. You might not even speak the same language as someone sitting across from you. Put a plate of delicious food between you though, and there becomes an instant connection and that burns into your mind as a positive experience. It’s in those moments that I realize we all, as a member of the human race, can always find common ground and if we just try, can form a connection with another person. By the way, my channel is an escape from talking about geopolitical issues though and you will never hear me voice an opinion or try to persuade others through my food channel. The channel for me is solely for the shear love of food.

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.

Kenny and Stephanie here at Food Take 2! We’re a Husband-and-Wife duo from Knoxville, TN. We’re best friends who love diving into creative projects together. Whether its cooking or indulging in our other hobbies like creating music, that’s where our ideas really flourish.

Kenny is usually the one bringing our recipes to life, while Stephanie is behind the camera, capturing all the moments and managing our Social Media platforms. We truly believe that teamwork makes the dream work, and we’re excited to share our culinary journey with everyone!

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The comments from the people who see my content are my instant gratification. It’s the connections I am able to make with the people I interact with. Sometimes it’s as simple as someone saying “hey, this is great, I can’t believe I’ve never had this ingredient taste this delicious.” Even people offering criticisms help me grow. People might tell me “Your dish is good, but it’s the best, try this instead.” The bigger and better reward though is the satisfaction I get from continually growing and learning, and the excitement of trying new things that blow my tastebud’s minds.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

It’s actually kind of funny now, even though it wasn’t at the time. We are currently about to celebrate our 1st year anniversary, and we just celebrated our 100th post. Both of these are huge milestones to my wife and myself. Getting started took a lot of time and effort though. Today, we do all out our own scripts, lighting, recording, editing, recipe ideas…. It’s a lot. If you asked us a year ago how to do any of this, we wouldn’t have had a clue. Even setting up our social media accounts specifically for our food channel was a challenge. My wife and I persevered through each of the challenges by putting in hours of research and a lot of late nights reading through how-to’s. Finally, we got our channel off the ground. We began to get followers and felt a sense of accomplishment. One day though, we get home and start to film. As Stephanie goes to log into our account, she discovers that it has been flagged! What in the world could be have done to get flagged, we wondered. We started making phone calls and writing emails. At the minimum we needed an answer as to why our account is flagged, so we don’t make the same mistake again. We struggled to get a person on the phone or to get a response that wasn’t AI generated. The most we could get was that our content was inappropriate. How!?!? We were literally just cooking food. We fought through and our account was then put into a review status. “Phew”, we thought. A person will review it and unlock our account. The next day after the review, not only was our account not reinstated but it was also deleted and we got a note that we were permanently banned, and unable to reapply for an account to this social media platform. We were just getting started and the small following we had was now gone. We had to start over and create a new persona on a new device just to get back onto social media. This left us with a feeling of defeat, and we questioned if we even wanted to fight for our channel anymore. We did overcome though and came back even stronger. Oh, what was our infraction by the way… it was using the hashtag #FoodPorn. Sometimes you learn the hard way.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/foodtake2
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@FoodTakeTwo2
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@foodtaketwo