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

Alright, Kylie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

This business kind of feels like an inevitable for me. I have been cooking, hosting, and making cheese and charcuterie boards for many years and my work has always been well received. I always believed that the people who ate at my table were relatively biased seeing as they were my friends or family but I always believed that I was pretty good at what I did. I had always been passionate about food and the act of coming together over a meal and I feel like it encourages community and a sense of family that doesn’t happen anywhere else. Some of my closest friendships have been formed over a meal and it’s always been my goal to create an environment for people to feel loved, taken care of, and thought of in my home through food. I had wrestled with the idea of working or even owning a restaurant, I’ve even had people offer to fund food truck projects for me but the environment of that type of job has never been appealing to me. I am a lover of intentionally, relationship, and beauty. I had a conversation about this with a family member who actually made me believe that I could make cheese and charcuterie boards and actually make some money. We came up with a business name, started an instagram, and even bought the domain to a website. Even still, I never believed that someone I didn’t know would ever want me to work for them. It wasn’t until my first wedding contract was presented to me in 2022 that I even began to believe that I could do something like this.

My business is special because of how intentional I am with my projects. I create relationships with everyone that I work with and I customize each of my boards to reflect who they are. I have thorough knowledge and experience of living with food allergies and intolerances so I have the opportunity to provide a place where everyone at a party can find something to eat and that is one of my favorite parts about what I do. From the ingredients I pick to the florals I use to decorate, I am always considering my client. I never wanted a job that was impersonal or was only in it for the money. I want to create an experience that people will continue to talk about for parties and years to come. Another part of my business that I am very proud of is the fact that any opportunity I have, I either make myself or I source from other small businesses in Nashville. I am currently working on relationships with local speciality meat and cheese shops to make sure that my ingredient cost is being poured back in to the small business communities.

This business venture has been one of the hardest and most emotional experiences of my life. Because of how personal it is for me, it feels incredibly vulnerable to present my work to someone. It feels like I give a little piece of myself and my passion with each board that I make. It is a whirlwind of emotions and I never take for granted that someone has let me into their lives to make a board for them,

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

I am originally from Gilbert, Arizona. I moved to Nashville, TN in 2010 and have been here ever since. Cooking food for people has been a part of my life for as long as I remember. I was not always as good at it as I am now but I would say I’ve learned a lot and have come a long way.

Graceful Graze is a business that was birthed out of a love for people, for community, for family, and for really good food. I have always loved creating interesting pairings of food and creating really beautiful platings. I get to combine these two loves of mine in cheese and charcuterie boards and it’s incredibly fun. Something that I love about this business is that I can create one board and it can accommodate anyone’s tastes. There will be salty and sweet combinations, rich and tame flavor profiles, and crunchy and soft textures. I include an array of fresh vegetables, fruits, homemade dips, and locally sourced breads. The gluten free person, the dairy free person, the person who can eat anything and every thing will always be able to find something to eat on my boards and that inclusivity is something that I love about this business.

Quite honestly, the catering industry picked me- I am generally a pretty shy and self conscious person so the fact that I am presenting myself and my work for rejection every time I deliver a board is actually pretty against my personality. I don’t take on many projects and it is because I want to spend a considerable amount of time getting to know what someone is looking for, what someone needs, and what they like/dislike as far as flavor profiles go. I believe that this intentionality is something that sets me apart from other businesses.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Back in 2019, my husband and I were living in another town about an hour and a half away from Nashville and I was utterly miserable. I was working at a marketing agency for automobile repair and my husband was presented with an opportunity to move back to Nashville and continue his career here. I was faced with the opportunity to get another meaningless job that sucked the life out of me, just for the sake of a paycheck, or I could take some time off and figure out what it was that I actually wanted to do with my life. I needed some meaning, I needed something to bring me life enough to get out of bed in the morning. I started Nannying after that and have recently also decided to pursue my childhood dream career and start going to college. I’ve been taking classes since 2021 and in 2022, I started Graceful Graze. All of that to say, I have spent far too much of my life working for a paycheck and not working for myself. I have learned that I am worthy of the career shift and that. my life has been, and will be all the greater for the change. Life is too short to not be passionate about what you do.

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

this is still something that I have been working on and honestly struggling with. I don’t believe that social media is actually built to favor of the small business as we are made to think. I’ve found it difficult to gain a social media following as I didn’t have the capital to spend of a bunch of social media advertising and I didn’t have enough content to be posting every day in the beginning of my business. As I mentioned, I am pretty particular about the boards that I take on as to make sure that I am the right fit for the client and visa versa so my content levels are pretty slim. I think I just want to encourage people that it is not as easy to gain a social media following as you might think. I believed that people would see my work and follow me just because of the quality but that hasn’t proven to be true and that’s okay! A lot of my followers have been gained slowly over time of working for people’s parties or weddings and finding people that way.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gracefulgrazenashville/
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/graceful-graze-nashville?osq=Graceful+Graze