When a friend from work suggested these next interviewees, I immediately went to their site and spent the next twenty minutes drooling. Adam and Joanne Gallagher are the creators of Inspired Taste, a popular food and recipe blog, and they’re here to share the details about their success.
If there’s anyone you’d want to invite you over for dinner, it’d be Adam and Joanne Gallagher. Chances are, the couple would start the evening off with some spicy maple bacon wrapped shrimp as an appetizer, serve up some lemon chicken with fresh chickpea salad and focaccia bread on the side, then finish up the meal with panna cotta in blueberry sauce for dessert. After a few cocktails, they’d even send you home with all their recipes. Sharing their culinary secrets is kind of their thing.
As the chefs, photographers, and writers behind the food and recipe site Inspired Taste, these high school sweethearts share a dream job and are “lucky” enough to be able to do it full-time. (We all know “lucky” is code for “they bust their butts.”) Hours of prepping, trial and error, and of course taste testing go into each and every new recipe Adam and Joanne concoct, and Inspired Taste has their personal stamp all over it. What started as a hobby became so much more for this ambitious couple, and they’re only just getting started.
Welcome, Adam and Joanne!
You guys are high school sweethearts, which is utterly romantic. How did your shared love for the culinary arts grow and evolve together?
Oddly enough, we only started to get to know each other two weeks before our high school graduation. From there, we didn’t really connect over cooking until the last few years of college. We both had apartments with kitchens so we began cooking together. Since we both enjoyed it so much, it evolved from there.
What did you each do for work before going full-time with Inspired Taste? Did your work lack in creative fulfillment?
Ready? We worked at the same engineering firm! Joanne’s parents owned a small business and we both worked full-time spending our days working on proposals and contracts. While the engineers were super creative, our particular jobs were not. That’s why the moment we came home we got to cooking—both nights and weekends.
When and how did the realization sink in that you could take your blog full-time? What did that feel like?
Our blog grew slowly and our road to making enough money to cover our lifestyle was, at times, painfully slow. Now, though, we often wake up in the morning and feel the need to pinch each other—it’s kind of still sinking in.
What were your family and friends’ reactions when you explained to them your plans of becoming professional bloggers? Did you have a lot of support?
Everyone has been really supportive, even when they don’t exactly understand what it is we do on a daily basis (not that we blame them). I’m not even sure we can explain it that well.
Do you ever feel pressure to maintain and build upon your success? How do you keep it in perspective?
Sure, but our blog has a built in reminder—comments from our readers. Our blog is all about food and cooking so when we get a comment telling us how well a recipe worked out for them and their family/friends it feels good. Like most people, we feel pressure all the time, but the comments keep us grounded.
Do you ever worry about running out of inspiration for new recipes or content?
Not at all—inspiration really is everywhere. Sometimes it takes a little longer, but we always get there in the end. If we’re feeling down, we pick ourselves up and either go somewhere like the beach or a park. Or, we’ll try tackling a crazy recipe—something like sourdough bread, homemade pasta or croissants. All just for fun.
Describe the joy that cooking (and writing about cooking) brings you.
Food makes us smile—fresh produce in the grocery store or markets, garlic hitting hot oil or tomato sauce simmering away on the stove. It hits all the senses, and since we both love it so much it gives us things to chat about and connect over. Plus, we get to eat it.
What are some of your favorite books (or cookbooks)?
Tough question—we’ve got so many! We absolutely love anything from Alice Waters, Julia Child and of course fellow food bloggers—so many have transformed their passion into amazing cookbooks.
Some professional bloggers let their work consume their lives. How much time do you spend cooking, writing, editing, promoting, cleaning, etc.? Does it become tedious? How do you avoid burnout?
We try to keep some balance, but sometimes work takes over. We cook all the time, but try our best to keep things like writing, editing, responding to comments and promoting to the day and not evenings. As far as cleaning—we hate it, but probably spend as much time doing that as cooking. It’s worth it, though.
Yes, sometimes it is a little tedious, but the pros outweigh the cons.
Are there plans or dreams of Inspired Taste taking on forms in other mediums like, say, a book?
Sure—lots of them, but for now, we’re happy growing what we have. We love what we’re doing today.
What sacrifices have you made to make your dreams a reality and sustain them?
Lifestyle. Just like many small business owners, we have found that we need to give up a few things to keep the business growing. For example, we absolutely love to travel, but have held back a lot since working full time. We hope in the future we’ll be able to travel more. It’s worth the wait, though. We are completely in love with what we do on a daily basis.
Thanks so much, guys! I cannot wait to try out some of your recipes. Have questions or comments for Adam and Joanne? Leave them in the comments!
