Why Getting Laid Off Was the Best Thing That Ever Happened to This Food Blogger
When Naomi Robinson lost her job, she started a food blog. (All photos courtesy of Naomi Robinson.)
The recession was in full swing when, in 2010, Naomi Robinson was laid off from her job as a marketing director for a group of restaurants. She found herself suddenly lost; she’d loved the job, but even more than that, the delicious world it had introduced her to. Now unable to find another gig in the field, Robinson worried she’d lose touch with it.
Until, that is, she discovered the blogosphere.
“I decided to do the blog to stay in food, and to kind of work through all the recipes that I never had time to cook when I was in the restaurant business,” Robinson told Yahoo Food. “It was just one of those things where I kept going and going … and going.”
Robinson’s mixed berry Dutch baby.
And thus Bakers Royale was born. As its name suggests, baked goods were initially the blog’s focus; Robinson’s first recipe was a decadent Bailey’s chocolate pot de crème. “A triple threat of dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and Bailey’s will have you melodically licking your spoon with every bite,” she wrote at the time. But Robinson soon branched out. Before long, she’d expanded into vegetarian spring rolls and light summer pasta salads.
She was hooked, and so were the people who increasingly were finding their way to her site. Bakers Royale’s traffic grew — a little at first, and then a lot. Robinson became increasingly active on social media. Despite having a full-time job at the time — she’d taken a non-food office position to pay the bills — Robinson suddenly realized she was working two jobs. “I was terrible… I would be at my office, and I’d be blogging,” she admitted.
So Robinson quit her full-time gig and started blogging full-time. She never looked back.
These days, Bakers Royale covers a lot of terrain. There are breads. Breakfasts. Cakes, candy, and cobblers. Savory dishes are in the mix, too, like beer-pulled pork nachos, Philly cheesesteak sandwiches, and creamed chicken and corn soup. Robinson has even dipped her baby toe in producing original videos.
In the five years since Bakers Royale was born, Robinson has come a long way since that first pot de crème. She’s learned a lot about cooking and technique, mostly because Robinson is a meticulous recipe tester.
“Sometimes you can do a recipe and it tastes great, but it doesn’t look great,” she said. “There are times where I will test a recipe up to seven times, just to get it to look the way it’s supposed to look. Good food just tastes better when it looks good!”
It turns out that Robinson’s passion is contagious: Last year, her husband Matt decided he wanted to try his hand at food blogging. Now his blog, Real Food by Dad, has a devoted following of its own. (More on that soon — Matt is Yahoo Food’s next Blogger of the Week, just in time for Father’s Day.)
But Robinson doesn’t think she’s reached perfection. There are still so many techniques she wants to learn, and recipes she hopes to conquer. “What I do feel good about is that when I do something wrong, for the most part, I know what I’m doing wrong,” she explained. And that’s reward in of itself. “I’m that much closer to fixing my failures than I was five years ago.”
More bloggers who should be on your radar:
How a 20-year friendship blossomed into a gorgeous food blog
Meet the male food blogger who’s all about feminism
Why this super popular food blogger is keeping her identity a secret
Who’s your favorite food blogger? Tell us below!
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