Kerry Diamond [00:05:56]:
That's a different podcast. Legs McNeil is a punk rock journalist. He's still around doing his thing. Leggs' claim to fame, although some people dispute this, is that he named the punk movement, the punk music movement. He was a kid, I think, from Connecticut coming into New York City to go to all the punk shows on the Lower East Side and in the East Village. and had a hand-drawn fanzine called Punk. And the scene took its name from the zine. And he had a partner, I forget the guy's name, but he went on to found High Times Magazine, I think. So yeah, so you can still find copies of Punk out there. I think they're collector's items at this point. But Legs, you know, Legs kind of recognized that something was happening and was doing all these interviews with the likes of... Blondie and television and the Ramones and the dictators and all these other folks who were part of the downtown punk scene.
Josh Sharkey [00:06:57]:
That's cool. How did you work for him? Because you're from Staten Island, right?
Kerry Diamond [00:07:00]:
I am from Staten Island, yes. Just like the New York Dolls who are also part of the punk scene. Okay. Let me think. How did I wind up working for Legs? I always knew I wanted to be a writer. Like you said, I thought maybe I wanted to be a fashion writer, but then I got really into music in high school. I loved New Wave music. I loved everything coming out of the UK. I loved indie music, all the music magazines, Spin, Rolling Stone, NME, everything, The Aquarium. If there are any folks my age out there from New Jersey, they'll remember The Aquarium.
[00:07:39]:
This was when I was in college. I applied for a bunch of internships. I had a really good mentor at the time, a woman named Holly Brubach, and I had asked her what to do because I got a bunch of internships, really good ones. Rolling Stone, I think maybe Chain Magazine.There were three internships I got. One of them was Rolling Stone, one of them was Spin and then there was another one. And I thought I should really take the Rolling Stone one because that was the most famous publication. And Holly said to me, take the one that will let you do the most. And I was like, okay, well that would be Spin. So I took the SPIN internship.
[00:08:15]:
They were located, I think, on 18th Street, you know, around Flatiron. And I showed up at Spin my first day of work. It was a really scrappy place. Like they had no money. Everybody was young and just looked like they were into music and there were just a lot of like indie music minded people there. And a lot of folks are musicians as well. And Bob Gucci Jr. was running it at the time. So I start, it's my first morning, I'm sitting at my desk. I look way too kind of clean and preppy to be working there. I was probably wearing like, I think I had on plaid shorts and a white t-shirt and this guy walked in.
Josh Sharkey [00:08:55]:
Were you into punk rock?
Kerry Diamond [00:08:57]:
You know, I was never into punk. I was wildly into New Wave and saw everybody, you know, New Order, The Smiths, Susie, Depeche Mode. I just loved going to concerts and just loved these bands so much. And the Pixies, I started to get really into American Alternative as well. So I was super into the Pixies at the time. Nirvana's first album had come out and everybody loved it. I was heavily into college radio, which we'll talk about, which is another reason why I love radio so much today. So then I got heavily into like American indie music, Pixies Replacements, all those folks, and it's my first day, it's Spin. I'm sitting at a desk and this guy walks in and I was like, oh my God, who is this guy?
[00:09:38]:
They let him walk into the building. He looked like he needed a shower and a place to sleep, and he had on sunglasses and leather pants. And the leather pants were held together with duct tape. And he goes, who are you? And I go, who am I? Who are you? And he goes, I'm Legs McNeil. And it was one of those like, oh my God, I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy. Like he just was my hero at the time. You know the way a lot of chefs feel about Anthony Bourdain? I felt about Legs. Legs was our Anthony Bourdain. If you were into music and journalism back then, and I'm sure Bourdain loved Legs. I don't know if they ever met, but that would've been an interesting conversation to eavesdrop on. So I say to Legs, you know, it's like, who are you? Who are you? And I said, oh, I'm Carrie. I'm an intern. I just started today. And he goes, you smell too clean to work here. And I probably did smell too clean. I think I was wearing White Musk by the Body Shop. I'm sure some of you out there remember that fragrance.
[00:10:37]:
So he goes, do you wanna work for me? And I said, yeah, sure. And he goes, well, I work out of my apartment on St. Mark's Place. And I'm like, okay, whatever. You know, he could have been a serial killer for all I knew. So I tell Stacy, the intern coordinator, like, see you later. I'm going to work for Legs out of his house. And she's like, what? She's like, no, you're not. I was like, yeah, I just told him I am. And I literally just walked out with him. So that's nuts. That's how it started. And we worked out of his apartment and it was a crazy six months.
Josh Sharkey [00:10:57]:
I'm curious what an internship is like at one of these magazines. Obviously, you know, like a stage is like in a restaurant, or at least what it was like. I think it's a little different today. Paid. Unpaid?
Kerry Diamond [00:11:10]:
Unpaid. Nothing paid back then.
Josh Sharkey [00:11:13]:
Was it a Devil Wears Prada kind of thing, or?
Kerry Diamond [00:11:15]:
Well, it was Devil Wears Prada for the people who were working in fashion. I mean, I later went on to fashion magazines. My internship with Legs was not a traditional internship in any way, shape or form. You know, I was reading something he wrote about Sinead O'Connor and I had completely forgotten that he and Sinead had a major relationship. They might've even dated and she used to call the apartment from time to time. You know, people had landlines and you know, I was just a young kind of dumb kid and didn't think anything of it, but I loved Sinead so much and that's such a sad story. So Sinaid, rest in peace.
Josh Sharkey [00:12:10]:
Yeah. That's tragic. I have to imagine that the variance had an influence on you. Do you feel like you still have some of what the energy was today in Cherry Bombe? Was there any impact of punk rock on or that just scene in general and what you do today?
Josh Sharkey [00:12:10]:
Absolutely. I mean, I think about Cherry Bombe a lot in terms of bands, you know, and how sometimes you have a band and they're only meant to be around for one album or two albums, and then some bands are meant to be around for a really long time. And I would like Cherry Bombe to be a band that's around for a very long time, still making music that people love. You know, somebody like Neil Young or Taylor Swift. That's the better analogy today. I mean, I think Taylor, she's already had such a remarkable career and she's so young. I mean, I think she'll be making music till the day she dies, which I hope is in her hundreds.
Josh Sharkey [00:12:45]:
Okay, we're gonna, we're gonna move on to this, but I just had one last question because I saw another note about Apocalypse Now. Apparently Legs asked you to watch this movie and you were gonna learn about writing. Is there some sort of correlation that we should know about?
Kerry Diamond [00:13:00]:
Yes. I think Legs thought because it was an internship, I was supposed to be learning things and I was, I mean, I was learning things left and right and getting to observe him was just an amazing internship in and of itself. And something that makes me so sad about work from home and virtual work now, because I just think, yeah, it's so hard to have internships and it's so hard to sort of impart those things that are just in the air that you only learn from observing somebody doing their job and being so passionate about what they do. But yeah, Legs, I think he felt like I needed to be learning something from him specifically. So he said, I think I'm supposed to be teaching you stuff. What do you wanna learn? And I said, I wanna learn how to write a great first paragraph, which for those who don't know, is called a lead. And I think it's spelled Lede. So if you ever hear a journalism person use the word lead, that's what they're talking about. And he thought for a second and he's like, okay, sit down. And he puts on a VHS tape of Apocalypse Now and leaves the apartment. So I don't know what I learned about writing a lead from that movie, but it definitely reinforced my belief that war is bad and men should not start wars they should focus on diplomacy.
Josh Sharkey [00:14:19]:
Well, at least you learned that, how to start one paragraph from that. So there we go. How did it start? How did, what's the origin story of Cherry Bombe? I remember you a little bit before the Cherry Bombe. I actually don't remember the time when it was coming about. So how did that happen?
Kerry Diamond [00:14:28]:
So I was working at Lancôme at the time. I was the head of PR for North America. I had left journalism behind for a little while and I started dating a chef and we opened a restaurant and I was not from the industry. You know, I had never waited tables. I never worked in a restaurant. I had a paper route. I worked in bookstores, I had internships. I had done things like that. So we own this restaurant. It kicked my ass in every way. I just thought it was the hardest thing I had ever done. I was just in awe of the people who are making the restaurant industry work. And I couldn't help but notice that women were treated a certain way in the restaurant world and by the food media.
[00:15:12]:
I had come from a world that was so female centric. You know, I worked at Harper's Bazaar, I worked at Women's Wear Daily. You know, like I said, I was at Lancôme. My world was women, essentially. You know, if you've seen Barbie, it was not too different from Barbie land. That was kind of the bubble that I was living in. So to move over to restaurants and be in it at a time when the industry was so bro-y was very shocking to me. And I couldn't help but notice, yeah, women were sort of treated as second class citizens. Male chefs were just revered. And even though women were running the food media world, they were still prioritizing the stories of men.
[00:15:55]:
And it just seemed so, I don't know, it just seemed so strange to me. So that happened, I observed that. And then my partner in the restaurant, a very talented chef named Rob Newton. He was being asked to do a lot of food conferences and food events at the time because, you probably remember Josh, there were so many food conferences back then and food events. There were big things happening every single weekend. And my role in the restaurant was to kind of pick up all that stuff that nobody else did. So I would organize these things for Rob, more or less, and you always ask who else is participating? They would tell you the other chefs and the organizer would gimme the list of all the chefs taking part.
[00:16:40]:
And I would say to them, you know, there are no women on that list. You just read to me. And they would say, oh yeah, we know. Do you know any? And I was like, what? You've gotta be kidding. Or they would just be completely oblivious. Like it didn't even matter or care to them and they hadn't noticed. And it just, all these little things were adding up, you know, Food & Wine’s best new chefs would come out and there'd be like one woman on the cover and all these events. And it just all started to stew in my head. And I don't remember the how or the when or the why, but this idea for a magazine about women doing super interesting things in the food world popped in my head.
[00:17:42]:
And at some point, the name Cherry Bombe popped in my head. And you know, obviously it's a reference to the Runaways song. You know, Joan Jets band. But it's other things too. You know, it's a Cherry Bombe is a firework. I grew up in Staten Island where they love to set off fireworks. Cherry Bomb is a little red fireworks and bomb with the E at the end of it is a French ice cream dessert. So I think it's sort of all those things in a blender.
Josh Sharkey [00:18:03]:
Yeah, it's a great name. Obviously there's a lot of catalysts. That could have been the reason why.
Kerry Diamond [00:18:11]:
I have to give credit to Lucky Peach. I think Lucky Peach aggravated me so much. That Cherry Bombe was the response to that.
Josh Sharkey [00:18:17]:
Really? Talk to me about that.
Kerry Diamond [00:18:19]:
It was so bro-y. It was so bro-y. Every issue would come out and I was like, gosh, this couldn't be bro-y-er. So I'm sure Cherry Bombe, the reason that there's a fruit, probably had something to do with Lucky Peach being deep in my subconscious. So David Chang. Thank you.
Josh Sharkey [00:18:30]:
And I don't think they even published Lucky Peach anymore, which is sad.
Kerry Diamond [00:18:33]:
Yeah. Which is sad. It was. I think it was an important magazine, not just because it inspired me to do the opposite, but I think it was an important publication.It was focused on very interesting journalism that no one else was doing. And obviously that's something I care deeply about.
Kerry Diamond [00:18:49]:
Yeah, those stories weren't being told. Okay, so I get why you were frustrated, you know, that makes sense. I think that's the same reason why I usually started my companies, but not everybody gets frustrated and then creates a media brand. You know, you could get frustrated and you start complaining about it more and maybe write an article, but you started a whole company around it. You’re just an entrepreneur by spirit or like, what was like the, was there some other sort of like catalyst of like, fuck this, I'm gonna go, you know, start a whole company around this?
Kerry Diamond [00:19:24]:
Not at all. Ironically, I loved working for the man. I love benefits and paid time off and all those things. I do not come from an entrepreneurial family. That was all a shock, but Cherry Bombe only became a business recently. In all honesty. I mean, I never thought about it as a business. Like people always say, what's your business plan? What's your five-year plan? What's your 10 year plan? There really was not one. My only desire was to, I love storytelling and I love telling stories of real people.
[00:19:51]:
My only desire was to do that. I knew there were interesting women in the food world and I wanted to spotlight them, and I love all things print. I love magazines and posters and albums and books. I can never have enough books. And I think I missed working on a printed product and everybody was launching websites at the time, and I think there were probably a few articles at the time, like the women crazy enough to launch a print magazine. And I don't even know if we had a website in the beginning. It was so analog, but there was no grand plan in all honesty. The only plan was we did a Kickstarter and we had rewards, you know, like you have when you do a Kickstarter. So I knew I had to produce as many issues as we had promised to the people who took the top reward.
Josh Sharkey [00:20:42]:
Yeah, I love that. Well, it, and honestly, that's probably the best way to start a business.
Kerry Diamond [00:20:47]:
To not start a business?
Josh Sharkey [00:20:49]:
Well, and you know, I, when people always ask me about starting a business, I always say just never start a business. Unless you can't not, unless you like to have to, otherwise you can't live with yourself. That's the only time to ever start one.
Kerry Diamond [00:21:03]:
Yeah. It was also never thought of as a money making opportunity. I think that was probably the other thing that helped. I mean, it wasn't set up to be money losing, but again, it wasn't. knew enough to register the business in New York State. I knew the basics that I had to do. I guess we'll talk about this, but it really wasn't until the pandemic when I woke up and I was like, oh, this is a real business.
Josh Sharkey [00:21:27]:
I mean, you had a story to tell.
Kerry Diamond [00:21:29]:
It was mission based from day one. It was more about the mission than anything.
Kerry Diamond [00:21:29]:
Yeah. Well, you know, one thing I'm most curious about. I don't know anything about running a media company, but you love writing. I really am curious about this. I see this, this same sort of parallel with if you're a chef, you know, I love cooking, but when I started running my own restaurant, I didn't cook much anymore. And I imagine you love writing, you've been writing for a whole long time, but do you have to write less now? And is it more sort of management and leadership and sort of promulgating your vision?
Kerry Diamond [00:22:06]:
I write all the time. I write all the time, but it's all the other stuff that I don't wanna do that I had to do for years. But we have a CEO now. We have an amazing human being named Kate Miller Spencer, who is our CEO. She just celebrated her one year anniversary with Cherry Bombe, so I'm very fortunate. We hired a CEO, I guess I hired a CEO a year ago. Amazing human. Kate Miller Spencer. She just celebrated her one year anniversary and I couldn't be happier. Kate sees the big picture. She is so brilliant and she has taken a lot of things off my plate that I am just not naturally gifted at sorting out health insurance for everybody. You know, all kinds of benefits, taxes, accountants, lawyers, all those things that just really hurt my brain a little bit.
Josh Sharkey [00:22:52]:
That's the best. Once you get to a place where you are sort of, are you familiar with the zone of genius? So there's these four zones and anything you do, the zone of incompetence, which is obvious things you're not good at doing. The zone of competence, things that you're, you can do the zone of excellence, which is the most dangerous thing. Things that you are really good at but don't love to do. And then the zone of genius, which is the things that you're really good at and you love to do them and everybody should be operating in their zone of genius. This is what you do and you, you know, created, manifested, this company and it, it wouldn't be here without you. So I think, I'm sure that it's a big part of what you do, but it's tough to only be in your zone of genius. But having Kate around, I'm sure helps a lot to sort of take some of those things off your plate. So obviously cherry Bombe has had this huge impact on so many women in our industry, probably outside of the hospitality industry as well. I would, I would presume. But I'm curious, is the mission evolving from, you know, women are sort of underserved obviously in so many ways. Have you thought about it evolving to other underserved segments of the world? Or is it always gonna be a hundred percent women.
Kerry Diamond [00:24:08]:
I mean, I wouldn't say it's always been a hundred percent women. I think that's what we said in the beginning, that it was all about spotlighting and supporting women in and around the world of food. The team and I have expanded that over the past few years to include culinary creatives because I think there are a lot of people who identify with what we hold dear at Cherry Bomb as an organization. So I am happy for it to be a home, you know, a home of sorts to anyone who wants to take part in Cherry Bombe.I mean, we've never excluded anyone. I remember in the first few years we had our conference Jubilee, which has become, you know, the biggest gathering of women in the food world around the US, which is really exciting. It sells out every single year and every year my guy friends are like, oh, I didn't buy a ticket because I know guys can't buy tickets. And I'm like, on what planet? Can't guys buy tickets? So guys do come every year. Some guys do find a way to buy tickets. But yeah, I mean, Cherry Bombe. It is still primarily about women in the food world because we have to be honest, things are not equal yet for women in the food world.
[00:25:24]:
Even here in the United States, there are still some kitchens that really don't want women in them. Healthcare is a big issue for so many women because they have their families and themselves to think of women who want to start families. Kitchens are not necessarily welcoming places for pregnant women, for pregnant individuals, for anybody who wants to start a family. The hours are just not conducive to when childcare is available. So I think we've got those things to still sort out. There's still a lot of work to do on behalf of women and just talking about those issues. I mean, our very first Jubilee, we had a whole segment about what it was like being a working mother. So it's something we have addressed in the beginning and we've done a lot more recently about it. Last year we had Camilla Marcus, I don't know if you know Camilla from Westborn, who really has just been so tireless in speaking about the plight of working families in this industry and childcare. She spoke at our Jubilee conference. She wrote an essay for us, an essay that she couldn't get published anywhere else except Cherry Bombe. We were happy to write that.
[00:26:42]:
We just had two women who are pregnant on our cover. You know, two of the three women who are at King and Jupiter. We are shooting someone else who's pregnant for our next cover. We just had Lena Charlo from Union Square Cafe on our podcast. She has two young boys. We talked about how she handles childcare and she talked about having a nanny. You know, and that's not something women are always asked because you've probably heard this. You know, women get kind of pissed off being asked that because they're like, well, men are never asked that question. But then, okay, that's totally valid. But then we're not talking about it, and it just remains this mystery as to how people take care of children. And we all know it's primarily left to women to sort out. So yeah. So we're trying to be way more intentional about those conversations.
Josh Sharkey [00:27:29]:
Yep. Yeah. So it sounds like there's still a lot of work you have left to do.
Josh Sharkey [00:27:29]:
Yeah. I mean, there's way more opportunity for women today. If I had to say what has happened over the past decade, it's that women are no longer second class citizens in the restaurant industry or in the hospitality world at large. And women, I think because they loved food and gravitated toward food, you know, in their hearts and their minds, but they were shut out of kitchens. They figured out other things to do, and were benefiting from that today in terms of all the amazing recipe developers and food stylists and cookbook authors and influencers and you know, there're just a lot of people doing very cool things like yourself. People who love food have figured out other avenues into it that don't involve working as a chef.
Josh Sharkey [00:28:18]:
Yeah. I love that. Being a husband to a wife who gave birth to two kids, it is no freaking joke. She was working up to the week before she gave birth, and she's an event designer. Like the amount that they have to endure. Just independent of just the work and then to work on top. It's insane.
Kerry Diamond [00:28:28]:
You know, it's not something the restaurant industry should have to figure out. I mean, this country just is awful in terms of how it cares for families and provides support for families, for working families. But I don't know, it seems to be left to restaurants to figure out how to make it work.
Josh Sharkey [00:29:00]:
It's one thing I'm really grateful for with my, with my company now being a technology company, is I'm able to do things that I never would've been able to do in my restaurants. You know, unlimited PTO, obviously tons of parental leave, taking care of healthcare for your family and your kids, not just, you know, for yourself and things that are much more difficult to do in the restaurant. I agree though, to your point, it's not binary, it's not so straightforward. It's difficult in the restaurant. Restaurants are a lot like Broadway, they're just always going. It doesn't stop.
[00:29:37]:
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Kerry Diamond [00:30:29]:
It's hard being a chef. I mean, I have so much respect for people who work in restaurants and I don't think there is enough love shown to people who work in restaurants. I am reminded, you know, having worked in restaurants and learned firsthand how hard it is. Literally every time I walk into a restaurant, I think it's a small miracle that this restaurant exists and I think people need to be a little bit more patient and show a little bit more love.
Josh Sharkey [00:30:55]:
Yeah, I agree. I will say, I think that we have a much more educated consumer of restaurants today than we did even, you know, 10 years ago. So I'm grateful for that. But I think there's still a lot of room for growth there. It's incredibly difficult and the margins are incredibly small and we still go out every day and do it. It's physically and mentally taxing to work in a restaurant and people need to remember that.
[00:31:11]:
Yeah. Okay. Well, we're gonna talk a little bit about restaurants in a way here with someone who gave you some good advice. Danny Meyer, and he said that business is all about problems and how you solve them is what matters. So my question for you is, what are the big problems that you have today that you're trying to solve?
Kerry Diamond [00:31:29]:
Danny got that advice from his grandfather. I think he was complaining so much that his grandfather told him, stop complaining and just understand that. You know, business equals problems. The problems we are facing today, it's a good question. One thing we're focused on right now is we're finally fundraising. Like I said, I really didn't wake up to the fact that Cherry Bombe is a business until a few years ago. So we just started actively fundraising and it's a very new thing to me, you know, because we had never done it before and writers and journalists aren't natural fundraisers.
[00:32:09]:
So again, happy to have a CEO be leading this charge. But we made the decision to do a community round instead of traditional fundraising. So we're doing a wefunder. Um, yep. That has occupied a lot of my time at the moment. I think it's a great thing that more people in the restaurant world should know about. We actually invested in Gage & Tollner via Wefunder. We invested in Ghost Town Oats, the first, I think black-owned vegan milk company in the country, potentially. And it's not a Kickstarter. You're not just giving money to get a reward or helping out some friends, you're actually investing in different companies or loaning them money.
[00:32:48]:
The Wefunder for Gage & Tollner was actually a loan. So anyway, we focused on fundraising because we've been bootstrapped for a decade. And you realize if you want to be truly effective, you need a team of a certain size and you need to take advantage of certain opportunities that are in front of you. And we would really love to add more staff. People are always shocked when they learn what a small but mighty team that we have. We don't have an office right now, and I would love to have something that's a little more multi-use multimedia than a traditional office. We have the most incredible collection of cookbooks by female authors.
[00:33:31]:
You know, going back to MFK Fisher, we've got the first book that Ruth Rieshal wrote in the seventies, when she was in her twenties. It's the most interesting cookbook, you know, and I wanna have a place where Cherry Bombe members can come in and use these as a resource, where we can do events, where we can film content. So more team and more resources. That's my issue right now.
Josh Sharkey [00:33:31]:
Unfortunately, I've had to fundraise a lot over the past four years. By the way, I don't know if you've ever heard of Hospitality Multiple. Ron Parker started it. Ron Parker was formerly related to USHG before that. He's currently the Chief Operating Officer of Jose Andres Group. He started this thing called Hospitality Multiple, and it's a collective for chefs to just sort of have a profile and folks can sort of find these chefs and create partnerships and just sort of business development and things. But there's an investment piece of it as well where there's a small group of businesses that are fundraising there. Alidoro is there. Lina Group. I'm happy to connect you with them if you like.
Kerry Diamond [00:34:27]:
Super interesting. I love all these ways in which companies can grow and I don't work for Wefunder. I also love the idea that if you have a community, your community is the one that can help get you to the next level. Because even if you have a rudimentary understanding of investing, it's pretty much asking rich people to invest in your business and make more money for them, which is great. And that's how so many businesses have existed, but it has shut out so many people from being able to invest in things that they love. Cherry Bombe would be nowhere if not for the bomb squad. And I do think, if we're going to grow and benefit, the community at large should benefit.
Josh Sharkey [00:35:05]:
Yep. So we're gonna move on a little bit 'cause you were mentioning Jubilee and I have a lot of questions there. How cool that you created the largest gathering of women and food in the US. That's pretty insane. You also have these dinner series that you do that I was interested about. I was curious how you think about Cherry Bombe, you know, 'cause you started it as a print magazine and now you have all these events and I think that, you know, one sort of feeds the other one. Was the plan always to have events like this or, and do you feel like you could, you would be able to decouple the event business from the print and media business?
Kerry Diamond [00:35:46]:
A great question. Doing events was never part of the plan. Like I said, the only plan was to do enough copies of the print magazine and you know, enough issues of the print magazine to cover what I owed people who had kickstarted. So I think the top reward on Kickstarter was maybe like eight issues. So we knew we had to do eight issues. To, you know, be able to hold our heads high among the people who had kickstarted. The reason we got into events was because of an article in Eater that ran in Fall of 2013. Cherry Bombe launched in May of 2013, and I think it was like October or November, and it was a story about, by Hillary Dixler about how women were being left out of food conferences around the world.
[00:36:27]:
And I knew that was happening for the reasons I mentioned earlier. You know, I was organizing events on behalf of my restaurant and realized, you know, there were no women speaking or participating in, in major roles in these events. And sometimes in any roles, you know, the lineup would be all guys. So I read this article and it was so interesting because it was filled with pie charts. So I knew emotionally, you know, anecdotally what was going on. I did not have data, and now all of a sudden, here's some data. So I said we should do an event. My partner at the time, Claudia Wu, said, well, we don't know how to do a conference or we don't throw events. That's not our thing. And I was like, you know what?
[00:37:10]:
We can figure it out. So the very first Jubilee took place, I think it was March 2014. We had incredible speakers. It was at the Highline Hotel in their ballroom. It was just such an amazing event and there was so much electricity. And I realized, you know, after I read the story, I was like, okay, so this is what's going on. Women aren't taking part in these events. And they're missing out on opportunities. They're missing out on opportunities to meet investors, to meet colleagues, to make friends. And I mean, Josh, you know, the first thing you did was tell me the person who we had in common. You know, when we started talking earlier, this industry is about relationships.
[00:37:55]:
Hospitality is about relationships. Relationships we have with each other, relationships we have with the guests. Or the readers or you know, whoever our version of the guest happens to be. And when you are shut off from making those relationships, it hurts you professionally. And that's what was happening to women on a big scale. So to be able to facilitate these connections and conversations was amazing. And the conference just grew and grew and grew every year. And no one is more floored than me that this continues to happen every year and no one is more grateful for it because I couldn't even begin to quantify the number of friendships and relationships that have come out of this. And especially after the pandemic. I mean, the first one we did was last year, 2022. And so many women who only knew each other through social media were getting to meet in person. And were hugging, we're crying, we're, you know, just so happy to be there. It's been amazing. I do not take it for granted one second
Josh Sharkey [00:38:57]:
Well, I'm gonna be a little bit selfish here in asking some questions about how, because we've been talking about events a bit. I'm sure the first one was amazing, but I imagine the delta between how good the one last year is from the one in 2014 is huge. What makes a successful event? What went wrong that you learned from mm-hmm. How do you make sure that it is successful? And then how do you measure the success of these things?
Kerry Diamond [00:39:28]:
Yeah, you are constantly fine tuning. I mean, I think that's life, you know, you're constantly fine tuning things, uh, in your personal life, in your professional life. So Jubilee is always a work in progress. And when we started out back in 2014, the term intentional gathering wasn't a term that was thrown around. You know, if you haven't read the work of Priya Parker, I definitely suggest that you read what she's written about gatherings and we were kind of naturally doing what she talks about.
[00:39:51]:
The one thing that I would like us to be better at is facilitation of networking. That sounds kind of nerdy. And you want to just think that that can happen naturally and it absolutely does. But so many women and other individuals come to our event by themselves and they are not necessarily natural networkers. And you know, if you're a little bit shy or an introvert, those things can be very, very hard. So we tried this year to have some networking and some meetups. So we did like a first timer meetup. I think it was like at the Kerrygold station. You know, if you were a first timer, go meet there. And we had some people helping facilitate it.
[00:40:32]:
We did one for entrepreneurs and CPG people who had launched in the CPG space at Whole Foods at one point. And I forget the other, I think we had maybe five different meetups at the different spaces throughout our venue. And I would say that they were semi-successful. I would like to find, tune them even more. Next year, I think we can get even more intentional and organized about networking. And you know what's so funny? We had lanyards that had people's, you know, were you staff? Were you an attendee? Were you a speaker? But we didn't have name tags this year for whatever reason. I don't even remember why. I think because one year we had name tags that were so hard to peel off the adhesive that it just made us all crazy. So we were like, no more name tags. And we always survey the attendees. And the number one thing this year was, could we please have name tags next year? So sometimes it's the little things.
Josh Sharkey [00:40:29]:
That's so funny. I would've never have assumed that I always took mine off.
Kerry Diamond [00:41:35]:
But I think Josh, it goes back to, you know what we were talking about earlier? Where's the white space? Where's the need? Yeah. You know, what's your community? There's so much white space that exists. People don't think that there is so much of everything right now. It's a little overwhelming. Molly Yeh, on my podcast Radio Cherry Bombe. I think she once called it too much of everything. And I think we're feeling too much of everything right now, but there is still white space and people want to come together in person right now in a way that they never have. And I think it's really important to bring people together in person. We spend too much time on devices and on computers and in our homes or apartments or wherever we happen to be. And magical things happen when people come together. People who share something. A goal. Yeah, a desire, whatever it is.
Josh Sharkey [00:42:17]:
Yeah. It's funny, I don't know if you see the parallel between your internship with, with l and this, he saw white space in punk rock and started what he did. And you've done the same with women, so you, you definitely at least pick something up there.
Kerry Diamond [00:42:41]:
Yeah. And the two great examples right now are what's going on with Taylor Swift. Again to bring up Taylor Swift. You know, to see what's going on around the country with Taylor, you know, they say that the city she goes into, the impact is as if the Super Bowl came to town in terms of the economy and the Barbie movie, groups of people just getting together to have a collective experience. You know, they're dressing up, they're going with their friends and their mothers and other people in their circles. And we are craving something as humans right now. And I think that is getting together. And again, if you can facilitate that, that is a great thing.
Josh Sharkey [00:43:04]:
You know, the idea of white space I think is really interesting too, because I think most people probably know it's there, but the common response is somebody's probably already doing that. Somebody's probably already tried and didn't work. I wouldn't do that. But most people probably take for granted it is no, no, no. If you, if you see a white space, just go fucking do something about it because mm-hmm. Yeah. If you don't. It might not happen.
Kerry Diamond [00:43:50]:
We did that. You know, you would think that there is no white space left in podcasting, but there actually is. We have so many incredible bakers and pastry chefs in our community. We just did not have enough space to be telling their stories at the level that we needed to, to. We decided to do podcasts that we launched in February called She's My Cherry Pie. It's a really fun, deep dive with the top bakers and pastry chefs in the country. We just had Christina Tossi on, it's hosted by Jesse Sheen, who's a really talented baker and author, and it's now the number one baking podcast in the country. There are tons of baking podcasts, but I think our approach was unique. It's not just running through somebody's career like we do on Radio Cherry Bombe, but it's a really nerdy, deep dive into their signature baked goods and the how and the why, and the technique and the ingredients behind it. So, If you had come to me and said, I wanna launch a baking podcast a year ago, I probably would've been like, good luck.
Josh Sharkey [00:44:39]:
Yeah. That's so interesting. I have to check that. It sounds like we also have a lot of, well, I guess they're customers of mine and they're, they're followers of yours, but we have so many bakers using these.
Kerry Diamond [00:44:58]:
Wait, you have to, I know this is our show, but tell people in case they're some Cherry Bombe people who come over and listen to those who aren't familiar with your thing. Give us your elevator pitch now I'm interviewing you. Sorry. It's inevitable.
Josh Sharkey [00:45:03]:
No, it's okay. Well, I mean, you speak about white space. I think it was the same thing. I was a chef and a restaurant owner my whole life and after, you know, owning restaurants for a while, I realized like there's not a tool built for us. And I started trying to find something so I could run my business and something for the kitchen, something for us craft cooking. And I realized nothing existed. And then I started getting more and more upset. I realized like, okay, designers have Figma and architects have AutoCAD and engineers have GitHub and. We have nothing. All we have is finance software and like accounting or inventory. And so meez is essentially, you know what Figma is for designers, meez is the chefs, right?
[00:45:47]:
It's our tool, it's our digital toolbox for the entire sort of culinary operating system. But primarily it is the greatest recipe tool in the world. I think I spent, you know, three years, just maniacally focused on building the best recipe tool that our food professional could have for all the things that we do with scaling and converting and all that jazz. And, and so that's what we do. And so we service over 24,000, you know, chefs and thousands of restaurants and they use it to run their kitchens and train and organize and scale and scale batches and, you know, get nutrition and costing and, and all that jazz. So it's sort of the all in one recipe tool for chefs. We also have a lot of bakers because of the scaling and percentages and things.
Kerry Diamond [00:46:38]:
And that is so important in baking. More so maybe even than cooking.
Josh Sharkey [00:46:41]:
Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. Absolutely. Well, thank you for, for letting me explain that to your listeners.
Kerry Diamond [00:46:45]:
I've listened to your show and you don't treat your show like a giant advertorial.
Josh Sharkey [00:46:48]:
No, I try my best not to.
Kerry Diamond [00:46:50]:
There you go meez listeners. Now, you know.
Josh Sharkey [00:46:53]:
Well let's talk about the podcast though because you now have like at least four that I know of podcasts in the realm of all the things you do. The number one podcast in America for Women in Food. Also the number one for baking. You have this, The Future of Food is You new one. That's really cool.
Kerry Diamond [00:47:04]:
And just won a James Beard award, and shocked us all. It was one of the surprise awards. It wasn't even an award. People might not know this, but you kind of have to nominate yourself to get a James Beard Award. So you have to nominate your articles and your podcasts and all that. Abena Anim-Somuah is a very talented host and received the Rising star James Beard. It was like an emerging voice in broadcast media and we're very proud of her.
Josh Sharkey [00:47:22]:
Wow. That's amazing. I had no idea. That's incredible. I have learned a lot about podcasts over the last, like six months. My first lesson was don't record 20 podcasts in a month because then you're kind of done.
Kerry Diamond [00:47:41]:
Right. But then also they get very tired. I mean, a lot of people do batch records, but the world changes so rapidly today.
Josh Sharkey [00:47:46]:
Yeah. I was nervous because, you know, I've obviously, I run a company, I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna have time to do this. Turns out like after you get used to it, you can bang up pretty quickly.I'm gonna kind of keep this broad is like what you've learned about podcasts and also from your perspective as a journalist and, and like through media podcasts obviously in the last five, six years have just had a complete paradigm shift. They were a fun place to hear some stories, Serial and things like that, so now it's like literally just part of the, you know, like fabric of how we consume information and not just information, just generally how we consume media. Like how have you seen maybe just the food media world change since podcasts have proliferated the way they have?
Kerry Diamond [00:48:13]:
That's a great question. There are a lot of podcasts. I would like to see more interesting food podcasts. I think there are a lot of similar ones like mine, like yours, you know, where you're sitting and having a fun conversation. I would love to see more that dive more into these podcasts that I wanna eventually do, but a lot of people could do these. I wanna do a one hour podcast on Alice Waters. Everything you need to know about Alice Waters, everything you need to know about Edna Lewis. I think there are a lot of great recipe podcasts. There are a lot of great interviewing chefs and prominent people. But again, going back to that white space, like there's so much room to do interesting things in the podcasting space in food.
[00:49:14]:
But yes, you are right, like. Podcasting is a big, big part of journalism right now. And if you do have a media company, you kind of can't avoid podcasting. It's how people wanna consume news on some level. You know, not everybody wants to read. Not everybody has the time to read. People are commuting, they're busy, they're whatnot. And a podcast is a great way to get information, news, entertainment, you name it.
Josh Sharkey [00:49:36]:
Yeah, yeah. You know, one thing I've always been thinking about is to sort of improve the experience of a podcast independent of the content. By the way, I love the idea of just an hour different on everything that you wanna know about Alice Waters, but you have to either have a notepad with you or you have to like, you know, remember things.
[00:50:01]:
And I would love to see an interactive way to digest a podcast where there's links and there's ways you can mark things. You can sort of, you know, while you're listening, so that you actually remember, because there's so many, there's some podcasts I listen to because I'm just learning and I have to, like, I'm literally writing things down and probably would need to be a new medium of how you have the podcast. That's with, with ai. I bet it'd actually be pretty easy now because you could transcribe as you go and create links.
Kerry Diamond [00:50:23]:
AI transcripts are terrible. I don't know if you've used AI transcripts yet, but they're pretty bad. Human transcripts are still far superior.
Josh Sharkey [00:50:38]:
Yeah. No, that's an interesting thing. You bring up. A lot of people don't engage with show notes. There's a lot of information in some show notes. We could probably all be a little more thorough in our show notes, in terms of links and all that, and we definitely try, but I don't know how many people, again, because you're, you know, you're often listening when you're doing something else, when you're driving or you're working out or you're cooking. Yeah. So there's not really time to be scouring the show notes for all the information you need.
[00:51:01]:
Yeah, yeah. Then you have to remember to go back to it. Yeah. Another question I had was, I listened to a couple episodes of the Future of Food Is You, and there's a lot of similarities. I mean, it's the same sort of flavor, right, of your other podcast in terms of like, it seems like there's a framework, like have you memorialized some sort of like framework of like this is a Cherry Bombe production
Kerry Diamond [00:51:13]:
No, definitely not. I mean, Radio Cherry Bombe came about very organically. It was Julia Turian who was our first host and she said could I host a podcast for you? And I was like, what's a podcast? I didn't even know what a podcast was back then. You know, like I mentioned, I worked in college radio, I was obsessed with radio. So I just love the idea. We get people once a week who reach out, who want to do their own podcasts and they wanna chat about what we've learned about doing podcasts. And Josh, I'm sure you know this, the one thing you need to know about podcasts is they are so much work. A lot of people abandon their podcast before they even have time to have found an audience. And it does take time. I mean, it was years before we had our audience, before we had our first sponsor, anything like that.
[00:52:11]:
And you kind of just have to be willing to put in the work on a podcast if you wanna do a podcast. But yeah, so the framework was sort of established from the outset with Radio Cherry Bombe. And then our second podcast, I guess our second podcast was our baking one. She's My Cherry Pie. And that one, we decided to break up the format a little bit and make the bulk of the show a deep dive into a recipe. So the baker or pastry chef is literally going through her recipe, like Christina Tossi went through her iconic birthday layer cake.Claudia Fleming, who I'm sure you know, you know, did her famous chocolate Caramel Tart. Then The Future of Food is You that Abena hosts with younger people who are just starting out in the industry, and the conversations are so interesting.
[00:53:00]:
It is similar in that it's a conversation about where their heads are at right now, but I feel like the conversations are so where their heads are at and where their careers are at. But I feel like it's so different because on Radio Cherry Bomb, you know, it's Ina Garten, it is Alice Waters, it's Nigel Lawson. It's people who are more established in their careers, although we definitely have some newcomers from time to time. So Abena, I feel like, is such a fresh, different take on the industry and where it's headed. So I love those conversations. And then at the very end, the guest leaves a voicemail to their future self.
[00:53:39]:
And if you're ever feeling really bummed out about the world and where it's headed, I suggest you listen to this podcast. You'll be a lot more optimistic about the future. Then the other podcast we do is an HBO Official Companion podcast. A max official companion podcast for their scripted series about Julia Childs. That obviously is on hold because of the writers and the actors' strike. But the show is supposed to come out in October. I do not know if there will be a companion podcast for season two, so we'll find out. I hope the actors and the writers come to a successful resolution because, I mean, I love actors, but I adore writers. Where the hell would we be without writers?
[00:54:18]:
I mean, it sucks. That's my take. You know, a lot of friends are out of work. Any great entertainment starts with a writer. You know, you can't get around that. I mean, you don't have a movie if you don't have a screenplay and you don't have a writer, you don't have a screenplay. So that's where it starts. It's like doing food without a chef or a cook. More and more things are being automated. I was just hearing like Chipotle has this new machine that makes guac and half the time, okay, fine. But do we really all want meals that are made by robots? I don't think so. Do we want scripts written by robots?
Josh Sharkey [00:54:59]:
No. I don't think you can have any net new ideas if you don't have writers because even if you automate things, it's all automated based on historical information. How do you think it's gonna play out? Like what do you think, do you have a sense of how this is gonna end?
Kerry Diamond [00:55:16]:
I don't know. I'm not in the business of predictions.I don't know. It seems to be taking an awful long time and yeah, I hope it's resolved soon. Things like that are painful. You know, it's not just for the writers and the actors, but there are so many people around them. From my past lives, I have so many friends who are makeup artists and hairdressers and stylists, and those folks don't have work right now. You know, restaurants suffer, you know, talk to any of your friends in Los Angeles. Yeah. You know, it's not, yeah. It's not great when people aren't having business lunches and doing things like that.
Josh Sharkey [00:55:51]:
There's, there's on and on and on that it impacts itself. I hope it ends too. So we were talking about the podcast and now you have four of them. One thing that I have always really admired as you've kind of grown this company is you've grown this brand really, really strong brand. You know, not just sort of the mission obviously, which is, you know, one of the sort of key elements of a great brand is that you have a very clear vision of what the future's supposed to be. And Cherry Bombe certainly has that, but even just the aesthetics, the storytelling, and I think when you see something from Cherry Bombe, you know, right away, the coloring, everything. You've built this incredible brand. I'd love to know if you have any sort of lessons or mistakes for anybody that's thinking about creating a brand of their own and how do you create an Evergreen brand?
Kerry Diamond [00:56:31]:
That's a great question. Again, it didn't start out like that. It's become that, I don't know, it's a good question, I'm not answering it very well, am I, Josh? Find great people to work with. That's much harder than it sounds. But we've been blessed to work with some people who are very talented when it comes to creating a visual identity. Folks like Nancy Pappas, who did a lot of graphic design work for us and Art direction, Seton Rossini, who designs our magazine right now. We've been very blessed to work with folks like that. I think consistency helps. You know, sometimes you can be all over the map with certain things and you have to show a lot of restraint.
[00:57:15]:
And for us, you know, we're doing so many events now and we've got the magazine and the different podcasts. It's how do you manage to marry everything? And we definitely do. I think it comes to just trusting your gut. I think about all things. All things business and design, and you really just have to learn to trust your gut. And that's something I didn't know for many years. And now as soon as you kind of get that feeling, and I still sometimes don't trust my gut and something will go into the magazine and the whole process, I'll be like, eh, do I love that? Do I not love that? And then the magazine comes out and I'm just like, Ugh, why did I not kill that when I had the chance? So trust your gut people.
Josh Sharkey [00:57:58]:
Yeah. It's a worse feeling when you don't trust your gut and then something gets through. Then the good feeling of when you trust your gut and it does get through because those things you're used to. But it's a lot easier said than done, obviously.
Kerry Diamond [00:58:21]:
And also educate yourself, because I know folks in the food world didn't come up in fashion the same way I did. Having the good fortune to work with amazing photographers and visual artists and. Graphic designers, um, creative directors, but there's so much out there now, you know, at our fingertips. Even if it's just via Pinterest. Yeah. You know, you can educate yourself visually. There are a lot of resources.
Josh Sharkey [00:58:38]:
What's next for Cherry Bombe?Anything on the horizon?
Kerry Diamond [00:58:40]:
Yes. We've got a lot coming up. We just finished an amazing series with OpenTable, where we did a series of dinners at different restaurants across the country, and I can't even tell you how nice it was. The whole series was called Sit With Us, and the idea was you can just come by yourself if you want, because Josh, I'm sure you know, you're busy, you have kids now you've got a huge company. There might be a restaurant that you want to check out. By the time you either get a babysitter or you find some friends who happen to be available that night and happen to like that kind of food and are willing to eat at the time that you can get the reservation. You're like, Ugh, I might as well just go by myself.
[00:59:19]:
So you don't get to check out certain places or maybe you don't like going to a restaurant by yourself. And I know plenty of people like that, myself included. You know, I'm one of five kids. I think I like being with a group when I go out to eat. So the whole idea was like in high school, you know, if you're new, come sit with us. So we did four of these dinners. We were at Four Cinema in San Francisco, Olamaie in Austin. We did Zou Zou’s in New York City. We did A.O.C. in Los Angeles and met so many people, tons of people came by themselves. A lot of new moms came by themselves, which was so cool and moving. And I was just so happy that they felt like this was a safe space where they could come and pump every few hours. You know, some of the moms were doing that and meeting new people. And I hope we're gonna do part two of that in the fall. We're doing a big event tied in with The Future of Food is You podcast. That'll be in New York City. We're doing our Future of Food 50 list. So we'll be celebrating some of those folks.
Josh Sharkey [01:00:21]:
What is that? What is the 50 list?
Kerry Diamond [01:00:23]:
You know, we're finalizing it right now. It'll be in the September issue of our magazine. And it's folks who are, again, kind of new in their careers, but who we think will be talking about for years to come.
Josh Sharkey [01:00:29]:
How do you find them?
Kerry Diamond [01:00:32]:
All different ways people could nominate themselves. We've had an open nomination forum for quite some time and people can nominate themselves to be on the podcast as well. But you know, if you're a journalist, your job is to know things like who's important, who's doing things that you should take note of, who's someone to watch. And I think we've always been good at Cherry Bombe or good at that skill. Like I've always kind of been a talent spotter, even in my other jobs. It was something I just happened to be good at and that I enjoy very much. There's so much new, exciting talent in the food world. It's amazing. Having to narrow it down to 50 is incredibly painful. I'll be working on it as soon as we finish this with my team. We've been working on it for weeks and we probably have another week in us, but we will get it done.
Josh Sharkey [01:01:18]:
Very cool. Well, I'm excited to see that. Anything else you wanna share with the audience?
Kerry Diamond [01:01:23]:
Support women in the food world. You know, there are a lot more female chefs than there ever were before. I think everybody should know who the female chef is in their community, or if you're lucky there are multiple female chefs or female owned businesses, go support them, but also, you know, support the indie food businesses in your community. You know, they're there when we need them, but they need us all the time. So support them when you can. And don't gripe about prices so much. I know everything's so much more expensive when you go to a restaurant. It's a little painful, but things are expensive now and it costs a lot of money to have people working in restaurants and transform those raw ingredients into beautiful things. That's on your plate. So Yeah, I know it's not within everybody's means to support restaurants a lot. But support however you can.
Josh Sharkey [01:02:13]:
All right. I couldn't agree more.
Kerry Diamond [01:02:15]:
And show them live on social media. That's an easy way, you know, if you've got a favorite place in town, like make sure you follow them on Instagram or whatever it is, and leave a comment. It's hard out there for restaurants, so do what you can to help them.
Josh Sharkey [01:02:34]:
That's a great one. I agree. I need to do that more.
Kerry Diamond [01:02:36]:
Yeah. Go leave a comment on your favorite restaurant's instagram.
Josh Sharkey [01:02:39]:
All right. I'm gonna do that today. Kerry, this is awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate the time. Really grateful. I know my team wanted to say thank you as well, and I'm sure there are a lot of people in this industry that would, so I'm really grateful that you're doing what you're doing.
Kerry Diamond [01:02:52]:
I have to say thank you to thank you to everybody out there who's doing important work in the food world, but also people just doing the essential work in the food world. I mean, Cherry Bombe literally would be nothing if it wasn't for the bomb squad and all the amazing women out there. So thank you right back, Josh. Thank you for your time and for what you're doing too.
Josh Sharkey [01:03:20]:
All right, Carrie, appreciate it.
[01:03:23]:
Thanks for tuning into The meez Podcast. The music from the show is a remix of the Song Art Mirror by an old friend, hip hop artist, Fresh Daily. For show notes and more, visit www.getmeez.com/podcast. That's G E T M E E Z dot com forward slash podcast. If you enjoyed the show, I'd love it if you can share it with your fellow entrepreneurs and culinary pros and give us a five star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts.
[01:03:47]:
Keep innovating. Don't settle. Make today a little better than yesterday. And remember, it's impossible for us to learn what we think we already know. See you next time.
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