The Culinistas
The Culinistas is a culinary resource that empowers people to gather. Founded by Jill Donenfeld and Tiana Tenet, The Culinistas makes it easy to book a private chef for any occasion, from intimate dinners to larger gatherings.
Overview
To drive social media growth and increase newsletter subscriptions for The Culinistas, I humanized the brand by pivoting from a food-only feed to a founder-led content strategy. By placing the founders front and center through cooking videos and personal storytelling, I established a new level of brand visibility and trust. This shift from static food photography to approachable, behind-the-scenes assets resulted in a significant spike in audience engagement, successfully expanding both their social following and their subscriber base.
Video Direction and Editing
Storyboarding
Social Media Posts
Digital Marketing
Banner Ads
Script Writing
Cooking Videos
Overview
The founders live in different cities, a real production challenge for a cooking series that needed to feel spontaneous and warm. I scripted and directed a series of recipe tutorials featuring Jill and Tiana, designing a split-screen format that let them cook simultaneously from their own kitchens, side by side in one frame.
The constraint became the concept: two people, one conversation, one dish. Each video was written to encourage culinary improvisation, giving viewers permission to adapt rather than follow recipes exactly.
Digital Banner Ads
Overview
To scale the brand's following and newsletter base, I designed a two-flight banner ad campaign that put the founders front and center. Shifting from food photography to face-forward creative wasn't just a style choice. It was a trust signal. These are real people who cook real food. The ads converted because they felt personal.
FIRST FLIGHT
SECOND FLIGHT
Newsletter
Subscriber Exclusive: Favorite Pantry Gems PDF
Subscriber Exclusive: Kitchen Essentials Guide
Social Posts
The social posts carried the founder-led strategy across formats, from cooking content to community engagement, maintaining a consistent voice across every touchpoint.
Results
When I came on board in June 2025, the combined social following across Instagram and Facebook sat at approximately 34,000. By March 2026 it had grown to nearly 60,000, a 73% increase in under a year. Instagram alone now sits at 60K.
Newsletter growth followed the same trajectory. Through the founder-led content strategy and subscriber exclusive content, the weekly newsletter nearly doubled organically within the year. A targeted sweepstakes campaign then drove total subscriber growth to over 620% from where it started.