Episode 22: Brooke Eliason - @femalefoodie

Brooke Eliason (pronounced “e-listen”), is a 20 something native of Salt Lake City who was raised in a "blogger family" (her mom and sister also have successful blogs), where her mother taught her the love of all things food and photography. She started Female Foodie in 2010 while she was living in the little touristy town of West Yellowstone, Montana (population 1,321) and decided to document her experiences trying every single restaurant in town. After leaving West Yellowstone, she continued to document and promote favorite foodie spots that she felt everyone should know about. In 2014 she jumped on the social media bandwagon and, for the first time, was able to experience being a part of the foodie community. Today, femalefoodie.com consists of over 30 contributors in 15 cities, who do everything from review popular restaurants to rank the best places to eat in different cities. On today's episode, Nate and Brooke discuss their mutual love of food, and how that love led Brooke to start what was initially a food blog after waiting tables during her summers in West Yellowstone. They chat about the importance of having a catchy name and keeping your url (09:00), the early stages of the blog and how it has evolved over time with help from social media and the "foodie" community (15:00) and how food guides have become their main source of content (20:00). Brooke takes us through her process of selecting her contributors and how she grew her little blog into a fully fledged business (25:00) and some of her most popular/favorite content (29:30). Brooke discusses the feedback she gets from her followers/readers and the cities where Female Foodie has the biggest wealth of recommendations (34:00) including Austin, TX and New York City. Brooke talks about how she chooses her restaurants to review and how she avoids writing negative reviews (44:00). Nate asks what Brooke's favorite foods are and they go off on a Mexican food rant, before finishing with a countdown of her favorite restaurants in Salt Lake City, Portland, Park City, New York and Dallas (50:00). They finish the podcast with a "7 seconds or less" segment where we get to know Brooke a bit better (58:00) before previewing what's upcoming from female foodie in the near future!