A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

When we talked last year, one of the things we discussed was how you continue to innovate in a space where you’ve established yourself.

It’s in step with growing or evolving as a person, which happens slowly and over time, not necessarily in radical jumps and leaps—at least for me personally. For me it’s a variation on, How do you stand out? I get that question a lot, when people are looking to break into the industry. It’s sort of a be yourself thing—that’s how I decide to move forward with projects, and how I decide that, yes, I’ve published shallot pasta before at another publication, but I’m going to put it in my book. I’m going to put it in this collection of recipes that is the poster child for pantry recipes. Shallot pasta is the gold standard, and it would be totally bizarre for me not to put it in this book, right?

The intention behind a book isn’t to innovate every day. It’s to innovate every few years, because that’s how long it takes to make them, and hopefully these things are items that stay in your home forever. And in 20 years, you’re going to be like, “This is such a solid book. I know that everything in it is great, and I can count on it, and I’m going to gift it.” It becomes something different than Googling “shallot pasta.”

How often do you need to feed your fans’ need for some sort of connection with you? Can you sustain the business of Alison Roman doing things on your own schedule, responding to your authentic feeling of “Now I have something to say”? Or do you need a more consistent schedule to meet those fans?

That’s a great question, and I don’t actually have the answer. All I know is what works for me. I don’t think, for me, more is more. I don’t think that if I were to give you a recipe every week, that anyone would cook it every week. There are just too many recipes in the world and nobody has time. I know for a fact that even when I was publishing every other week, people were still not able to keep up with that cadence. So then you sort of wonder, well, who is it for? Is it just for the eyeballs? What are we doing here? I don’t think my work is better when I’m publishing on somebody else’s timeline, and I think the work suffers.

Frankly, when I’m forced into, I’ve got to make a recipe for this—it’s fine, and it tastes good, but I’m not impassioned about it. I think you can kind of tell in the writing because I’m a horrible faker. But also, I’ve never set that precedent. I’m not somebody who used to publish with that much regularity or consistency, then dropped off all of a sudden—with the exception of [my YouTube series] Home Movies, I suppose. And I’m not going to push myself to innovate on something that doesn’t need innovation. It’s so funny, because on a book tour people love to ask me, “What’s next?” And I’m like, Jesus Christ, I had a baby. I opened a store. I launched a tomato sauce brand. I’m like, I beg of you to tell me that you’ve consumed everything I’ve written and cooked and that you’ve taken part in all of my offerings. There’s a lot that I have offered because I’m trying to diversify, I’m trying to explore, by other means, what it means to do what I do. I don’t see it stopping at me just being, well, a recipe on a newsletter. I have a lot more planned for myself.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

That is never going to be my path. I launched a tomato sauce and opened a store because those are areas where I can hire out. I can hire really smart people who are great at C.P.G., who are excellent at retail, who have a commerce mind. That frees me up to write. I can cook, and I can write.

I’m spending less time writing and cooking, less time than I ever have, but it’s with the goal of coming back to writing and cooking. I have to set up these businesses to be in a good place to run effectively, and be solid with good products and great staff and great environments, so that I can step away and write. That’s always my goal. That’s the most fulfilling, and the thing that keeps me going.

At the risk of doing what you just said you hated, can I ask, do you know what’s next?

Honestly, my goal is to get back to writing more and cooking more and publishing on a regular schedule because that, to me, is the best and easiest way to feel like I’m working. I love working. And lately it’s been a lot of logistical calls and not what I want to be spending my time doing. So my goal is to hire out for those roles, build those businesses, get them all in a really good place, and continue to build. Whether it’s a store in New York City that’s permanent, or growing the tomato sauce—like, building these brands that aren’t my name, that aren’t based on my face or my writing, that don’t require that as part of it. So that way I can actually scale up. My goal is to do that so I can reprioritize the types of books I want to write, the type of food I want to cook, and hopefully continue to do that forever.

When I first started out, when I published my first book or even my second book, I was like, I want to be the best, I want to be whatever number one was—which is so silly, because that simply doesn’t exist anymore. I was sort of like, I want to be the best at whatever. And now that is so far from my goal. I want to just be thought of as somebody. I want to have a really long career—a really solid career for a very long time. I don’t want to spike at any point. I have no interest in peaking… ever. I want a sustained, solid cruising altitude—that’s what I hope for myself.

I hope you have a fantastic Thanksgiving. Thank you for doing this.

I’ll see you this time next year.