The Power of a Hand-Written Letter

When I sat down to write my college application essays, my high school counselor wrote down the name of a website on a yellow sticky note for me as a source of inspiration: food52.com.

That night—deep in procrastination of writing my AP U.S. History paper—I googled the website and was surprised by the simplicity but practicality of the information I found. From recipe competitions where locals submit household favorites in order to be featured on the site to blogs about which seasonal vegetables to find at the farmer’s market to links to durable kitchenware, the website was the learning tool I never knew I needed.

Four years later, I’m still subscribed to the email newsletter and follow Food52 on all social media. But for a loyal fan, I never knew the background of the company and its namesake until now.

This week’s episode of the NPR podcast “How I Built This” with Guy Raz was about the co-founder and CEO of Food52 Amanda Hesser. Instead of taking a traditional path after college graduation, Hesser wrote hand-written letters to the chefs of all of her favorite restaurants and bakeries in Europe asking if they needed extra help in the kitchen. In the podcast, she explains how she followed-up by flying to Europe during spring break and knocking on the door of one of her favorite restaurants, explaining to the manager that she was the woman who had written the letters and she was looking for work.

To her surprise, one of the chefs in Germany agreed. Hesser gained experience as a kitchen runner and line chef. After a few years with the restaurant, she found herself living in a chateau in France to shadow the gardener. From this experience, she learned how to cook traditional recipes and about the seasonal shifts in ingredients. Hesser decided her observations would make a great cookbook and reached out to publication companies.

Her first book, The Cook and the Gardener, was published in 1999 and “landed [her another] book deal and one of the most coveted jobs in journalism: writing about food for the New York Times.” Hesser was described as “frighteningly ambitious” by her work colleagues at the Times because her drive for success challenged the “layers” and “bureaucracy” of the journalistic institution. In her own words, she said she found herself "pissing off people in new ways."

In 2008, Hesser didn’t have the patience to work her way up the ladder of journalistic hierarchy. Instead, she became an entrepreneur. After a failure with one business, she launched Food52, a “part food blog, part e-commerce site for all things kitchen and home.” Today the company is valued at about $100 million.

Courtesy: The Select 7

Hesser’s story did not move me because of her success, it moved me because it started with something as simple as a written letter. I still believe in the power of mailing a hand-written letter. It’s a lost art that most young people don’t take the time to appreciate. To be quite frank, my brother didn’t even know which side the postage stamp went on an envelope when he mailed his college graduation letters last May… Whether it’s a birthday card to your grandma or a letter to your future employer, Hesser’s story is a perfect example of how a small action can lead to a big change.

So, instead of moping around about not having an internship for the summer, I went to Target and bought myself some stationary. Spending my Sunday night writing letters to editorial and news media companies might not solve my immediate frustrations, but this approach could lead me to new opportunities.