“The world is your pita! As long as you take the time to dig deep into the culture around it. Every day I love the Galilee Culinary Institute more and more. I love how open and how ready to evolve the team is.”

What’s a food entrepreneur anyway? Keren Brown has had over a dozen career positions in the food industry. From food content creator to event producer to food tech adviser, if it’s culinary, she has probably done it. She’s been on the team of the Galilee Culinary Institute from the very beginning. She does everything from writing the content on the website to helping with the newsletter to creating short-form content. In addition, Keren Brown is a TikTok Strategist, Food expert, and the author of the Food Lovers’ Guide to Seattle. Here’s how it all started! 

Keren’s food journey started when she moved to Seattle and didn’t know a soul. She made Aliyah at 17  from Montreal and, at 27, moved to Seattle with her boyfriend for his job in high tech. She needed to reinvent herself, so she started volunteering at food events and hanging out at Whole Foods. Keren started a blog about Seattle food in the Seattle PI, one of the two main local newspapers. She spent her days networking with local food lovers and building a community without even knowing it. 

Over 7 years, she became a local food influencer, built her dream business, Foodportunity, networking events that connected the food community, and wrote a book, The Food Lovers Guide to Seattle. She was even named “Martha Stewart’s “Doer of the Week”.

Eventually, Keren and her family moved back to Israel, where she focused on a social media career. When the pandemic began, she decided to dive deep into TikTok and fell deeply in love. She has 24K followers and over a million likes and helps brands understand the power of TikTok. She has been part of the GCI team since the beginning stages, writing the entire website and helping with the monthly newsletters, strategizing social media, and creating short-form videos.

Why did you decide to be a part of the GCI?

I believe that when things are meant to be, they are just meant to be. I met Nathan a year before, and he told me about the GCI. I felt that there was an excellent connection.  The rest was food history.  I love everything about the GCI because I believe it is everything that is missing in culinary and more. 

Since you have been in the food world for more than 15 years, what is the essential skill to break into food? 

It’s flexibility. I started my food journey by taking culinary classes at the Art Institute of Seattle because I wanted to be a chef. I helped at some restaurants and knew pretty fast that it would be too hard on my body in the long run. I started a blog at the beginning of the blog era and discovered social media before there was even a name for it. I always shared food, and it made it easy for me in life that this passion for food could take me to many different careers. I was approached by an editor at Globes Pequot and wrote my book, “Food Lovers’ Guide to Seattle.” The fact that I could always move into a different path or career in food has dramatically influenced my life, and I always seem to find opportunities because I am flexible and ready to become an expert and learn in new areas.

How did Foodportunity come about?

I lived in Israel for a decade when we moved to Seattle. I had Israeli “chutzpah” in a good way. I wasn’t scared to go for my dreams. I had been obsessing over Chef Tom Douglas, one of the best chefs in the Northwest. I knocked on his door and asked his manager if I could talk to him. I came in and told him that I wanted to do events together, and Foodportunity was born. He mentored me, and the idea that I was cooking up became one of the most influential events in Seattle. Every three months, we threw a huge culinary event that connected food companies, chefs, bloggers, writers, and food professionals. We used Twitter to promote it organically, and we grew as people figured out the power of social media. The event was always sold out, and we even expanded to Portland. It was a food lover’s dream come true.

How do you expect the Galilee Culinary Institute to change the culinary world? 

It’s simple. The food world is evolving every day. You need to be on top of social media, the updates in tech, and the cultures, and the only way to do this is by being hands-on. The world is your pita! As long as you take the time to dig deep into the culture around it. Every day I love the Galilee Culinary Institute more and more. I love how open and how ready to evolve the team is. I love the inventiveness of it all, and I especially love this opportunity to see people fall deeply in love with the food world. If you study here, you can have a vibrant work life and never get bored.

What’s your obsession with TikTok, and why do you see it as so necessary?

I believe that short-form video is the way of the future. People are bored of looking at photos. Videos are changing the scene on all platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, and I believe LinkedIn is next.  TikTok is not a social media platform but an entertainment one like Netflix. The videos are 100 percent storytelling, you need to have sound on so you can’t just scroll, and if you learn to use this platform correctly, you can become an expert at anything.  TikTok is focused on Search Engine Optimization and is giving Google a bit of a fight, and companies that use SEO correctly will be able to build entire brands before the rest of the world catches up.

What’s a fun culinary fact about you?

I love fast food as much as I love haute cuisine. I genuinely love simple Mcdonald's or Harvey’s, a Canadian favorite. I never told anybody about it, and I couldn’t admit it when my career was developing as a food writer until I interviewed a prominent chef in Israel. She told me she loves fast food and orders for her staff at least once a week. I felt liberated. It’s my secret!