THE MAKING OF PASS THE SPATULA Workshops

Pass The Spatula, a student-led magazine featured in the New York Times, started in 2020 during COVID-19, when the students of the Food and Finance High School were not able to participate in person for their Junior Showcase. Through the Food Media program at Food Education Fund, the magazine lives on and, now in its fourth year, Pass The Spatula has expanded from 12 students to over 30 students from three different schools: Food and Finance High School, High School of Hospitality Management, and High School of Environmental Studies.

Students involved in Pass The Spatula learn how to illustrate, develop recipes, copy edit, write copy, engage with social accounts, choose intentional content, and this year, for the first time ever, make a podcast! Once complete, students have a chance to apply for paid internships and receive free culinary supplies, as well as learn from and network with professionals in the food media world. Issue 1 focused on Chefs of Color, Issue 2 focused on Food Justice, and Issue 3 focused on Global Food and Mental Health Awareness. This year in Issue 4, our students are excited to dive deep into Entrepreneurship, including the intersection of identities, women in the kitchen, and mom-and-pop/ local businesses. The magazine features a diverse range of content that includes interviews with up-and-coming entrepreneurs, tips and tricks for starting a business, and a variety of mouth-watering recipes.

During this entire process, students are broken up into teams and have assignments to work through together. The editorial team brainstorms topics and writes editorials, such as opinion pieces, informative pieces, and profiles. The creative team oversees the magazine design and provides illustrations. The recipe development team oversees recipe production, and the entertainment team provides valueadds to the magazine. The interview team takes care of selecting, writing questions, and interviewing high-profile entrepreneurs that fit within our theme. The marketing team learns about advertising outreach and creates and oversees social media. This year, we’re lucky enough to have an additional full podcasting team, on top of their regular team assignments, which will record at CityVox led by Kerry Diamond of Cherry Bombe.

Meet The Team!

For our first workshop, the PTS team decided on the theme and dug into the question “What is Food Media?” (see Food Media Assignment pg. 16-17).

Magazine Development

We have honored guest speaker Amber Mayfield of While Entertaining and To Be Hosted, who covered the topic of magazine development. Students brainstormed ways to keep readers entertained and engaged while reading PTS, with ideas ranging from crossword puzzles (as seen on pg. 89) and fun lists (as seen on pg. 53).

Food Entrepreneur Panel

Our second guest speakers were a panel of up-and-coming entrepreneurs: Kyle-Cuffie Scott from Darnel’s Cakes, Chef Lay Alston from SoulandWheel (see her feature on pg. 50), and cousin duo B and Sam from Bite Mini Donuts. We chatted about what’s it like to start a business, the challenges they face, and key tips and tricks to keep in mind.

Podcasting

Next up was a topic that students were eager to dive into – Podcasting with Kerry Diamond of Cherry Bombe! We learned about the ins and outs of podcasts and discussed the Pass The Spatula podcast.

Recipe Development

An important part of Pass The Spatula is the diversity of delicious recipes! We had guest speaker Gabriela Rodiles of Food Network and Gourmet Gab to discuss Recipe Development and how it translates to social media! Students were tasked with brainstorming ideas with a marketable “IT” factor—for example, recipes drawing from culture or heritage, or incorporating something they’d never seen before in another recipe.

Recipe Prep Day

For this workshop, students met virtually to plan and prepare for the intense next step: recipe day.

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Food Photography

From here, students learned about how the eyes eat first and dove deep into food photography with Mr. C. Students learned different ways to enhance their photos using color, light, arrangement, props, and angles.

Recipe Day

Recipe day was fun, crazy, and super successful! After preparing their mise en place the day before, students worked alongside Chef Kyle, Chef Kat, Chef Gaby, Carson, Winnie, and Gabrielle from the FEF team.

Food Writing

Guest speaker Elazar

Sontag of Bon Appétit, joined us to discuss what it’s like to be a food writer and how to approach different editorial styles. We talked about our editorial and food writing ideas for the magazine, and Elazar gave feedback.

Editing

For our workshop with journalist Deanna Ting of Resy, students delved into the editing process and the steps to create a well-written story or recipe. They received tips on how to edit and learned best practices for factchecking. Deanna then supported the editorial team in workshopping their stories for the magazine!

Social Media

Social media is one of the more prevalent forms of marketing, and our students were lucky enough to learn from expert and Bon Appétit alum Emily Schultz of BentoBox. We discussed how to utilize different platforms based on your audience, and brainstormed ideas for the PTS social media based on editorials.

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Careers in Food Media One

For our first workshop on Careers in Food Media, we had food media expert and founder of Butter Be Ready, Quin Liburd, discussing blogging, photography, and digital entrepreneurship! Quin discussed all the basic of creating your own blog, and how to stay true to your authentic self.

For our second workshop on careers in food media we had author, food writer, and food culture and policy professional Alicia Kennedy share the journey of her newsletter and a full-time entrepreneur writing and speaking about what she loves. 13

Intentional Content Creation

We wrapped up the guest speaker series with none other than Stephen Satterfield, food writer, publisher, and multimedia producer, most popularly known for Whetstone magazine, Netflix docu-series High on the Hog with Dr. Jessica B. Harris, and his new disruptive talent agency HONE. We discussed being your unapologetic self, sticking to your values, and how to produce and write content for multi-media platforms and international audiences.

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Magazine Design

Throughout the magazine process, we’ve been lucky to work with a professional designer, Alex Vitela of Droga5 , who has guided our creative team in choosing colors, fonts, and cover design for Issue 4. For this workshop, Alex presented magazine layouts, potential covers and overall design ideas.