#Foodhackers features storytelling from 4 food founders [photos]

You’ve been to enough meetups with demo pitches. At the first Food Hackers event, which was kicked off by Gowanus distribution startup Farmigo, which we profiled yesterday, the format was all storytelling.

The night allowed for speakers to say a bit about what they do, but they told it in the form of stories about their development as entrepreneurs. As Farmigo CEO Benzi Ronen said, it was like an event at The Moth. It just didn’t feel the same as other similar events.

Helped by food prepared by Farmigo staff, the night welcomed several dozen attendees. Here’s a quick run down of the four stories presented, which Ronen moderated:

Erin Fairbanks, executive director at Heritage Radio Network. (Photo by Brady Dale)

Erin Fairbanks may be running a podcast network now, but she told the story of how she managed to break in to the world of high-class chef work — and how she totally blew it at a fancy party with other leading chefs.

Brian Leventhal, cofounder and CEO of Brooklyn Winery. (Photo by Brady Dale)

Brian Leventhal was a tech pro who got more interested in wine-making than technology. He talks about how opening a wine-making space led him to stumbling into the wedding business and a disaster he faced, early on, one Friday morning, before a wedding, when he got to the winery and fire trucks had beat him there.

Josh Hix, cofounder of Plated. (Photo by Brady Dale)

Josh Hix is an engineer who wanted to make it possible for busy people to have the experience of cooking something remarkable themselves. He told the story of how he discovered the subculture of do-it-yourself large-scale refrigeration. He said it was the first of several times his company nearly went under.

Alison Cayne, founder and owner of Haven’s Kitchen. (Photo by Brady Dale)

Alison Cayne told the crowd that she had lots of kids young so that she would have people to cook for. As they grew, she wanted to help other people lose their fear of cooking. In opening Haven’s Kitchen, she found out about real estate, entrepreneurship and landlords. “I didn’t know that if you aren’t making money, then you’re actually losing money,” she said.

As she got a bit more sophisticated, Cayne began to discover infrastructure problems in her space and realized that it would be her responsibility to get it fixed. She gave a report from the middle of her latest structural challenge, one in which she realized that being the super nice cooking lady had softened her. “I had lost a little of my fuck you-ness, but it came back yesterday,” Cayne told the crowd.

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