Spiced Up Mom: Using Roadblocks to Reach a Wider Audience with Shari Mukherjee
Collider is passionate about sharing the stories of Rochester entrepreneurs and small business owners! We recently chatted with Shari Mukherjee, who is a local food blogger, chef, content creator, and Master Chef participant.
Photo contributed by Shari Mukherjee
Shari Mukherjee, online content creator and writer of a food based blog, Spiced Up Mom, did not get into cooking until after meeting and marrying her husband. In fact, she explained that she was a very poor cook up until that time.
“When my husband and I were first married I was a terrible cook, like really bad,” Shari said with a laugh. “We used to watch the show Worst Cooks in America, and my husband sent in an application for me as a joke. I was mortified when the producers actually called me and refused to audition to be on the show.”
Shari went to college at the University of Minnesota Duluth to study cell biology. Shortly after acquiring her degree, the recession hit and she moved back to Rochester to work at a pharmacy, at which time she met and married her husband.
After getting married, Shari and her husband purchased a home. Shari remembers watching a different cooking show, Master Chef, one of their first nights living there. “That’s the show I want to be on,” she said at the time.
Over the next several years, Shari began experimenting with cooking, soon falling in love with the process of learning and developing recipes. She and her husband also grew their small family to include two sons. Now a stay at home mom, Shari launched her food based blog, Spiced Up Mom.
Photo by Shari Mukherjee
In 2019, Shari realized that Master Chef was hosting casting auditions in Minneapolis. Thinking back to her aspiration to be on the show years past, she decided that she would give it her best shot and audition to be a participant.
“When I saw that Master Chef was casting, I knew I had to go. So I told my husband I was going to audition, we dropped the kids at my sister's house, and he took off work and came up with me. I asked others to audition too, but no one wanted to,” Shari explained.
“I realized that it was a big, crazy dream and being pretty practical, I understood that the chances of me getting on the show were really slim. But I made it, out of the 20,000 other applicants, I was somehow one of the twenty chefs selected to participate in the show.”
Shari spent three months filming with Master Chef, working directly with well known chef and TV personality, Gordon Ramsay. After such a crazy experience, Shari was excited for opportunities to come her way upon returning to Rochester.
Photo contributed by Shari Mukherjee
“Before MasterChef I had been working on my blog, teaching myself to cook, and selling macarons locally. I had done one pop-up dining event with others in the community at a local restaurant but that didn't turn into anything regular. When I came back, I had a lot of ideas about doing something bigger.”
Unfortunately, Shari was surprised and disappointed to find roadblock after roadblock in her way after returning home and attempting to start something new and exciting.
“It was strange, I felt like prior to being on the show it was a lot easier to make connections in town and get people to work with me. Afterward, it felt like almost no one would work with me. Honestly, I felt ostracized to an extent. I saw other individuals from the show being embraced by their communities, going on to start restaurants or have crazy local opportunities come their way, and I was getting a bit frustrated by all of the rejection I was facing in my own community.”
Shari also felt that she did not receive the help that she wanted from the Rochester entrepreneurial community. Because she was a stay at home mom, she found it difficult to make it to various networking events to make connections with other entrepreneurs. She also found advice that was given to her to be dismissive and upset her more than it helped her at the time.
"I was told, 'If you don't feel you can do what you would like to start your business here in Rochester then I suggest you take your celebrity and influence online and make your business there.' That made me really angry at the time, considering that I was asking for help to overcome some of these struggles I was facing from a local entrepreneurial group-whose mission is to help people start businesses locally.”
Eventually however, an opportunity did come Shari’s way through a local cooking store and kitchen, Figue. They had discovered her on social media and reached out, asking if she was interested in being involved. Shari went on to host cooking demonstrations there, which she greatly enjoyed.
“I found that I was really good at teaching and really loved doing it. It was really exciting working with them to teach classes and host private dinners.”
Photo by Shari Mukherjee
Sadly, when the pandemic hit, Figue was forced to close and was unable to reopen. Shari was faced with yet another roadblock.
“It just felt that anything good that happened didn’t happen at quite the right time.”
During the pandemic however, some other opportunities came Shari’s way. Mayo Clinic reached out to her, asking if she would be willing to teach virtual cooking classes for their employees
“The opportunity with Mayo Clinic really helped me learn how to create good video content, it also opened up some doors and sparked connections that led to me teaching a lot more virtual cooking classes.”
Shari has gone on to utilize her love of cooking in many ways, from creating large quantities of online cooking content on her blog and social media platforms, hosting private dinners, teaching in person and virtual classes, selling macarons and cookie cakes, as well as developing and selling recipes and online content and photos for large and small brands. She recently had the opportunity to collaborate with Collins Orthodontics on a mini doughnut business they created to raise funds for their “Adopt-A-Shark” program which provides free braces to child cancer survivors. Shari developed seventeen unique sugar flavors for the business, The Donut.
“It’s been a really amazing opportunity. It allowed me to get back into some of my favorite things like food photography, product photography, and recipe development.”
Photo by Shari Mukherjee
Shari, along with her difficulties with finding a place for her skills and ideas in the community, finds being a stay at home mom to be one of the greatest challenges of being an entrepreneur.
“I have to remember that while I have this dream of cooking and letting that provide me with the opportunities that it will, that this is not my children’s dream or my husband’s dream, and I have to be conscious of how the things that I pursue affect them too. That can be really hard when there are things I want to do that don’t necessarily make sense for my family.”
Despite a challenging journey, Shari has found a way to do what she loves in a way that works for her, and intends to keep growing and changing to succeed in a way that makes her happy and shares her love of cooking with a wide audience.
“For me, the most rewarding thing about doing what I do is the creativity and the freedom to create whatever I want. I don’t have to put myself into a box just because I’m good at a certain thing. I’m always growing and setting goals for myself, and I’m the kind of person that sets a goal and makes it happen.”
She continued, “I thought by now I might have been doing more pop-ups or working with local restaurants to create something, but instead I’ve created a great online brand for myself and have been able to reach so many more people than I ever expected to.”
As a word of advice to aspiring entrepreneurs, Shari said, “Keep an open mind and have confidence in yourself. Oftentimes things won’t work out the way that you hope they will. But if you are really passionate about your dream or idea, something will work out in some way. It may be different than you imagined, but it may be better too.”
Thank you for taking the time to read Shari’s story! If you find value in this content, please consider donating to help Collider continue amplifying the voices of Rochester entrepreneurs. You can also find out more about Shari and what she’s working on by clicking the link below!
Article by Corrie Strommen, Director of Community at Collider.
