Today we’d like to introduce you to Chef Esco.
Hi Chef, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My entrepreneur journey began long before Esco Eats. It was a mindset that burned into my brain as a kid. My parents tell a story when I was four about how I was obsessed with trucks and always told them, “I wanted to be a truck driver,” my parents would just laugh and told me, “We will teach you how to own the company.” Of course, a phrase I wouldn’t understand until many years later. With both of my parents being entrepreneurs, my Dad running his landscaping company and my mother launched her own clothing line, I was a prodigy.
Fast forward to high school, I began to pick up my cooking skills not because of the love of the craft but simply because I ate a lot. As a 16-year-old growing boy who played sports, eating out every time my stomach grumbled wasn’t much of an option. I built my skill set up from the first dish my grandmother gave me, banana pudding to making cuisines such as salmon wellington. Unknowingly, these fortunate sequences of events built up to create a skillset and mind-frame that would capture an opportunity little would have seen. I was eating lunch my senior year of college, having a conversation with some friends, and someone blurted out, “you know what would be a cool job?… being a food critic!” And like a speeding bullet, a vision flashed before me of a next-generation culinary series. A show where my peers and foodie lovers will want to watch and be entertained by. It’s a thought I went to the library to unwrap that night, putting down all my notes on the whiteboard. All the skillsets I have been building since I was a kid came full circle in a stroke of luck conversation or fate? Only time could answer that question. I saw that opportunity and I dived headfirst. I took a one-way flight to Atlanta from college, leaving all my stuff and coming home with nothing but a dream. Less than three weeks later, I had over four restaurants lined up to record at and asked some friends to help out.
March 1st, 2020, Esco Eats was born. An entertainment spin on traditional food shows I call food entertainment. A seamless guide to learn about the best food restaurants in Atlanta while also getting a few laughs: being on a strict budget, I adapted again, this time by not cooking but filming. I wasn’t able to pay a production studio to make my series so I simply created my own… Young Food Entertainment. I began to put together a small ragtag crew of creatives and talents where they can grow and blossom to get experience on a web series called Esco Eats. I learned how to edit and practice with my YouTube videos getting better and better at refining my concept. I posted one of my videos on a cinema forum where it caught the attention of a platform in LA. They loved it so much they agreed to distribute the first pilot season of the show. As I was working on my pilot season, I had a very talented gymnast on where I was showing her how to make an Apple Pie. I used an online recipe that I half read and botched. Everyone in the room’s eyes lit up as they ate it, which everyone agreed was amazing. A mistake or a creation? Perspective right. This grand mistake created my infamous recipe for the World Famous Apple Cobbler Pie. A step up from the first banana pudding I made in high school. Life comes full circle. Less than a year later, Esco Eats has taken on an identity of its own, and I’m just enjoying the ride.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
It hasn’t always been smooth. The hardest part is putting the Esco Eats name out there. Atlanta is a big city with a lot of major businesses with market space, so I started a grassroots effort in my backyard to spread the word and market. I believe I have a great product and customers confirm it, now all I have to do is build awareness about Esco Eats.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Esco Eats is a revolutionary culinary entertainment series that inspires a young generation through media and art. Chef Esco created his World Famous Apple Cobbler Pie from a mistake in the kitchen and wants people to know cooking is an art, not a science, just like the content he puts out. What sets Esco Eats apart from other media companies is the creative digital content he puts out to his viewers. The audience gets to resonate with the brand more this way. The readers should know that he is creating a new age-style company centered around pie, entertainment and fun right in the backyard of Atlanta.
How do you think about happiness?
Making great food content most excites me. I love the challenge of creating new videos, which I see as art and a way to express to my viewers.
Pricing:
- $25 For my World Famous Apple Cobbler Pie
- $5 For a slice of World Famous Apple Cobbler Pie at Sweet Potato Cafe in Stone Mountain Village
Contact Info:
- Email: escoeats@gmail.com
- Website: www.escoeats.co
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealescoeats/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealescoeats
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/EscoEats
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3IiLgIRW9CYKmZfeFGYl2g
Image Credits
Emalee Evans (IG: photo.byem)
