Fresh Take: Chef Ayesha Curry Is Building A Food Empire

Chef Ayesha Curry is in empire-building mode.

There’s her wine company Domaine Curry, her lifestyle brand Sweet July—which includes a magazine, a book imprint, and lines of coffee, candles, superfood-formulated skincare and other products—and a cookware line sold at Target and Walmart. She’s seen nearly every kind of deal in the food industry, from penning cookbooks to hosting her own Food Network shows.

Curry is also a coveted investor: She’s backed startups including Mill, a trash can that composts food scraps, and sugar alternative The Supplant Co. After working for a decade with mushroom growing startup Back to the Roots, Curry joined the company’s board in 2022.

“For me, it’s more about impact over legacy,” says the mother of three. “My hope is to make a lasting impact in the space. People don’t have to know it was me or know my name. But if we can change the way the industry looks and the way products are looked at and used and the impact on the community, that will be worth it.”

I loved interviewing Curry on-camera, and am thrilled to share this inspiring piece with you. Wishing you a cozy long weekend!

— Chloe Sorvino, Staff Writer

Order my book, Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed and the Fight for the Future of Meat, out now from Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books.

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Field Notes

It’s radicchio season, and I have not been able to get enough of pink treviso and white and pink speckled castelfranco. Here’s a Big Salad—chopped Italian style with olives, red onion, mozzarella, pickled chilis and more—that my husband and I made for a recent potluck.

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Chloe Sorvino leads coverage of food and agriculture as a staff writer on the enterprise team at Forbes. Her book, Raw Deal: Hidden Corruption, Corporate Greed and the Fight for the Future of Meat, published on December 6, 2022, with Simon & Schuster’s Atria Books. Her nearly nine years of reporting at Forbes has brought her to In-N-Out Burger’s secret test kitchen, drought-ridden farms in California’s Central Valley, burnt-out national forests logged by a timber billionaire, a century-old slaughterhouse in Omaha and even a chocolate croissant factory designed like a medieval castle in northern France.