Derek Kirk on soulPhoodie and Building Community

On the latest episode of the podcast I talk with Derek Kirk, founder of soulPhoodie, an online community that celebrates Black food and beverage culture. Derek founded soulPhoodie in 2016 to share timely and compelling content about all facets of Black foodways in a way that is fun, intelligent, nerdy, and at times provocative. Derek is a graduate of North Carolina Central University & The Wharton School of Business and is a restaurant branding and marketing executive with 20 years of experience.

I felt like this conversation was years in the making. In 2017, I started following a Twitter account called soulPhoodie that shared news about Black chefs, sommeliers, writers and more in between the occasional funny meme about Black folks’ cooking practices. I always wondered who was behind the account since its source was unamed, only going by the moniker soulPhoodie, a cast iron pot with an afro as the logo. Eventually I learned that Derek was the man behind the account and we set up a call to talk about the food world. We talked at length his journey to building the soulPhoodie brand and about how one of Derek’s missions is to advocate for Black-owned restaurants and Black food writers like myself. So many of the stories I’ve written have been shared, liked and reposted by Derek’s social channels bringing eyes and attention to my work in a way that I wouldn’t be able to achieve on my own.

During our convo Derek also shared that he’s planning on expanding his site to include editorial content, providing more of a platform for Black culinarians, writers and folks in the beverage world to be seen and heard.

You can listen to our conversation here.