Sophie has a passion for all things food and beverage. Originally from Sydney, with formative time spent in Victoria, she returned to her hometown to study, soon making her mark in the media world. Her time at St Andrew’s College helped her form a new sense of connection and community in the big city.
After working as an Editor, she co-founded Buffet, a creative agency specialising in content strategy, copy and production within the food, beverage, and hotel sector, leading it to be one of Australia leading creative agencies in the food and beverage space. With a young family and ambitious goals ahead, she’s now reaching new heights in both her career and personal life.
Tell us a little bit about yourself; where are you originally from and where did you grow up?
Besides food and drink, Sydney itself is a huge part of my life and narrative. I grew up here in Sydney’s East and fast made the city a focus of my career – working as editor for Broadsheet Sydney, in digital at Gourmet Traveller and co-founded my creative agency, Buffet, here in 2017, which operates within the food, beverage and hotel industries. I did spend a quality chunk of my schooling in Victoria at Geelong Grammar School, which I loved, but after I completed year 12, Sydney drew me back for university.
What made you choose St Andrew’s College? What appealed to you the most?
Since I had spent the final four years of high school interstate at a co-ed school, I was looking for a college that would help me form new connections in my city after some distance. Co-ed living was something I truly loved at Geelong Grammar School, so having those same values of community reflected in the College was something I thought was fantastic. Also, it just looked like a lot of fun.
At College, what were you involved in, and do you have a favourite memory you’d like to share?
College life was so vibrant, and I met some of my closest friends there, whom I love connecting with regularly today. I swam for the College team and, of course, loved all the celebratory events, but being dropped off on Walkabout has got to be one of my wildest memories and one I retell at parties all the time!
How do you feel your time at St Andrew’s influenced your post-College life?
The community I met at St Andrew’s was so brilliant. I loved how the College brought so many people from different areas of NSW and further abroad together, and so I’ve loved extending those connections and friendships since. Honestly, I feel the days of single-sex education are numbered, and my time at St Andrew’s only reinforced this belief for me, and it comes into play as we consider schooling options for our two young boys.
What made you want to work in the creative industry?
I’ve always loved the food and drink industry, and after working in media for so long and covering so many incredible businesses, my business partner Nikki To (a food photographer) and I spotted a gap in the market, just as the awareness of social media for brands was really heating up, to work to empower venues and F&B businesses to tell their own stories via their own channels, rather than relying on media to do that for them. At Buffet we work on creative and content strategy, brand campaigns, copywriting and production of photography and video, so really everything to build worlds around brands in the food and beverage space. There’s a LOT of good food, wine and people in this industry, we’ll never tire of it.
In the lead-up to starting your own digital media company, you had many roles including Digital Editor for Australian Gourmet Traveller at Bauer Media Australia and Editor at Broadsheet Media. How did these roles shape your time in the industry and help you go out on your own?
These were two incredible yet wildly different roles that afforded me two unique skill sets. Broadsheet was in start-up mode when I joined as Sydney editor, and it was (and still is) an incredibly fast-paced, ambitious brand. I loved this energy and enjoyed being given the freedom to build and run my own team in Sydney. The network it afforded me was unmatched – the role forced me to quickly get to know everything and everyone in the industry in Sydney, working to constantly break and cover stories that made a huge impact on the visibility of the brands I was writing about. It was a nimble environment that really showed me the value of agility and taking an idea and running with it, and not getting bogged down in too much red tape to make something happen. I worked with Gourmet Traveller in a few different roles: as an intern, then as editorial coordinator and then as sub-editor at Gourmet Traveller WINE Magazine, and then as Digital Editor at Gourmet Traveller a few years later. The editorial power and authority at both brands ran so deep, and these roles helped me garner huge respect for the power of knowledge, research and the art of journalism and cultural criticism. I learned how to artfully write about food and wine in my years with GT and aim to pass these learnings onto our team at Buffet every day.
Starting your own company is not easy. What would you say is the biggest challenge in starting and running Buffet?
Correct! No day is the same in small business, which I love, but there’s a lot of juggling – with the team and their workload and progression, with client needs and wants, with the impact of market and economic shifts, and all the little learnings that come every day when you’re growing a brand and product from scratch. The social media landscape is ever-changing, too, which keeps us on our toes! But we’ve built such an incredible, skilled team that any challenges are softened by the fact that we face them together.
What is it like to work with different food and beverage companies and help create a brand and story for their business? How do you go about creating and influencing perception around brands?
One of our major focuses is that no two brands we work with should sound, look or act the same. We’re constantly striving for creative originality in our work, and that always pays off in the results of a launch or campaign. At the outset, we focus on what the key messages are for the brand, and strategise how to best communicate those via content; keeping audience engagement front of mind.
What are you most proud of in your career thus far? Do you have a particular project that is a highlight?
The success of Buffet has definitely been my career highlight! I’m proud to say we are the leading creative agency in the food and beverage space in Australia, and every year I’m blown away by the calibre of our work and the feedback we receive from clients and onlookers. In terms of projects, I have loved working with the City of Parramatta council on campaigns that drive foot traffic to the area through a food and beverage lens – the variety of edible delights and local stories in Parramatta is so incredible, so to uncover that through our campaign work is really exciting and satisfying. If there’s a good story with food involved, I’m there.
Is there a ‘typical day’ at Buffet?
Definitely not. We have a number of retainer clients that we work with to deliver ongoing content plans and production each month, but typically there are a high number of projects in the works at any one time, from large brand campaigns that require creative strategy and art direction, to pre-production, location scouting, storyboarding, copywriting, graphic design – there are always so many elements working in lock-step to get to the finish line. We invest a lot of time in our own brand marketing too, last year we released a card game, Food Face, which was a huge success, so we work on fun projects like that regularly, too.
What advice would you give to current students wanting to explore a career in the media industry?
There’s nothing holding you back from writing and producing stories. If you want to work in media, start building your own audience and practise honing your style – start a podcast, a newsletter, a TikTok or even just a website with a blog. Don’t wait for someone to give you permission to write or create – just do it yourself, build yourself an audience and you’ll get noticed and learn a lot.
What do you do outside of work? Do you have a favourite hobby? How do you unwind and switch off?
I have two young sons who keep us very busy and entertained. I love to cook and my husband is a chef, so when we get some time to ourselves we love to cook something interesting together or head out to eat, we’ve also loved spending time growing fruit, vegetables and herbs in our small garden at home.
Looking ahead – what’s next? What are you hoping to achieve this year?
We’ve just moved offices at Buffet this year so we’re getting settled there, but I’m looking forward to working with more clients in bigger ways; large-scale campaigns that stretch further than Australian shores.