From Back Roads to Backstage with Guy Fieri 😱🤩

Before she was sweating through 17-hour days setting up pop-up kitchens for Guy Fieri on the shoress of South Beach, Jenn Thomas was unclogging drains in heels at restaurants across Chicago. 

And before she was producing world-class culinary festivals and working behind the scenes with some of the biggest names in food, she was just a small-town girl from a small town in Northeast Ohio—bartending, arranging flowers, and dreaming big…

…Until the day she became the unexpected winner of Rachael Ray’s first-ever on-air cooking contest, "So You Think You Can Cook?!"—beating out thousands of hopefuls with her goat cheese lasagna and her quiet tenacity.

But if you think that moment launched a glamour-filled, celebrity-chef-hobnobbing career, Jenn’s here to set the record straight.

“It’s not all champagne and selfies,” she laughs. “It’s blistered feet, 90-degree tents with no bathrooms, and unpacking ten crates of kitchen gear on a beach at sunrise.”

A Job You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

Jenn calls herself a culinary producer, a term she coined because, well… there wasn’t one. Her work lives in the space between food styling, festival production, recipe testing & development, cookbook shoots, and full-blown event logistics.

“I create and organize everything before, during, and after an event that has to do with food,” she explains. “If there’s something I don’t know how to do, I figure it out, or I find someone who does. It’s about bringing the vision to life—no matter what it takes. And there’s absolutely nothing in the world like the feeling when you step back and realize you pulled it all off.”

Jenn learned early that details matter. She credits her time at The Window Box, her aunt’s flower shop in Brimfield, where she worked an average of 102 weddings a year.

“She always said that even if she dropped dead, her clients would still get their flowers,” Jenn says. “That mindset taught me how to visualize the end result and reverse-engineer every single detail to get there.”

A Small Town Start, A Big League Hustle

Jenn’s road to culinary stardom wasn’t paved—it was carved. She sold nearly everything she owned to attend the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in New York. No backup plan. No safety net.

And at the time she was feeling her own personal rock bottom after a stressful divorce that upended her entire life. But she was determined to find a new start.

“It was very militant there. A piece of my hair came out of my hat once and a chef literally sliced it off with a knife,” she recalls, laughing. But she credits the intense atmosphere for her stamina and ability to thrive in stressful situations. 

From there, things began to look up as she was awarded a highly-sought-after internship with the James Beard Foundation and followed their requests from city to city - including Chicago, New York, and Atlanta— eventually landing roles in some of the country’s top kitchens and culinary events. But in the end, she chose to come back to Northeast Ohio.

“Chicago gave me a lot, but I couldn’t put roots down. Here, I can travel the world for work and still put up the Christmas tree with my parents. That’s worth everything to me.”

Creative Grit, ADHD, and the Real Rockstars

One of the biggest misconceptions about Jenn’s job? That it’s all celebrity chefs and glamour.

“The chefs are great, but the real MVPs are their support staff—the sous chefs, the logistics people. They’re the ones sweating it out with me, crying in the walk-in cooler at 3 a.m. We’re the ones who make the magic happen.”

Jenn also believes her ADHD has been her secret weapon.

“In school I was seen as lazy. But in the kitchen? It’s a superpower,” she says. “Culinary school was the first time I thrived academically. Suddenly I understood math—because it was connected to cooking. Measuring, scaling recipes… now that made sense.”

A Moment at the Top—Literally

Of all the surreal moments in her career, Jenn says there’s one that still gives her goosebumps.

In high school, she used to flip through Food & Wine magazine, dreaming about the legendary spread from the Aspen Food & Wine Classic—the one where top chefs are photographed drinking champagne at the summit of the mountain. "It was like the culinary Oscars,” she says. “It didn’t feel real. I would just stare at that page in the library like, how do people even get there?”

Years later, Jenn found herself not just attending the festival—but producing it.

She was assisting chef Stephanie Izard at a dinner on the mountaintop when they paused for that same iconic photo. “I was just standing there watching it happen, and I started sobbing,” she laughs. “We were 12,000 feet up, the altitude was messing with me, and I was watching the exact moment I used to daydream about. And now I’m one of the co-producers of the chef demos at that very event. It was one of those full-circle, holy-crap-how-did-I-get-here kind of moments.”

Beer, Burgers & a Leap of Faith

Of course, Jenn’s rise wasn’t all iconic mountaintop moments. Some of it started with, well… beer.

“I literally got drunk, made a burger, and sent a video to Rachel Ray,” she says. “I was slamming beers, talking to the camera, just being myself. I mailed the video on Friday, and the next Wednesday, I was in New York.”

The video landed her a spot on Rachael Ray’s very first televised cooking competition—and despite being the underdog, she went on to win the whole thing. From there, it was a whirlwind: People Magazine, Good Morning America, months in New York… all from one slightly tipsy, instinctive decision.

“That’s the thing,” Jenn says. “When your gut tells you to do something—just do it. Don’t overthink. I could’ve talked myself out of that video a million times. But I trusted the spark. That one decision changed my whole life.”

Advice for the Creatives in the Cornfields

For anyone chasing a creative dream in a place that’s not exactly a “creative hub,” Jenn has some advice:

“Unless you feel a pull to get a degree and have the book smarts to do it, don’t count out trade school! I wish I had been brave enough to consider it when I was younger, but at the time the attitude was if you didn’t get a traditional college degree, then you’d be stuck flipping burgers for the rest of your life.”

Jenn’s respect for all trades from hair dressing to high-end culinary is palpable after her career has led her to such heights. 

“And don’t wait until you feel ready. You’ll never feel ready. Soak up whatever experiences you’re learning from right now—even if it’s in a flower shop in a small town. Everything counts.”

She adds, “You don’t have to live in a big city forever to do big things. Sometimes the best creative freedom comes from the freedom to come home.”

Living in Northeast Ohio gives her the flexibility to travel anywhere she needs to for work, while enjoying the low cost of living and the feeling that only home can bring. 

Whether she’s developing a recipe, orchestrating a food festival, or stuffing kitchen crates on the shores of Miami, Jenn Thomas is proving something big: You don’t need a traditional path—or even a name for your job—to make an impact.

All you need is hustle, heart, and maybe a good goat cheese lasagna.

You can check out Jenn’s website here

Follow Jenn on IG here

Want to learn how to style your food pics better so they shine on IG? 🍔🥰

Click here to see some top tips I learned from Jenn!