Inspired Taste

Long before they were making delicious recipes on their blog, Joanne and Adam Gallagher were making something quite different: night-vision goggles.

“Adam worked in project management and I worked in business development for a government contractor owned by Joanne’s parents, creating goggles for USSOCOM,” explains Joanne. “And while this was important work that we cared deeply about, it wasn’t the creative outlet we’d always been looking for.”

Most mornings, Joanne and Adam would commute together — which could last up to an hour and a half if traffic was tough. To pass the time, they would talk in detail about what they were planning to cook for dinner that night. Some days they would even stop for groceries together on the way home, or cook together after work.

Always a fan of cookbooks, Joanne would dream about the possibility of writing one of her own — though she didn’t see many cookbook authors out there who were home cooks like her. But when she began to read the many cooking blogs that burst onto the scene in the 2000s, she began to see a place for herself in the culinary world.

Then a name came to her: Inspired Taste. She and Adam liked it so much that, although the dot-com domain wasn’t available at the time, they decided to go ahead and register the blog under inspiredtaste.net. (Don’t worry, the inspiredtaste.com domain has since been purchased).

“Then we borrowed my dad’s DSLR, learned how to take pictures of food, and started uploading those recipes we talked about on our commutes,” says Joanne.

“The crazy part was, we soon noticed people were actually finding the blog and posting comments about how they were making our recipes,” says Adam. “That’s when we knew we might have something serious on our hands.”

Joanne and Adam have come a long way from those early days, daydreaming about recipes on their commute. Just last year, Inspired Taste drew a staggering 60 million visitors, according to Google Analytics. “We are truly blown away by that number,” says Joanne.

Thanks to their ad revenue, the Gallaghers have been able to grow the Inspired Taste team. They have a social media manager who handles their social channels. And last year, they were excited to welcome a professional chef to their team to help with recipe development.

“Walla Walla is this cute little foodie town, so over the years we’ve become close friends with Richard Hattaway, who’s executive chef and owner of Hattaway’s on Alder,” says Joanne. “And we figured, why not add Richard to the team and see if he can help us expand the type of recipes we create?”

“Richard’s been a great addition to the team,” says Adam. “Every time he comes into the kitchen with us, he helps us make our recipes easier, more approachable, and more delicious.”

Joanne and Adam realize their readers are putting trust in them each time they use one of their recipes. They’re often shocked to see readers who will run to the store to grab ingredients right after a new recipe gets posted.

“They’re spending time and money on these recipes,” says Joanne. “So because we’re home cooks, we want to have some credibility in the kitchen and ensure that whatever they’re cooking up for their family is high-quality and tested.”

The highlight of their job is reading through all the comments and responding to readers one by one. Every now and then a comment will come along that moves them, like one from a reader who had struggled to find something their family member battling cancer could eat — until they cooked Joanne and Adam’s vegetable soup recipe.

“Along this journey, we’ve heard from so many readers with similarly moving stories,” says Joanne. “As we share our recipes, we are so touched to see our audience sharing their stories with us.”