Connecting Generations Through Family-Famous Recipes with Kim Caviness of Familia Kitchen

Oct 10

Kim Caviness is Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief of Familia Kitchen, a leading Latino recipes and food stories website on a mission to gather, celebrate and create the largest treasury of Latino family-famous recipes.

In this episode of Let's Talk Limbic Sparks, Kim reveals how respect and authenticity creates enduring emotional connections. Kim shares how she's bringing these values into Familia Kitchen to preserve and share generational Latino family recipes, or what she calls Abuela recipes, drawing on her many years of experience as a journalist and content developer.

We talk about the importance of seeking out and appreciating cultural nuances that reflect unique and genuine life experiences. Kim applies this to brands, sharing why marketing rooted in insight and instinct will be more effective at connecting with consumers than marketing that is massaged into corporate perfection, expressing that it's the realness that consumers feel connected to.

Key Takeaways and Soundbites:

“I'm really going for creating the biggest Latino, one-stop-shop… a very respectful cataloguing and hearing of this oral history. I name every recipe after the person that gave it to me. All credit goes to them, I'm just gathering it ...That's what we're doing. Literally talking person by person by person, and making it authentic, real, trusted, and respected.”

“We capture it, with their story about: When do they make it? Who taught you to make it? Why is it important to you? How is yours different? What does it make you feel? We get it out there. They're very proud. They share it with their family, and now it's captured.”

“All we have to do is be respectful and listen, and give credit where credit is due, to create a community where everybody feels welcome.”

“I really would love to inspire the next generation that to cook together is one of the most meaningful things you can do as a family.”

“These are the dishes when you make them, they come with stories and identity affirming experiences. So, suddenly you're not just making rice and chicken for dinner, you're making the dish that your family has made for 200 years.”

“That's why I admire the brands that I admire. You get the feeling that someone just sat down at their computer, wrote it and hit send. That transparency and realness is what you feel so connected to.”

“Sometimes you can tell that something was massaged into corporate perfection and that's the opposite of Limbic Sparks.”

“I've learned the power of instinct. If you're an expert in something, or if you're passionate enough to be open about what you do know and what you don't know, trust that and put that out there in a very respectful atmosphere of not being a know it all, and that will connect.”

“People really respond to telling it like it is, for the brand that you are. Be respectful of that process. That rawness creates the Limbic Sparks that makes you then feel emotions, and then you’re going to buy into it.”

Here are some fun facts about Kim…

Kim Caviness, co-founder and editor in chief of Familia Kitchen, grew up in Santurce, Puerto Rico in a small, family-owned hotel. She loves to cook for family and friends, learning from her Puerto Rican mom and American dad how to entertain guests with style and sabor. Kim talks to hundreds of Latino homecooks about their favorite recipes and food stories, tapping in her 20+ years of journalism and content experience, including at the Boston Herald, Condé Nast Traveler and as chief content officer of several agencies. Her husband, Lyn, and son, Roberto “Bob,” love when she makes Puerto Rico family dishes she learned to make from her mom, Marisa, and from “El Libro”: Cocina Criolla, the Boricua cooking bible.