We had the chance to sit down with our friend Reed Alexander and catch up about what he is working on! Such great projects in the works!
Q: So can you tell us what you are working on?
RA: Yes! It’s a really exciting time, I have some great projects in the works I am developing a concept for a second book that I am going to be writing all about food and this time travel so it is a really exciting book. I’m going to Asia, and Portugal, and spending some time at home in Florida which sometimes I don’t really think of as travel because I am from Florida so it is not as exotic for me,but I am very excited!
Have you traveled a lot in the past before?
RA: Yes! Mostly to Europe and I have been to Central America, but never South America,but I have been to Honduras,but I have spent a lot of time in Europe though. I was just there over the summer in the UK again. I have never been to Asia though,but I am going to Japan and Hong Kong in December.
When you are traveling,do you ever create any new recipes?
RA: I discover a lot of recipes that I bring home with me. I have cooked the Cordon Bleu in Paris and have done fun stuff like that just for fun, but I discover a lot of culinary inspirations so to speak that I bring home with me basically in my suitcase or in the back of my mind that I recreate in my own kitchen. That is a lot of inspiration for my second book which is going to be exciting! Lots of writing and research,an excuse to travel some more.
Q: How is the second book going to be different from the first book?
RA: The first book was very mainstream with healthy recipes being very lean and light cutting back on sugar, reducing carbohydrates, boosting whole grains and it was really targeted for families. This second book will continue to target families and make travel accessible, but it is really about bringing the world to our readers. It is a different kind of inspiration, yes in a healthy way, but really very much inspired by taking the reader on a journey and understanding what food says about people. I think food is very much an expression of all of us individually, what we like to eat, who we are, our cultural upbringing from the past and what makes us unique. I think this next book will tap into that and come look into the cultural and culinary DNA that makes up different people around the world. I do think food is one of the few universal languages that we all speak. It doesn’t matter if you are from Africa, Asia, or from New York City everyone understands the power of food to bring people together and that is inspiring this second book.
For many years KewlBites.com was kind of my digital home, but now we recreated that and it is ReedAlexander.com. It has been in development for over a year and we have been putting so much thought into it,but now launching in the next few weeks in this fall is going to be a very special section on the site that defines what the lifestyle site is going to be about. It is going to be inspired by very much the same things as what the book kind of revolves around including restaurant reviews, travel, explorations from on the road, reports, write ups, and the food that we discover and recreate in our own kitchens so that every one can feel like they are going on a great journey just by what they make in their kitchen.
Q: What inspired you to start this new business?
RA: Well for seven years I have built up my lifestyle brand with KewlBites and we got it to the point where I been working this last many years with the Clinton Foundation, the President, the First Lady, and cooking on many shows and I have learned so much and made so many connections through this business. My family are all in business and none of my family is really in the entertainment industry except for one who does marketing, but never really into acting like I was,so it is very natural to me and comfortable for me to wanting to start a business. The goal of the business is doing the same things that I have done to build my own company, but working with our own clients to do the same thing. It is so crazy after always having worked with PR agencies and brand development firms to having clients of our own, but we do! We have signed some great people who we work with every single day and our goal is to help them consult on where there brand is going, how they can market their brand so they can be better at talking to their consumers and fans, how they can use platforms like social media and traditional media on television, and all of the people we know in New York and Los Angeles to tell their story and there are innovative strategies for that. Also, public relations, communications, and advisory in business. We have a very strong core team, three people, and I get to work with some unbelievable partners who are older than I am and have lots of experience to share with me and some fantastic clients. It is a very new endeavor and there are some great possibilities ahead for us.
Q: What makes your company different than other companies?
RA: I have been in the spotlight so I understand the challenges so our clients when they call us, I can relate to them and I can understand them and what their mentality is and thought process and what are some of the obstacles that they are facing as people who are under the media glare and how we can best advise our clients to deal with that for their own benefit. A lot of other agencies that I have worked with in the past they are great, but their representatives don’t have a lot of experiences of having been in the limelight or having been the person that has the brand and is out there developing it every single day so that puts us in a direct dialogue with the client so we can understand what they are facing. We have a huge software division that does IT and builds websites and pushes websites to the very top in the search for them and boosts traffic so a very popular software division with decades of experience thanks to our business partners and members of the team who have been in the software industry for a very long time. We also do legal meaning we can represent our clients almost like a law firm because we have a partnership with one of the biggest law firms in South Florida. When our clients come to us, they can ask for PR, brand development, IT, and legal protection and we can do that for them. I am a millennial so I understand, what is young and happening and I can understand what are the social media trends and what are people in our age bracket doing that is driving the consumer market interested in like is it corporate social responsibility, trends, Philanthrophy, the things that really are driving the conversation and we really have our finger on that. Lastly, since I have been doing what I am doing for so long, we have built some really good connections so it is not hard for us to pick up the phone and have some of the top people be interested in our clients which really is a rare gift. I think those are some things that have set us apart and are our goals.
Q: Can you share some of the clients you are working with?
RA: We are working with fashion brands that are in the magazines now, we are working today with a great client who is a celebrity lifestyle expert who has been on the Dr. Oz show and the Today Show and is based in South Florida, but her brand is really about to take off.
Q: Can you tell us anything else you are working on?
RA: We have another software business that is opening us, launching the site, working on this new book, and I have some cool TV projects that are really coming together that I am writing as opposed to acting in that are in the early stages so I am very excited about the progress of where they are. They will begin filming in a few months and I am very excited about that! It is fun for me to be on the writing side and the production side because growing up I was always acting which I loved, but this has been fun! Lastly, my journalism which I have been studying at NYU. I am a correspondent for the BBC radio doing reports every week on food and health.
Be sure to check out Reed Alexander on social media!
Twitter: @ReedAlexander and @RAlexanderMedia
Website: http://www.reedalexandermedia.com