Yes Chef Group is a food-media company, so it’s only fitting that a random encounter at a restaurant changed everything for its founders. The story starts when @jacksdiningroom and his co-founder sat next to Sports Illustrated's CEO. Then they were approached by a group of moms: “These moms come up to us and are like, ‘My daughters know you.’” “And [Sports Illustrated's CEO] kind of looked at us. He’s like, ‘Who are you guys and what the hell’s going on?’” “We’re like, ‘We make content, but we do consulting. This is only 10% of the time. We’ve done 30 million views in two weeks.’” Then SI's CEO said they were looking to attract a younger audience and do more social-first content. “So he’s like, ‘What if we did short-form content with you guys?’” “We kind of just like pitched him the entire world that night.” “A week later, we got on a call with their whole C-suite team.” “They offered to match our consulting salaries plus the 50/50 on rev split.” “Since then, we’ve just never really looked back and we’ve just doubled down on the content.”