My internship at Easy Food Magazine

My name is Emily and I’m a third year Culinary Entrepreneurship student in DIT, Cathal Brugha St. As part of my course, we go on placement for 12 weeks in a food related business. I’m a real foodie who loves to cook – and eat – tasty, no-fuss food. However, I don’t want to work in a kitchen! As you can imagine, this is quite confusing as people always assume I want to be a chef!

When I started applying for placements, a food magazine was my number one choice. Since I was 15 I’ve worked in various cafes and restaurants so I feel I have sufficient experience there. I wanted to do something completely new and something I wouldn’t necessarily get the opportunity to do again. Easy Food was where I wanted to be so I was very excited when I was asked to come in for an interview.

When I came in for the interview I was given a tour around the office by Caroline, and everybody I was introduced to was really friendly and welcoming. As the intervew progressed, I knew this would be a perfect fit.

I began my internship on the 22nd of January and my title was “digital/social intern”. I was going to be focusing on the social sites for Easy Food and creating content for them. As a 21-year-old girl, I am very interested in social media in my personal life and I knew I wanted to learn more about growing followers and recognising trends.

My daily routine would typically consist of uploading recipes from past issues on to the website. I found this really interesting because it was basically like reading cookbooks for a few hours a day! When I wasn’t doing that I was posting Instagram stories, tweeting, uploading to Instagram, posting on Facebook and I spent a lot of time in my last few weeks creating content for Pinterest. I also ran some competitions in my time here.

As the weeks went on, I actually got to work in the test kitchen. I was delighted to get this opportunity and I jumped at the chance to get cooking! I helped out on projects for various clients which included a cookbook and new product lines. It’s very cool that some things I’ve made have been professionally styled and photographed! I loved this part of my internship and I will definitely use the things I’ve learned when it comes to styling and cooking in the future.

In my time here I also got to work with James Kavanagh and William Murray of Currabinny, go to a press launch, and go to an event in Cook’s Academy – all things I never expected to do!

I really feel like I’ve gained so much in doing my internship at Zahra Media Group. I’ve been exposed to so many aspects of the culinary world and also the social/media world. These things will stand to me in the future and I am so grateful to have gotten this opportunity. One thing I must stress is how nice and welcoming everyone has been to me. I really felt like everyone wanted me to learn and wanted to give me as many opportunities I could get.

I’m sad my internship has come to an end but I’ll leave feeling very fulfilled and my confidence in my capabilities has grown a lot. If you ever get the chance to be an intern here, consider yourself lucky because you will learn so much and be well and truly looked after.