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Unhappy Engineer Turned Food Blogging Side-Hustle Into Dream Career

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Unhappy Engineer Turned Food Blogging Side-Hustle Into Dream Career

  • Ten years ago Jannese Torres, 38, felt unfulfilled in her job as a process engineer.
  • Looking for a creative outlet, she decided to start a food blog.
  • She quit her job to focus on her business full time in 2021 and never looked back.

In May 2013, at the age of 27, Jannese Torres says she had a “quarter-life crisis.”

She had ticked off almost every box in the “American dream” checklist that her parents had told her to follow by getting good grades in school, going to college, and securing a stable job as an engineer at a large corporation. But she felt deeply unfulfilled.

Looking for a creative outlet that would allow her to immerse herself in something other than her career, she decided to start a food blog.

Torres had identified a gap in the market, and she filled her blog with Puerto Rican-inspired recipes. “When I first started, I was probably one of less than five Puerto Rican food bloggers that existed out there,” she told Business Insider.

At the beginning, it wasn’t Torres’ intention to turn her blog into a full-time job. She knew people who had done it, but the idea still felt too far-fetched.

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Then, six months later, she got laid off.

With nothing else to do, Torres decided to take a food blogging course at a local culinary school in New York City, and it changed everything.

A decade later, Torres is a full-time blogger and makes more money than she ever did as an engineer. She wants to inspire others to take similar leaps.

Torres set out to turn her blog into a job

On the food blogging course, Torres learned about creating multiple income streams for a blog using affiliate marketing and display ads and creating sponsored content for brands.

The course lit a fire inside Torres. “The light bulb kind of went off for me, where I’m like, ‘This could actually be a thing,’” she said.

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She learned that in order to be a six-figure blogger, she’d need millions of readers per year. Immediately after the workshop, she began to look for influencer and affiliate marketing networks.

In March 2014 she started a new role working as an engineer at L’Oreal — but she continued working on her blog in her downtime.

She became so busy with her side hustle she had to start taking time off from her corporate job

In 2017, Torres began making some money from her blog through display ads and affiliate programs, but 2020 was the year it really took off, she said, possibly because left with nothing else to do when COVID-19 kept them locked at home, people began cooking.

That year, Torres said her income skyrocketed. “I said, if I can do this and this is part-time, I can only imagine what’s going to happen the following year in 2021,” she told BI.

That year, she began having to take time off from her main job to go to speaking engagements for her podcast, and she was also spending her lunch breaks frantically writing articles. She realized it wasn’t sustainable.

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“I thought, ‘This is more than I’m making in my engineering career, so what the hell am I still doing working this full-time job and being restricted by all the things that come with that?’” she said. In May 2021, she decided to take the leap and quit her job as an engineer to focus on content creation.

When Torres quit her job, she said she had around 300 blog posts that were already generating a six-figure income, she said. She ended up using her blog as a passive income stream while she focused on developing her personal finance podcast, which she’d launched in 2019, and creating courses designed to teach people how to build their own passive income streams online.

In 2021, she earned $144,000 from her food blog, which more than matched her previous salary of $118,000 per year, according to documents seen by BI.

The loneliness can be difficult, but Torres has focused on building connections

While Torres is happy with her new career as an online entrepreneur, she said the most difficult thing about it is the loneliness that comes with it. Sometimes she misses the built-in socialization that comes with working in a corporate environment. “Most of your friends and family aren’t doing this, so you’re kind of just in a little bubble working from home all the time,” she said.

To foster new connections and feel less alone, she has been sharing what she has learned throughout her journey on X and Instagram. This has helped her to meet other like-minded people who have similar interests and goals.

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Torres is happy that she made the leap, but she emphasized that building a blog from scratch is a lot of hard work, and that it took her a long time to replace her income. Still, Torres would encourage others to take the leap — starting her blog was fairly low-risk and required little initial investment, and it paid off in the long run.

While she continues to build her blog, Torres plans to carry on sharing her journey online and teaching others how to build their own blogs so they can become financially free.

She told BI, “Part of me talking about this publicly is just normalizing the idea that others can also do this, even though they may not have thought that it was a career option.”

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Panera Discontinuing Charged Lemonade Drink After Lawsuits

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Panera Discontinuing Charged Lemonade Drink After Lawsuits

Panera’s Charged Lemonade has been under fire from consumers and regulators after lawsuits alleged the highly caffeinated beverage has been the source of long-term health problems and even death.

Now, the chain has decided to phase out the drink as a part of overarching menu changes.

RELATED: ‘100% Should Be Illegal’: Woman Exposes Jaw-Dropping Amount of Caffeine in Panera Lemonade

“We listened to more than 30,000 guests about what they wanted from Panera, and are focusing next on the broad array of beverages we know our guests desire — ranging from exciting, on-trend flavors, to low sugar and low-caffeine options,” a spokesperson for Panera told CNBC.

According to Bloomberg, Panera will begin discontinuing the drink within the next two weeks and replace it with a “broad array of beverages” featuring a blueberry lavender lemonade, a pomegranate hibiscus tea, a citrus punch, and a tropical green smoothie.

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The beverage was at the center of three major lawsuits, two of which were filed on behalf of the families of 21-year-old Sarah Katz and 46-year-old Dennis Brown. Both died after allegedly consuming the Charged Lemonade, citing pre-existing medical conditions.

Another lawsuit filed in January claimed that 28-year-old Lauren Skerritt developed long-term heart problems as a result of consuming two and a half of Panera’s Charged Lemoandes.

“You put an innocuous product like lemonade in an innocuous bakery-cafe like Panera, what reasonable consumer is going to be thinking that they’re drinking, essentially, three Red Bulls?” said Skerrit’s lawyer Elizabeth Crawford at the time. “Everything in her life has been altered because of this situation.”

Per Panera’s nutrition information, one large 30 oz. serving of the Charged Lemonade contains 390 mg of caffeine in addition to guarana extract, a natural stimulant.

Related: Panera Sued: Alleged Charged Lemonade-Related Heart Issues

According to the FDA, the maximum amount of caffeine that the average adult can safely consume per day is 400 mg, though the average adult consumes about 135 mg of caffeine daily.

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Panera did not immediately respond to Entrepreneur’s request for comment.

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Jack Dorsey Exits Bluesky Confirms on ‘Freedom Technology’ X

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Jack Dorsey Exits Bluesky Confirms on 'Freedom Technology' X

Jack Dorsey, co-founder and former CEO of X/Twitter until he resigned in 2021, has left the board of X rival Bluesky, a decentralized social media network he helped create, fund, and promote.

Bluesky started as a small research project within then-Twitter in 2019 and became its own platform in 2022. The company’s goal is to create a common operating standard for social media platforms so that apps can work between them. It works a lot like Twitter, which it was designed to replace.

Dorsey has been on Bluesky’s board since the platform split from Twitter, now X, two years ago, but took to X on Saturday to simply write “no” when asked if he was still on the board.

He also posted and pinned: “Don’t depend on corporations to grant you rights. defend them yourself using freedom technology. (you’re on one)” on the same day, deeming X “freedom technology.”

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Jack Dorsey. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

On Sunday, Bluesky posted an official statement on their site thanking Dorsey “for his help funding and initiating” Bluesky. The company stated it was looking for a new board member “who shares our commitment to building a social network that puts people in control of their experience.”

We sincerely thank Jack for his help funding and initiating the bluesky project. Today, Bluesky is thriving as an open source social network running on atproto, the decentralized protocol we have built.

— Bluesky (@bsky.app) May 5, 2024 at 4:11 PM

Dorsey also reportedly unfollowed over 2,000 people this weekend and weighed in on government surveillance.

Related: Jack Dorsey Blasts Mark Zuckerberg Over Threads Follow Request: ‘Too Soon’

He now follows just three people on X: Elon Musk, Edward Snowden, and Stella Assange.

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The seemingly public approval of X is a change of tune for Dorsey, who openly called out Elon Musk’s leadership of X last year.

Dorsey also founded the fintech conglomerate Block, which the Department of Justice is currently investigating after a former employee alleged compliance issues.

Dorsey mainly dismissed the news report at Block’s earnings call last week.

Related: ‘Should Have Walked Away’: Jack Dorsey Says ‘It All Went South’ After Elon Musk Took Over Twitter



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Feed Your Company Spirit with This $200 Restaurant.com eGift Card That’s Only $35

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Feed Your Company Spirit with This $200 Restaurant.com eGift Card That's Only $35

Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you’ll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners.

As an employer, you might forget what it’s like to be on the team instead of leading it. Employee motivation is complex, and sometimes, it’s the little signs that you care that can boost team spirit. In fact, something as simple as providing meals for your employees occasionally could give your team a huge boost. One Edenred report even found that companies that provide food services saw a 25% increase in employee satisfaction.

Now, that doesn’t mean you have to hire a food truck to come around every day. A low-cost alternative is to invest in a service that gives you more food for less capital. Restaurant.com is home to thousands of deals for eateries across the United States, and you can get a $200 Restaurant.com eGift Card for just $35, but this deal may not last long.

Save on meals for you or your employees.

If you want to search for low-cost dining options all over the country, here’s how the process works:

  1. Buy your Restaurant.com eGift Card right here.
  2. Redeem them on Restaurant.com for credits.
  3. Use your zip code to search for qualifying eateries.
  4. Spend your credits on gift certificates for restaurants around the U.S.

You don’t have to use all your credits at once. That means you could help take the team out for a celebratory dinner or treat yourself a few times while traveling. Suddenly, there’s another reason to have business partners around the country.

Plus, you can use your eGift Card for dine-in, delivery, or takeout, but check the fine print for every restaurant. Some meals, drinks, or days might not be covered by your gift card. It’s also a good idea to search restaurants in your area (or where you’re likely to travel) before purchasing.

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Raise office morale with meals.

Maybe the missing ingredient in your employee retention plan was a good meal.

For a limited time, get a $200 Restaurant.com eGift Card for $35.

StackSocial prices subject to change.

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