Life & Work with Sara Mellas of West Meade

Today we’d like to introduce you to Sara Mellas.

Hi Sara, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I’ve always loved to do anything creative. Music, cooking and baking, drawing and painting, sewing and knitting, writing, theatre… growing up I knew I never wanted to work any job that would keep me behind a desk or staring at a computer screen.

As a teenager I was fortunate enough to transfer to a high school that had a very good music program, and I decided I wanted to pursue music professionally. I initially went to college to study music production/technology, but switched my major halfway through to music history and vocal performance. I entered an intensive nine-month graduate program immediately after completing my bachelor’s, where I earned my master’s degree in music education.

I held a handful of different jobs over the next few years while living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was the Director of Music at a church, taught K-5 general music, middle and high school band/jazz band, and conducted the San Francisco Boys Chorus. All this time, my hobby of baking/cooking, something I’d been doing regularly since elementary school, continued to grow. I started taking orders for birthday cakes and hosting elaborate themed dinner parties with friends.

Many of my friends worked for a company called Yummly (a recipe website/app) that had just been bought by Whirlpool Appliances. They were about to roll out their new smart ovens and “guided cooking” app feature, and were looking for a recipe developer. Through the gracious recommendation of these friends, in 2018 I was hired to develop over 700 recipes for the company, all the while still working as a choir conductor. At the end of that year, I competed in and won the Kellogg’s Holiday Baking Championship, which was judged by Top Chef’s Padma Lakshmi.

Through the small amount of recognition I received and people I met following that competition, I was able to start marketing myself as a food stylist. I discovered how much I love being on photo and film sets working with crews of talented creatives, just making beautiful things. Around this time there were shifts happening in my music career and personal life, so I decided to try navigating self-employment by growing my client base as a recipe developer and stylist.

Working for myself propelled me to leave the Bay Area in interest of more living space, warmer weather, and pursuing my life-long dream of being a southern lady. I arrived in Nashville at the beginning of 2020, having just signed my first two cookbook deals. I wrote The Easy Baked Donut Cookbook, The One-Pot Casserole Cookbook, and soon after, the Quick & Easy Breakfast Cookbook within a five-month time frame during the beginning of the pandemic. The first two books were published last summer, and the third is available for pre-order.

In the last year I’ve been working to grow as a commercial stylist, expanding beyond food to also do props, lifestyle, florals, and even wardrobe. I have no formal training in visual or culinary arts, so it’s a daily practice to improve my skillset. Styling is not a job most people even know exists, and I am so grateful to do this work. I joke that most days, it feels like being in a glorified middle school art class.

This past summer I gave my first TEDx talk, and I’m looking forward to the new creative opportunities it is leading me into.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
When you decide to become a freelance creative, you essentially have to become your own brand. As much as I wish offers would just fall into my lap, every single project/job I’ve ever gotten (including my book deals) has been the result of my efforts to research, call, and email potential clients/agencies/publishers, and basically pitch myself. For every 100 inquiries I send out, I’d say I get around 1 “yes,” 9 “no”s, and 90 people don’t even respond. Constantly marketing yourself can be draining. I’ve had to become almost indifferent about it just to keep from going crazy, and trust that the projects I am meant to do will happen with persistence and patience.

Being self-employed, especially as an artist, means living with a level of unpredictability and uncertainty that can be fairly challenging. To not be a full-time employee with set hours means never really knowing what your schedule will look like. This keeps things from ever getting boring, but as someone who thrives off of routine, I have had to work on being adaptable and comfortable with frequent changes.

With each new project comes a reassessment of resources. Our societal default is to prioritize money, and of course we all need a certain amount of income to survive, However, I’m coming to learn just how valuable time and energy are as well, because if we are short on either of these resources, earning money becomes very difficult. I’m routinely having to be mindful and calculating about the projects I pursue, while doing a decent amount of guesstimation around their overall value.

Who else deserves credit in your story?
Any non-traditional, creative career relies so heavily on interpersonal dynamics and positive word-of-mouth connections. And at the beginning, the people who see your potential and give you a chance. I’m so grateful to those who have done just that for me, and to those who continue to help me grow my professional network, support what I do, and offer words of encouragement. On the creative side, I have endless admiration for the photographers and artistic directors I get to collaborate with, and the editors and designers who are integral to getting my books out into the market.

Contact Info:

• Email: sara@saramellas.com
• Website: www.saramellas.com
• Instagram: sara.mellas

Image Credits
All images are my own.