Why We Chose a .kitchen, Not a .com, to Grow Our Business.
Our mission is to make people more comfortable with the art and flavor of vegetable fermentation. Some people buy books, attend workshops, taste the pickled creations of their friends and still are not sure if they can do it. They want to do this, to become what we call Fermentistas, but they need just a little more support. That is the purpose of our website Fermentista.Kitchen, to provide that community and support for people to take the next step, in their own kitchen.
The great thing about coining a term that is picked up and adopted by people all over the world is that you can be first to the land grab of the .com, at least if you are thinking about it. We weren’t. We were in the middle of an organic food start-up, which meant when we weren’t in the kitchen wheeling large stone crocks full of fermented goodness in and out of our fermentation caves we were making deliveries and standing for hours at farmers markets.
“Good Morning. Would you like to try some lacto-fermented vegetables? We have nine varieties to try this morning.”
“No thanks, I forgot to bring my sausage..”
<<the husband laughs and keeps walking>>
<<the wife looks embarrassed and steps back out from under our canopy to catch up with husband>>
<<we smile and turn to the next group passing through>>
“Good Morning. Would you like to try…”
You get the idea. When you are early on in a movement it takes time for change, especially for what people put in their mouths, to filter through society. It helps when celebrity chefs like David Chang or Rene Redzepi and trusted writers like Michael Pollan take up the cause. No one wants to kill their family with something they have made in their kitchen — we get it. As a society we have forgotten how to do things that were, just a few decades ago, common place. The good news is the DIY and good food scenes have merged here and there is a lot of energy around bringing fermented food back. People around the world are becoming Fermentistas in their own kitchens.
So when it was time for us to move from a local business to a worldwide service we were attracted to the not-com revolution. Sure there was plenty to be read on the Internet about how it was a fad, these domains wouldn’t stick, it was better to do whatever alphabetical surgery you needed to in order to stay with the tried and true. That’s the way change looks in our experience, messy in the beginning. We reserved the .kitchen domain and had it as soon as it was released and haven’t regretted it once. It opens conversations at classes and workshops. Its easy to remember, just a “.” between you and your kitchen. Its simple and allows everyone to get on to the conversation, and the fermenting.
