Meet Kate Pauley | Founder of Create Dinners and Photographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kate Pauley and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kate, how did you come up with the idea for your business?

I wanted to create something with my friends that we could all feel proud of and have a hand in. I sent the following email out to a handful of them in April 2016 just about a month before Dinner No. 1, our first ever Create Dinners event.

“I’m emailing you because you’re talented, a beautiful friend, and if you haven’t met everyone else on this email, it’s about time. Several of us have been chatting about doing a creative collaboration. We all have different talents and together I think we have the ability to create something amazing. Here’s my proposal: We agree on a date and time, I’ll lock down a location, each of you bring your “offering / talent”, we have an awesome night hanging out together (sharing a meal, doing a craft, making new friends), and we all get beautiful content that I’ll capture for you to use on your blogs, websites, and social pages + we all get to help promote each others’ brands.”

We now host other events like floral workshop and creative gatherings, work with brands and businesses to plan events, and have plans for our biggest undertaking yet this fall. We have evolved a lot, but we still largely follow this model for our dinners and our focus for sharing a meal and gathering with intention remains.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Create Dinners hosts events designed for creative women, imbued with meaning. There are hundreds of event companies, even dinner party companies specifically, but I think what sets us apart is that our dinner series is collaborative.  It’s essentially a creative potluck where every person in attendance has a hand in creating the table scape, food, surrounding area, or the pre/post dinner activity or entertainment.

We started back in 2016, but it wasn’t until 2020 that I started running Create Dinners and doing photography full time. I was part of a mass layoff during the pandemic, and thanks to a decent severance package, I was fortunate and able to spend a few months transforming Create Dinners from a passion project to a business. I formed an LLC, came up with a financial model, and launched a visual re-brand. There have been some moments of ease, but I would not say running your own company is easy. I get endless help from my husband and close friends and family, but there is always so much to be done. A freeing lesson I’ve learned this last year is that things will always be there to dive back into the next day and that no one cares about this company as much as me.

I hope that others can look at myself and Create Dinners and feel empowered to start their own projects. I’m not a genius or re-inventing anything. You don’t need to know every answer, you just need to have a lot of drive and to start somewhere.

And to any companies reading this, we are actively looking for partners to sponsor and co-host events. Working with us is an incredible way to get an intimate introduction to a passionate community and to generate brand awareness and have authentic content created to use across social, e-comm, etc.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.

My dream question right here. I’m going to answer this as though someone is coming to visit Brooklyn specifically around this time of year, spring or summer. This schedule would change if it were fall or winter or if we ventured into the city. There are too many good things to do!

Thursday:
– Coffee + walk through Fort Greene Park
– Breakfast at As You Are in The Ace Brooklyn — grab a photo booth strip before you go!
– Greenlight Bookstore
– Dinner at Colonia Verde or Miss Ada
– Comedy show at The Bellhouse

Friday:
– Everything bagel with scallion cream cheese from Bagel World
– Noguchi Museum
– Glass of wine at Petite Paulette
– Street noodles at Mekong BK

Saturday:
– Dance cardio class at The Good Move
– McCarren Park picnic lunch with sandwiches from Court Street Grocers
– Shopping at any combo of the following: 10 ft single, Beacon’s Closet, Dobbin St. Co-op, Big Night, and 28 Scott
– Dinner at Nura in Greenpoint or Sobre Masa in Bushwick
– Piña coladas at The Commodore

Sunday:
– Croissant and coffee from L’Appartement 4F
– Walk the Manhattan Bridge
– Matinee movie at Nighthawk Cinema or BAM
– Pizza dinner at Emily

I don’t know where to squeeze this in, but for a sweet treat, I would grab a GF pb cookie from Ovenly. 🙂

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My shout out goes to Elise Apffel and Katie Marble, two of my best friends who I consider extensions of my soul and brain. They are my creative muses for life and the reason Create Dinners became anything when I started it back in CA in 2016. We’ll be back together for Dinner No. 20 (cannot believe we’re planning our twentieth dinner!) in Palm Springs this August.

Website: createdinners.com

Instagram: @createdinners

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/create-dinners

Image Credits
Katie Marble / Kate Pauley (selfie)