From Layoff to Six-figure Food Business: Indian American Chef Priyanka Naik’s ‘American Dream’ Story

Sometimes, blessings come in disguise. A layoff is not always the end of the world. Rather, it may be an opportunity to start a more fulfilling career, turn a passion into a fruitful venture, and unlock a hidden treasure of fortunes. Indian American Priyanka Naik’s success story started from a mass layoff at Twitter (now X) after Elon Musk took over the company in 2022 and axed half of the workforce in a week of his ownership. Priyanka Naik from New York, an award-winning chef and cookbook writer, was among the total 6000 layoffs at X.com.

Chef Priyanka Naik, who cashed in on her passion for vegan cooking and became her own boss with a six-figure income in US dollars after being laid off, has no regrets for her impressive 12-year career, from Bloomberg to Conde Nast to Twitter, which ended abruptly. She put on a chef’s hat, grabbed a blender, armed herself with a knife, sharpened her olfactory sense, took to vegan cooking, and started culinary blogging. The pink slip from Elon Musk laid her unconventional passage to fame and popularity.

Culinary experimentation is neither her newly found niche nor her new shot at success. When her professional career was peaking up, she won Cooks vs Cons, a cooking competition on Food Network, in 2017. It was her first recognition in the world outside the corporate sector and her first stepping stone to what she is today—a self-taught vegan chef, celebrated cookbook author, TV personality, globetrotter, and food columnist for The Washington Post.

With her roots in Maharashtra and a little down the south, Priyanka is a vegetarian. Food has been one of the few ways for her parents to stay connected to the roots and culture since they immigrated to America. Apparently, it was her mom’s kitchen where her destination was scripted, in childhood. Food gave her not only a second inning in her career, but also a baton to advocate for a plant-based lifestyle through her vegan cooking. She believes, “What we eat impacts not just our health but our planet.”

Just like her signature look, accentuated with a pair of glasses in burgundy color, her vegan recipes and cooking stand out for sustainable measures. Sustainability being her USP, Chef Priyanka educates her social media followers on the importance of the ingredients we choose and use in everyday cooking for environmental health. Whether it is her kitchen, a culinary event, or a live TV show, she sticks to environment-friendly practices, from sourcing local ingredients to using unprocessed food grains and ditching single-use plastic items.

Cultural fusion and experimentation, other than sustainability, are among the hallmarks of her cooking. She is not shy of doing experimentation even with everyday fun snacks like panipuri, a most versatile and adaptable street food in India. Panipuri with a tongue-twisting fusion of the Mexican flair and Indian spices is very representative of who Priyanka Naik is. The filling of panipuri with Mexican elote (grilled corn in mayo cream sauce, garnished with chilli powder, and seasoned with lime) elevates the taste a notch above the traditional taste.

Chef Priyanka Naik’s pledge to further her mission of sustainable vegan cooking across geographies took shape as a cookbook “The Modern Tiffin” early in 2024. The Modern Tiffin that documents her love of Indian vegan cooking and global cuisines seeks to broaden the prevailing view about vegan food and prove that easy-to-cook vegan recipes could make it fun to lead a plant-based lifestyle. One of the recipes in her debut cookbook shows how to make Chicken 65 vegan.

Her commitment to building a global community of vegan lifestyle aspirants and enlightening people on sustainability in the kitchen did no go unnoticed at the White House. “The Modern Tiffin” author, Chef Priyanka Naik was among the guests who were officially invited to attend President Biden’s last Diwali celebration at the White House this year. Her blog and Instagram page have piqued the interest of high-profile public figures, like Kamala Harris and Chrissy Teigen, in a vegan diet.