Simple, easy, and delicious recipes is what Julie’s Eats and Treats describes as her brand to her 70,000+ Instagram followers, but the drool-worthy food photos she posts may contribute to the attention as well. Julie (Koehl) Evink 2006 is a University of Minnesota Crookston graduate who took her bachelor’s degree in hotel restaurant and institutional management and turned it into a thriving modern business. She has a heavy social media following with over one million on Facebook and 442,000 on Pinterest, successful food blogs, and a new cookbook as the cherry on top.
Evink started her Julie’s Eats and Treats blog on a whim in 2010 after frequently being asked for her recipes, and later, in 2018, came another blog, Gimme Some Grilling, which started after her husband, Jason, got a wood pellet smoker and became “slightly obsessed with it.” Being a proud mother of three young children also led her to create Kids Activity Zone, a site with easy free printable crafts, activities, and recipes.
She’s been seen in Good Housekeeping, CountryLiving, BuzzFeed, delish, The Huffington Post, and Parade, and will surely captivate audiences with her Julie’s Eats & Treats Cookbook that includes “easy, family friendly recipes from a Midwestern mom.”
It was in tenth or eleventh grade, Evink knew she wanted to go into hotel management and, with the limited number of locations for that type of major, she landed on U of M Crookston.
“I visited UMC and it felt like home although I lived in Morris (where another U of M campus presides),” Evink shared. “It was a natural progression of wanting to leave (home) but wanting to feel secure, so Crookston was the right pick for me.”
“You don’t always appreciate what you have until you look back at things and I now remember Crookston as a small intimate campus where everyone was friendly and you could be as involved as you want,” she added. “It was safe and you weren’t just a number. It’s what I want for my kids.”
Associate Professor Ken Myers was Evink’s professor and advisor at U of M Crookston, and each of them have looked back to compliment one another.
“Ken was amazing,” Evink declared. “I remember him trying to teach us how to make homemade marshmallows one time and we didn’t read the instructions so we had to go sit back at our desks. It’s now ingrained in me how to read a recipe.”
“She was extremely energetic,” Myers said about Evink. “She would set awesome goals such as wanting to graduate in three years instead of four, and she did it. I still remember after all these years.”
“Julie served as an officer in the club (hotel and restaurant management) multiple times and was very engaged in activities,” he added. “That’s obviously carried over into her home and work. What started out as having fun at home has developed into a fabulous business opportunity.”
After graduation, Evink worked in both food services and hotel management before meeting her future husband on a blind date. She returned home to Morris, Minn., and temporarily worked at a job that wasn’t necessarily her “passion.”
“In 2010 I started my blog sharing recipes as I wanted to share on the internet versus writing something down on a recipe card,” Evink explained. “Back then you didn’t make money on food blogs, it was just a passion project.”
“(Later) I remember having a conversation with my brother and told him I had heard about people actually making money on blogs so I decided if they could do it so could I,” she added. “Pinterest was just coming out and you had to have an invite to it, and Facebook was out, and the industry was starting to grow. Soon I was getting an expensive camera and learning how to stage the photos, and we started forming groups online and learning from each other.”
Evink said there’s a core group of food bloggers that set the industry standard, developing the ad industry for what it is today. Now, companies pay them to promote products and become social media influencers.
She quit her job six years ago, which she says was the scariest thing she’s ever done, and two years ago her husband quit his job and works with her full time on the food blog. He also built their family a house and Evink got to design her dream kitchen.
“Picture your wildest dream and it actually happens,” she remarked. “Every day I have to pinch myself. Obviously there’s work, and there’s good days and bad days, but I’m blessed.”
“I’ve talked to kids in high school and spoken about how far the industry has come,” Evink went on. “My friend is a teacher and she’s trying to get a mock restaurant in class like we had in Crookston so her students can learn what it’s like to work in a restaurant. You learn lifelong skills.”
Speaking of kids, Evink said her family is everything plus growing up on a farm has been one of her main inspirations. Her parents still live on their farm and her 70-year-old dad still farms to this day.
“My favorite recipes stem from my childhood favorites that I grew up on like the hamburger stroganoff my mom used to make,” she described. “I make recipes that people can connect with like my mom’s cheesy garlic bread that came from a ‘secret recipe’ where she dumped a bunch of ingredients together and handed me the recipe which was on a stained piece of paper.”
“I also feed my kids chicken nuggets like everybody else and live in a town with only one grocery store,” Evink continued. “I have 30 minutes and we need dinner on the table, so I keep it real and have that connection with the readers.”
As far as social media goes, Evink said things can change so fast but if you have those “true people that connect with you” they’ll keep coming back no matter what. Other influences of hers are her blogger friends, but she tries not to compare herself to others. Not even Food Network. Though she has a large subcontracted team of ghost writers, social media specialists, photographers, videographers, and a publicist to help turn her visions into reality, much like celebrity chefs and bakers.
Evink is also celebrating a new reality - her first cookbook.
“I looked at Jason as we were setting goals last January and said I wanted to write a cookbook, and have full control of it,” she explained. “I told him it was a huge undertaking and it would be a ton of money, but it was on my ‘bucket list’ and he said, ‘do it’.”
Evink then hired a cookbook design strategist, who also published the book, and away they went with what she calls an “elevated church cookbook.”
“There are tried and true recipes that are easy to make, and that kids will eat,” Evink continued. “There’s savory and sweet, and the end product is something anyone can pick up and they’re not overwhelmed. Readers can find a handful that will work for their family, plus there’s tips and tricks like pantry staples and getting your kids to eat.”
Evink hopes her cookbook is a resource for people and makes dinner less stressful.
“I want this cookbook to have those stains on it and then you hand it to someone and say ‘you have to cook this’,” she admitted. “Getting it dirty is like a badge of honor, I think.”
Julie’s Eats & Treats Cookbook is on sale online at Barnes & Noble, Target, Walmart, and Amazon, and may be seen in stores.
Though Evink doesn’t consider herself a “foodie”, even after confessing to spending over $1,000 on a meal with some fellow food bloggers in Miami at a Michelin Star restaurant, she enjoys feeding her family and forming relationships over food like at family dinners.
“That’s my big push in my cookbook: Here’s a 30-minute meal you can put together doing homework and then you all sit down and have dinner together, and that’s your half hour where you get to be a family,” she described. “I grew up on a farm and my mom cooked dinner, and at 6 p.m. we had dinner and my dad came inside from the field. Our farm business was a conversation and that showed me how to run a business. It made me who I am today, and how to be an entrepreneur. Food is a base and a connection your family can come back to.”
“I truly love what I do,” Evink stated. “They say if you find your passion you will never work a day in your life. I told my friend at age 25, ‘we have to find our passion’ and now my friend says ‘I found it’ and I did, too.”
