Fiona Afshar has written software, worked as a florist and raised three kids. She never thought she’d cook for money.
Growing up in Iran, she was taught food meant love. “The more we feed you, the more we love you,” Afshar, 57, tells CNBC Make It. In 2018, she started her Instagram @cookingwithfiona, specifically to post instructional cooking videos she’d filmed for her daughter.
Within months, Afshar grew a following. She had recently discovered how malleable pasta dough was, and posted videos of herself designing, cooking and serving brightly colored, loudly patterned noodles. Viewers were hooked. Cooking classes, brand partnerships and an online shop called Fiona’s Pasta followed.
Afshar thinks her audience is drawn to her eccentric noodles for one simple reason: “If you look at every culture closely, there’s always a form of pasta. It just like leaves a really warm feeling [of] comfort.”
Five years into her cooking business, food still means love to Afshar — but now, she gets paid for it, and shares her love with nearly half a million followers. She brought in $129,300 last year, primarily from making pasta and shipping it out of her home in Malibu, California, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
Here’s how Afshar created her pasta business — almost by accident.
A lifelong love of cooking
When Afshar was 9 years old, at the start of the Iranian Revolution, her dad moved her and her three brothers to the U.K. Then, he left to go back for their mother.
Her mother had given her a cookbook, and and every night, Afshar ran her fingers over the recipes, memorizing them as a source of comfort. Her parents joined the siblings six months later, but her deep connection with food remained. It was how she was taken care of, and how she learned to take care of others, she says.
After graduating college, Afshar moved to California and worked as a software writer and consultant. She met her husband Ali in 1987, and started a software business with him before…
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