Born to a Filipino mother and a German father in Düsseldorf, Germany, Marita Jünemann-Sinden grew up between cultures. And when her family moved to the UK when she was 16, the cross-cultural nature of her upbringing only grew more complex.
In London, Marita found herself longing for the German food she grew up with — so she took it upon herself to learn some authentic German dishes. These meals helped her reconnect with her family and her past. Knowing she wasn’t the only German expat who felt this way, she decided to start posting some of these dishes online.
She started MyDinner in 2011, and the blog’s content was as advertised: Marita mostly posted simple pictures and descriptions of the dinners she cooked. Then, she got a bit more advanced and started posting recipes — specifically German dishes, like the ones she grew up with.
“I realized that people really wanted to hear what I had to say about German food because there just weren’t that many German recipes online,” explains Marita.
While Marita had found a gap in the online content landscape that she was determined to fill, life soon got in the way. She and her husband now had two small children. With a busy family life, Marita found that her blog was falling to the wayside. Before she knew it, she hadn’t posted on it in five full years.
Then, on a whim one day, Marita decided to check her blog and see how it was doing.
“I realized I had been getting traffic even though I hadn't touched the blog,” says Marita. “That's when I decided I was just going to sit down and try to build up the blog.”
She clearly had an audience, so it was time to turn her passion for German food into a real, thriving business. Marita dove back into the blog, immersing herself in the world of SEO and online publishing in hopes of building up some steady income from her blog.
