Biography

In 1995, when the Internet was considered “new media” and none of the major food manufacturers had a Web presence, Sandy Hu launched a pioneer weekly e-zine called recipe.com. It won the Public Relations Society of America’s first-ever Bronze Anvil (the PR trade’s Oscars) for best technology communications. By the end of its five-year run, recipe.com had an enviable track record: over 100,000 unique visitors, representing more than a million hits a month.

Rising successfully to new challenges is a familiar part of Sandy’s career, which has spanned more than 30 years in food communications. Food is the essence of Sandy’s world — how it tastes, how it looks, how it is evolving, how it impacts purchasing decisions. Her knowledge, passion and experience in food marketing provided the impetus for Sandy to start her own boutique food marketing agency in 2004.

While managing her own business, Sandy maintains a position as a consultant at Ketchum, one of the world’s largest public relations agencies. Sandy has had a long-standing relationship with Ketchum with responsibilities that have run the gamut, from public relations account management, to directing the Ketchum Food Center (the agency’s national culinary center), to leading Ketchum’s Consumer Food Group as its SVP/group manager. Her last full-time position was as SVP/associate director of Ketchum’s Global Food & Nutrition Practice.

Sandy also is a freelance writer. Her features for the Associated Press on star chefs and food trends were seen in hundreds of newspapers around the country. See some of her past newspaper articles on this site. In addition, she co-produced a bi-weekly television cooking show, Quick & Easy Cooking, for Ketchum and CBS5-TV in San Francisco.

Sandy started her career as food editor of Co-Ed magazine in New York City, and then became food editor of the Honolulu Advertiser in Hawaii. She joined Ketchum San Francisco in 1980. Two years later, she left to freelance, writing for such publications as San Francisco magazine and Cook’s. She returned to Ketchum in 1985 and rose to vice president, creative supervisor.

Sandy left Ketchum to become public relations manager of Specialty Brands, where she promoted the company’s flagship brands: Fleischmann’s Yeast, Dromedary Dates and Spice Islands Spices. She returned to Ketchum as director of the Ketchum Food Center in 1994 to take on the challenge of providing strategic culinary direction for the agency’s roster of clients, to grow Ketchum’s food influencer network, and to promote her concept of the “killer app recipe.”

Sandy is a graduate of the University of Hawaii. She is a member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, the San Francisco Professional Food Society, James Beard Foundation, International Foodservice Editorial Council, Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, and the elite professional culinary association, Les Dames d’Escoffier International, where membership is by invitation. Sandy is past president of Les Dames d’Escoffier, San Francisco Bay Area chapter, and served for two years on the national board of Les Dames d’Escoffier International as third vice president and is currently a director-at-large of the international organization. She was a judge of the James Beard cookbook awards in 2008 and 2006. She was a board member of the Hawai’i Chamber of Commerce of Northern California through the 2008 term.