Meet Zach Brooks | General Manager, Smorgasburg LA

We had the good fortune of connecting with Zach Brooks and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Zach, how does your business help the community?
The thing I am most proud of is how Smorgasburg LA has grown from a weekly “event”, into a incubator at the center of the Los Angeles food scene. This is not just evident in the dozens and dozens of businesses who have gone on to open permanent locations of their business to great acclaim all over the city, but also the community that exists every single Sunday between the vendors that manifests itself in all sorts of ways, from food collabs to fund raising to the sharing of resources and knowledge.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Weirdly I actually started off in radio… in music programming. In 2006 I was working at Sirius Satellite Radio in Midtown Manhattan, and decided to start Midtown Lunch, a food blog dedicated to the lunches I was finding near work. I also had a podcast about the intersection of food and music called Food is the New Rock, which I put on hiatus to help open Smorgasburg. I often think about the through-line of my career… which has always been about wanting to help expose the things I love to a larger audience (whether it’s an indie band or street food vendor.)

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
A day in each of the great neighborhoods of LA and Orange County… San Gabriel Valley for Chinese food, a day each in Koreatown and Thai Town, Westminster for Vietnamese, taco crawl through Boyle Heights and East LA, and a day in Downtown centered around Grand Central Market and Little Tokyo (and Smorgasburg if it’s a Sunday!)

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I didn’t start Smorgasburg… I only helped them bring it to Los Angeles. So all of my gratitude has to go to the founders, Eric Demby and Jonathan Butler. It was a huge leap of faith for them hire a freelance food writer and podcaster to run the Los Angeles version of their baby. They taught me everything about the business I knew nothing about at the time, and worked with me to adapt it to Los Angeles (which is incredibly different from New York!) They are probably more shocked than anybody that it’s 8+ years later and I’m still there at the market, every single Sunday.

Website: https://la.smorgasburg.com

Instagram: midtownlunchla

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zach-brooks-5788844

Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/smorgasburg-los-angeles