Dame Amy Muzyka-McGuire
Profile by Judith H. Dern
A word you hear often when talking with Dame Amy Muzyka-McGuire is “grateful.” The word and its meaning come with recognition of how her career in the food universe has spanned the spectrum from the corporate to the agency side, to today, where for the past 20-plus years she’s been an independent marketer to clients. Her segue from a career in food public relations to earning dietitian credentials to being an adjunct to businesses with a focus on recipe ideation and food styling was both spontaneous and the result of synchronicity.
Call it being in the right place at the right time–and acting on her savvy instincts. And yes, she has seen changes throughout the food industry, from a proliferation of bloggers to young foodies sharing recipes and photos nonstop online.
Amy is first to admit her career path wasn’t planned. In fact, she wanted to be a veterinarian, and was enrolled in a pre-vet program studying animal science/nutrition in college. But with a twist, her first job was working for the National Livestock & Meat Board in Chicago where she focused on human nutrition. She remembers this as a “great working experience, especially due to a wonderful home economist in the test kitchen. I learned from the best.”
After meeting her husband, the couple moved back to the Midwest where Amy was a dietary consultant with area hospitals. Within a couple of years, she entered graduate school to pursue becoming a registered dietitian/nutritionist. As her first encounter with synchronicity, she attended a meeting of Home Economists in Business and met Dee Munson (someone many LDES members will recall) who was working at the American Egg Board. Dee hired Amy as their Foodservice Director to conduct all national promotional programs. When Dee moved to Seattle several years later to open The Food Center at Cole & Weber, she persuaded Amy to move West. At Cole & Weber, Amy became the Food Center’s Associate Director and managed foodservice accounts for Washington Apple Growers, Peter Pan Seafoods, Roman Meal, and Lamb Weston, among others. The change from corporate to agency had its bumps and hiccups, and when Dee left Cole & Weber to set up her own independent agency, the move promoted Amy to also move out on her own.
This transition from public relations to singularly creating recipes for clients, handling their public relations and food styling–along with finding clients who valued her experience and skills–is something Amy says she feels “Very lucky about and grateful business is out there and has stayed constant.” As a seasoned culinary professional offering a distinct blend of on-trend, nutrition, lifestyle and food styling experience, Amy creates recipes that meet client’s needs and customer demands, edits chef recipes and delivers photo styling to clients nationwide.
Today, Costco Wholesale is a prominent client, with the company relying on her for reviews of recipes for the “Farm to Table” section of the company’s Costco Connection magazine (14+ million circulation), as well as for styling of some recipes. “There’s a wonderful pipeline of recipes and styling projects,” she says. For Costco alone, she’s styled more than a thousand recipes for their cookbooks and magazine.
She also works with ASMI, the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, to develop and review chef recipes. Occasionally she participates in photoshoots in Portland for the agency managing the Fred Meyer and Tillamook accounts. Wearing her food stylist hat, Amy’s portfolio also includes SeaBear and Wendy’s. Most recently, she worked at a photo shoot for a new restaurant on Capitol Hill.
As a Les Dames d’Escoffier member for 15 years, Amy has served as chair of procurement for several successful LDES auctions. Within IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals), for many years she served on the executive committee for the Association’s annual cookbook awards and judged cookbooks in the health category. She also was inaugural chair of the Nutrition and Food Science Section within IACP. In 2010, she was honored with IACP’s Nutritionist/Food Scientist of the Year award. As a longstanding member of ADA (American Dietetic Association, now called the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics), Amy served as communications chair of the 1400-member practice group of its Food & Culinary Professionals section.
Assessing her career, Amy notes how her food journey includes intersections with Julia–who spoke at both ADA and IACP conferences–along with Jacques and Anthony. She doesn’t hesitate to say she still watches Jacques. “I’m an armchair traveler (at the moment),” she says, “and it’s important to learn about other food cultures.” Amy is also quick to add that Dame Danielle Custer’s mother, the late/famed food stylist Delores Custer, was an inspiration to her.
Add her appreciation for living in the Pacific Northwest, a place where native foods are recognized and embraced, and where diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts are important to support. “For all of us, food is what you make of it. It can be nourishing, it can meet your [basic] needs, or it can be fancy for celebratory times,” Amy says. “And Les Dames members share these values. They are the people I want to have around me to embrace and to continue learning with.”
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