When the seller called and remarkably accepted her “very low” deal, “I just remember going, ‘Oh, s–t,'” Ina stated, chuckling, on PBS Newshour in2017 “What have I done?!”
While she had a service background, it was her first-ever profession relocation having anything to do with food, her previous experience coming just from being a home cook. But, Ina remembered on Sunday Sitdown, Jeffrey provided her “the best advice anybody could ever get: ‘If you love it, you’ll be really good at it.’ I loved it, so I did it.”
In hindsight, she kept in mind, “It was incredibly brave of him to put everything we had behind it. Worked out OK.”
Ina offered the shop in 1996 (already she had actually moved it to a bigger area in East Hampton), crediting its success to the joyful environment she developed from the first day with positive music constantly playing, complimentary coffee and great deals of goodies for her consumers to sample. Armed with a well-off customers, great deals of great buzz and a smart press agent, her 1999 publishing launching, The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, was a hit.
