The Wild Honey Pie, based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, centers around creating a real-life community for local and visiting musicians, fans and food lovers. To mark its 10th anniversary, the company is hosting a celebratory dinner party on Sept. 23 at Guadalupe Inn in Bushwick, featuring Canadian-born, Brooklyn-based pop singer EVA (aka Eva Tolkin, who has collaborated with Solange and Charli XCX, among others). Founder and CEO Eric Weiner spoke with amNewYork and reflected on his onetime startup hitting the decade mark.
What is The Wild Honey Pie?
We started out as a food blog, but we have evolved into a music discovery collective. I see us as a platform for discovering artists we think you’ll fall in love with and getting to know them through video content, playlists and experiences, such as our dinner party concerts and Welcome Campers, which is an adult summer camp music festival we host at Camp Lennox in Massachusetts each summer. Our ultimate goal with everything we do is to break down the barrier between artist and fan.
How many dinner parties do you host each year?
We started with four dinner party concerts in 2017. Then we had around 15 in 2018, and this year we’ve already had 20 across New York City, L.A. and Austin with more planned until the end of the year. In 2020, we’re planning on expanding to Nashville and New Orleans.
What does turning 10 mean to you?
Honestly, it’s incredibly humbling. When we launched in 2009, it was a very different ecosystem, so we’ve had to evolve in order to thrive and eke out a place to connect with our community. It brings us all endless joy. We have people who have been involved from 10 years to 10 months, but so many people have touched our community and left their fingerprint.
Who is performing at your anniversary party?
We’re very excited to have EVA on the lineup. She’s a first-time collaborator and an artist we deeply respect. She has an amazing stage presence, and her work with Blood Orange is definitely impressive and on her own she’s been able to do really incredible work. We’re also still foodies, so we’re excited to eat some Mexican food. Guadalupe Inn is opening just for us on a Monday — and we usually serve beer and cider as our complimentary drinks — but we’re going to have free tequila cocktails.
How large are your events?
All of our dinner parties are around 65 people. When we say intimate, our goal isn’t to cram as many people as possible into a small space. We want it to be the best experience possible for our audience so that no one feels overcrowded or rushed to finish their meal.
What is the connection to Susan G. Komen?
Working with nonprofits has become more and more important to our core vision. Tequila Partida has an existing partnership with Susan G. Komen and we want to get the word out to as many people as possible to show their support through posted tags. For our event in L.A., all ticket sales are going to RAICES, a nonprofit benefiting refugees and immigrants, which is incredibly relevant and near and dear to our hearts.
Why have you put so much emphasis on good causes?
The little things are really important to us and instilling practices like offsetting our carbon footprint in our office, eliminating single-use plastics at Welcome Campers and making T-shirts out of recycled plastic with Recover. It all adds up to our future as a company and the future in general. Now that we’re 10, we’re thinking about it even more.
If you go
The Wild Honey Pie has an upcoming event on Sept. 16 and it’s 10th anniversary celebration on Sept. 23. For more information, go to thewildhoneypie.com.
