Antoinette Bruno

Antoinette Bruno brings more than a decade of experience in the foodservice industry to StarChefs.com, the first online food magazine—celebrating its 15th anniversary in 2010. Since taking charge as CEO of StarChefs in 1999, Antoinette has led the company to prominence and respect among culinary insiders. She has grown the company’s site traffic from 750,000 to 20 million hits per month (just over 3 million page views) and the content library from 4,000 to 27,000-plus pages. StarChefs.com achieves enviable search engine placement for all things culinary and has become the most influential destination for original culinary content on the web. Its JobFinder is the premier online employment classifieds for the hospitality industry.

Antoinette travels extensively throughout the US and the world to meet leading chefs and taste their food in order to bring StarChefs’ audience a first-hand perspective on the top chefs and their ingredient and technique-focused recipes, as well as industry trends and controversial issues. StarChefs’ Board of Advisors consists of the country’s most influential chefs, including Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Daniel Boulud, Norman Van Aken, Todd English, and Marcus Samuelsson. 

Recognizing a need in the industry for professional recognition, Antoinette created the Rising Stars Awards. Each year, StarChefs scours four cities across the country for their top culinary talent. Rising Stars are up-and-coming chefs and culinary professionals who represent the vanguard of the contemporary dining scene in America. StarChefs.com recognizes these individuals for their ability to see beyond the walls of their own restaurant and their commitment to fostering a culinary community by sharing their knowledge with fellow professionals. The StarChefs.com Rising Stars Revue is now a major yearly event on the radar of the culinary who’s-who across the country. 

As an extension of the Rising Stars Revue, Antoinette Bruno and Managing Editor Will Blunt conceived of StarChefs.com International Chefs Congress – a kitchen without boundaries (ICC). ICC provides chefs with a collaborative environment to share knowledge and experiment with new techniques. It is a forum where the world’s most innovative chefs pass their knowledge and techniques onto 1,500 of their peers. 

Under Antoinette’s leadership, StarChefs’ JobFinder has become the destination of choice in the industry for restaurateurs seeking qualified staff. She conceptualized Online Interviewing and the Employers Report Card to address the hiring needs of busy foodservice professionals. As Editor-in-Chief, StarChefs.com has been recognized in the media as a top food website, including USA Today, Lycos Best of the Web, US News & World Report, and Brill’s Content. Antoinette has been featured for her management and fundraising accomplishments in such publications as Business Week, Venture Wire, and the Nation’s Restaurant News. Her most recent television and radio appearances include Fox Business Nightly Countdown, NBC Miami, Fox Good Morning Boston, WUSA 9 CBS Morning Show Wash DC, Sunday Morning - ABC 7 News, San Francisco’s Morning Show (KRON), Dining Around with Gene Burns (San Francisco, KGO-AM), The Restaurant Guys, Les Kincaid's Lifestyles Las Vegas (KLAV).

Antoinette has been a presenter at numerous foodservice industry conferences, including National Restaurant Show, the International Hotel/Motel & Restaurant Show, The Great American Dessert Expo, The Foodservice Technology Conference, and the Global Gaming Expo – F&B at G2E. Antoinette has also organized and moderated several celebrity chef panels for the Wine & Cuisine Society at Harvard Business School.

Prior to joining StarChefs.com, Antoinette worked for over 15 years in the fields of finance, operations, and marketing. She began her career working in the foodservice industry, spending 10 years in both front of the house and back of the house positions. Subsequently, Antoinette founded and managed her own chain of retail stores before moving on to Wall Street. There, she negotiated purchases and sales of securities for Salomon Brothers institutional clients in the 1980s and later structured financial strategies for middle market companies. Other notable accomplishments include creating and implementing the first marketing strategy for The Body Shop, a billion dollar global retailer.

Antoinette attended the Chefs' Program at the Ritz Escoffier in Paris and worked as an apprentice for Chef Jean Pierre Callaud. She earned her MBA from Harvard Business School, and a post-graduate degree from the London School of Economics. She resides in New York City with her husband and two children.