She grew up at sporting events and around professional athletes who were clients of her father, David Falk, a pioneer of the sports agent industry. At a very young age, Daina fell in love with game day and the sports fan experience. So much so, in fact, that she only did one college application—it was Duke University or bust. Her goal: to be a Cameron Crazy.
While at Duke, Daina traveled extensively and studied cooking. After college, she was still obsessed with sports and sports fandom so she worked for teams and produced and hosted network segments around major sporting events. But she kept coming back to the idea of the sports fan's experience and how it lacked an arbiter of taste—a curator à la Martha Stewart.
Always wanting to be authentic and wake up everyday excited to go work, Daina decided to create a platform for the tailgaters, homegaters, sports- bar-goers and sporting event attendees of the world. Thus, Hungry Fan® was born.
As the founder and face of Hungry Fan®, Daina can often be seen hosting events, TV shows and segments or promoting her cookbook. She has appeared on shows such as Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Today Show; and she hosted Toughest Tailgate, which highlight NFL tailgating traditions, on CBS Sports. She has done celebrity chef appearances for teams such as the New York Giants and Yankees. And her first cookbook hit bookshelves in August 2016 and was a bestseller on Amazon.com in Tailgate Cooking. Published by Oxmoor House (of Time Inc.), the game day cookbook features Daina's own Fangating™recipes and those she collected from Olympians and professional athletes such as Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Andre Agassi, Boomer Esiason and Robert Griffin III.
Episode #175 - Daina Falk
