To market the new Kern's Food Hall, this small firm moved there.

At Vella Crew, Suzanne Young’s passion for marketing and film has turned a hobby into a career.

Young has a natural background in art in the form of dance, music and film from a young age, and she pursued film in college. She also went to school for computer science, which is where her expertise in marketing comes from.

“I do my hobby for a living,” Young said. “It's how I make money and feed my family, but there's not a day that feels like work because this is exactly what I want to do. I love this world that I live in.”

Vella Crew has overseen the branding and marketing of the newly opened Kern's Food Hall for about two years, since the construction phase.

Post-grad, Young had spent several years as a developer for a national brand, developing sites along with the brand as a whole. However, as an artist, she did not feel fulfilled working eight-hour shifts in a cubicle. Young said her productivity took a hit being figuratively and literally caged in a box, leading to her eventual firing.

“I'm better suited to activate a vision,” Young said. “Because I see things from a broader scope. And it's harder for me to be caged in a box where I feel like that’s the worst thing you can ever do to an artist.”

While most would see it as a bad break, Young saw it as an opportunity to finally fulfill her vision. She hadn’t been given a place to be creative and explore new ideas, so she decided to create it herself, which is now Vella Crew.

For about seven years, Young steadily grew her business. She took on many clients from many areas of business. Through that, she began to form an idea of the ideal client that aligns best with her and the business, which was food, fashion and entertainment.

It wasn’t long until Young had the brand awareness to be able to choose clients that more closely aligned with her vision.

She brought her husband, Phillip, on board to help with the growth of her business. However, his background had nothing to do with marketing or film.

At the time, Phillip Young was a supervisor at Costco. What he did have was a background as an athlete − a competitor. That competitive fire drove him to become an expert in the world of film.

“He has that athlete mind,” Suzanne Young said. “When he decides that he wants to do something, he really throws his whole self into it.

“I brag on him a little bit because he's like a little savant when it comes to film. I think that the way that he learns things is exponentially fast and the way his eyes see like, things through the camera lens. He just knows his stuff.”

Vella Crew continued to grow, eventually partnering with the renovations of Kern’s Bakery into the newly opened food hall.

With such a big project, Phillip and Suzanne Young wanted to be able to give Kern’s Food Hall their full attention, so they brought Vella Crew to it. They were able to build a studio inside the food hall instead of the garage studio they had been working from.

The next step at Vella Crew will be fully utilizing the studio space. It will serve as a physical sign of their brand, but other people will be able to use it for creative purposes.

“We will have a lot of people and eyes on us as well in this creative space,” Suzanne Young said. “Having a space at Kern’s is also going to be like we're giving back to the community in terms of creating this space for other creatives. It's not just for ourselves.”

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: To market Knoxville's Kern's Food Hall, this small firm moved there