When the 2023 Hollywood strikes finally came to an end, many in the industry figured work would quickly restart. Some even organized their schedules around it. “We took a trip to Japan for my birthday, expecting Hollywood to be back in full swing by the time we returned," said production designer and art director Federico Laboreau, who's married to fellow production designer Maximilian Pizzi.
But in the weeks after they came home, they realized things were not going back to normal. “Before the strikes, I was juggling up to seven projects a week and earning great money,” Laboreau said. “But after the strikes, my income dropped to just 10% of what it used to be.
” The couple had started out in Buenos Aires and Mexico City, where they'd worked on shows like Project Runway Latin America and Mexico’s Next Top Model before moving to Los Angeles in 2013. Since then they've built established careers in TV and commercials, working for clients like Disney and T-Mobile. But as work post-strikes became scarce, Laboreau and Pizzi realized something had to change.
They asked themselves: "What do we do to get our economy going again?" The answer they came up with was the much-loved dish of their home country of Argentina: empanadas. The couple, who both grew up in Buenos Aires, had strong childhood memories of making food with their families. “Like many Argentines, our families are originally from Italy and France, so we grew up cooking and kneading pasta with our grandmothers.
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