Alumna shares German culture through successful online community

When Sophie Sadler first came to study in the United States as a high schooler, she thought she would go somewhere with a beach. Where the Trier, Germany, native ended up was in the middle of the country, far away from any big bodies of water.

At 15 years old, Sadler signed up to study abroad for a year and was sent to a small town in Kansas, right outside Kansas City. Her impressions of the U.S. and Kansas were how hot the summers got and how cold buildings were, how big cars, roads and houses are and how different the food was from the food she knew and loved and how differently the U.S. celebrated Christmas compared to Germany. Little did she know that one day her longing for a connection back to Germany would come through sharing food with others.

Today, Sadler runs Dirndl Kitchen, an online platform where she shares authentic German recipes, offers online cooking classes and connects her audience to her German culture through traditional and regional German foods like the country’s most popular fast food, the döner kebab (a Turkish bread pocket with meat, vegetables and sauce), apfelkuchen (apple cake) and semmelknödel (bread dumplings).

“When I first came to the U.S., cooking wasn’t easy because everything was just so different,” Sadler said. “Oven temperatures were different; measurements weren’t the same. The portions are bigger; bread didn’t taste the same. I was missing German food a lot.”

Sadler returned to Germany after high school and worked in radio and TV but ultimately returned to Kansas for her college experience. She started at Johnson County Community College (JCCC) and before transferring to the KU School of Business to study marketing and finance. She had a more difficult transition and felt lost her first semester, but it didn’t take long for Sadler to hit her stride. While at KU, Sadler worked at Wheatfields Bakery, which made her feel like she had a connection to home so far away.

“Going to community college was such a great option for me to get adjusted to college,” Sadler said. “I had a full scholarship for my first two years and got a free computer. I relied heavily on my instructors because the classes were so small. Then, coming to KU, that transition was harder, but once I made connections with other students and professors and got into more specialized classes I found my way again. I liked picking my own topics and going deeper into those.”

A business education allowed for Sadler to learn foundations that she would later use in life. She always loved the creative arts but didn’t want to pigeonhole herself into one specific thing. After graduation, Sadler worked in finance for a few years before leaving the industry and deciding to pivot into something new. She left the professional workforce feeling dejected from the sterile corporate environments she worked for and wanted to exercise her creative muscles and put her marketing degree to use in a full-time creative venture.

“Marketing was like my initial thing because I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do,” Sadler said. “I love creative things like art and design but didn’t want to nail myself down to one thing. I knew that I would either work for a business or start my own. I felt like I had a lot of doors open where I could still do marketing for a business or my own.”

It was there that Dirndl Kitchen was formed. With no desire to return to corporate life, Sadler launched her food blog in 2015 as a way to feel closer to Germany, work creatively and to make cooking and baking German goods accessible to everyone around the world. She set out to show that German food was more than pretzels and bratwurst, and that it includes hearty stews, bread and delicious pastries cakes that are naturally less sweet.

It took Sadler a while to find her groove with the blog. She struggled getting traffic from web searches and visibility for her platform because she didn’t know anything about search engine optimization (SEO) when she started. She worked with specialists to revamp her website and build her platform into what it is today. 

“I actually thought in the beginning that everybody already knows these basic German recipes,” Sadler said. “I thought that no one needed them and that visitors would be bored on my page seeing them. So, I made up all these more creative recipes and Google couldn’t find me because people weren’t looking for these weird variations of the food I was making.”

After working out the kinks, things began to click for Dirndl Kitchen. Sadler says she realized about five years ago that this was her calling and that food blogging would be her full-time profession. Today, Sadler has more than 126,000 followers on Instagram, where she shares her recipes, her life as a German living in the United States and her and her family’s love of Kansas City. Her website has evolved from just sharing recipes to an online community where members can get exclusive recipes, tutorials and content, access to her course to master German pastries “Plunderteig 101,” cooking/baking food challenges and much more.

The food influencer community showed Sadler that the same type of content can coexist on the internet. Leaning into what other people are doing online and sharing ideas and creativity let her see that people can work and draw inspiration from others who are doing the same thing as her. She has even made friends with another German food blogger and finds that it’s helpful to compare their versions of recipes and find ways to help another.

“I feel like it’s so easy to look at somebody on Instagram be like, ‘oh my gosh, how did they do all that?’ And you have to think that maybe they’ve been working at it for 20 years,” Sadler said. You don’t see all that past 20 years; you see the current moment of success that they’re putting out there. But if it resonates with you, that’s probably somebody you should look at as inspiration — not as somebody telling you that you can’t do that because they’ve already done it but rather telling you that you can do that because they’ve already done it.”

Today Sadler lives in the Kansas City area with her husband, Jason, and their three children. They also homeschool their children and raise them in a bilingual household with Sadler only speaking German and Jason only speaking English. Sadler has found flexibility in homeschooling that allows her to stay connected with her family and while creating recipes and content. That flexibility allows the Sadler family to return to Germany for longer periods of time throughout the year, letting Sadler reconnect with her home. The family also hosts au pairs from Germany for the past few years, which makes the homeschooling dream a reality.

Stateside, Sadler has integrated into the Kansas City community so much that the Chiefs asked her to be in the 2025 schedule release video. The Sadlers, along with Chiefs cornerback Trent McDuffie and cheerleader and Lawrence local Katie Lomshek, put their Chiefs knowledge to the test in a version of the game show “Cash Cab” called “Chiefs Cab.” Ben Bailey returned as host and drove them around Kansas City while quizzing them on the 2025 schedule.

“It was so much fun,” Sadler said. “I just got an email randomly from a Chief’s national marketing person saying that they found me online and liked my vibe and asked if Jason and I would be available for this. It was an opportunity that would have never come along if I hadn’t put myself out there. You can’t really plan on that stuff happening; you have to put yourself out there and not worry about what other people think. Because I think there’s going to be people that think you’re ridiculous and cringe and whatever, and you’re just going to have to overcome that because there’s enough people that also love you for you. Those are your people.”

Sadler has many things up her sleeve for the future. Her debut cookbook, “German Home Kitchen” came out in October, connecting German cooking to an even wider audience. She also is exploring new blogs and ventures where she can continue to be creative and share her love of food. Her advice for students and creators alike is to take time to enjoy the journey.

“You will always want to shift into the next best thing for you,” Sadler said. “And it’s supposed to be that way because you’re preparing yourself for the next big best thing. You’re not going to arrive at your ultimate destination tomorrow, and you don’t have to have life figured out right now.”