Ten years ago, it was enough for a chef to be known among his neighbors in the nearby area. He did not even need to know how to market himself because people would either love his food or not. However, a chef with a small kitchen in Lyon or Lagos can have a large following in fifteen different countries.
He will never meet some of them and may never see them in person. The approach to the travel of information has significantly changed, and the independent chefs are the ones taking advantage of it.
This post describes the methods that allow chefs who do not belong to big restaurant corporations or possess big PR departments to reach a wider audience beyond their neighborhoods.
Moreover, they do it not by luck, but thanks to several repeating habits regarding content, platforms, and communication.
If you cook and wish to expand your audience, this post may provide you with helpful tips.
Kitchen Has Gone Through the Walls
Previously, independent chefs competed for the same few thousand people residing in the same place. Currently, both the opportunity and competition are bigger, as one can easily film himself while deboning a fish or preparing some dumplings and post a short clip on YouTube. This clip can be viewed by a person who lives miles away, and he or she will watch the chef’s new video next week and so on.
First of all, we can say that the platforms appeared recently; however, they are not the key reason why people started watching the work of chefs. Now people tend to trust the opinion of individuals rather than brands, and a person who speaks to the camera and explains why he prefers a particular method of cooking seems more sincere and reliable.
Finding Your Unique Niche
Chances are high that a chef who managed to create a following outside the neighboring area represents something unique. It means that it is not just «good food» which everyone says about their dishes. Every such chef has a particular niche, a specialty, an angle which can be explained in one sentence. Someone can make restaurant dishes in a tiny apartment kitchen. Someone prepares regional dishes unknown to many people. Someone is the scientist who explains the process of baking.
Focusing on something special does two things at the same time: it makes the chef more memorable and allows people to find him or her easily. The thing is that people search for something specific, not a general one, and appealing to everyone usually means reaching no one.
It is important to be sincere about what you do in your cooking that other people do not. You can ask yourself the following questions:
- What do your friends or regular customers ask you to prepare or explain?
- Which aspects of cooking do you love so much that you always enjoy filming them?
The answers to the two questions will probably be the basis for the niche development.
Creating Content That People Will Like
Filming yourself while cooking and creating content that people will actually watch and like – these are two very different things. The former is the record, and the latter offers the reason to stop scrolling and, most importantly, come back tomorrow.
The chefs who managed to do it begin with something that grabs the viewers’ attention during the first few seconds, creates a promise or asks a question. Afterward, it needs to be delivered clearly, without ten minutes of preparation. It is important to think about the quality of the light and sound in your video; the camera is less important.
Consistency is the other important aspect that will help to reach success. Filming three brilliant videos and then disappearing for a month means that both algorithms and audience will forget about you. Posting videos regularly does much more during one year than posting brilliant videos from time to time.
Chefs who treat content creation as a preparatory task tend to have the most reliable growth because it is not a performance anymore, but rather a routine, like preparing onions.
Owning the Relationships, Not Renting Attention
Social platforms can be extremely helpful for the discovery of a new chef; however, they are the rented territory. It is possible to lose the reach instantly if the social media service changes its policy, and a chef who built the entire career using one particular platform will be greatly influenced by this. A better idea will be turning this borrowed attention into your personal one.
For most independent chefs, it means having an email list or a personal website. Once a person provides you with his email, you establish a direct connection with him; no algorithm will affect the delivery of your newsletters.
Newsletters have become one of the most powerful marketing tools of food creators, precisely because they are stable and dependable.
Some chefs go a step further and create a membership or a paid community. People who joined it will become the best customers; they will buy your cookbook, classes, and apron.
Collaboration Across the Countries
It is possible to reach a new country very quickly by collaborating with a person who already has a wide reach in this country. Chefs can guest on each other’s channels, cook the same dish from opposite corners of the globe or exchange one signature technique on camera. In this way, a cook in Seoul will introduce his cuisine to the people in Mexico City and vice versa.
These exchanges work well because they look genuine and not commercial. People are able to distinguish two people who respect each other’s cooking from two people who are just helping each other. The chefs who are willing to collaborate generously and often will find themselves woven into a wider network of food creators, and this network will keep sending people to them long after they upload a video.
Account Management Across Different Regions
When an audience begins to spread across different countries, account management becomes more complicated. It is possible for a chef to manage his Instagram account, video channel, newsletter platform, shop, and payment processor from one laptop, mostly while traveling to pop-ups or working in cafes using public WiFi. Some features and tools may appear only in certain regions; creators sometimes need to check how their content or shop looks from another country.
All of this account management from one laptop brings certain security risks. It is easy to intercept passwords and sessions when people connect their laptops to public networks in cafes, airports, or shared offices. Loss of access to a channel with tens of thousands of followers due to this problem may require months to be restored or never be restored at all.
This is the case when a VPN for computer usage should be added to the workflow of the chef. It encrypts the connection between the laptop and the Internet and makes passwords and sessions safe even on public networks.
Additionally, a chef can check how pages and products look from another country using this tool; it may be handy when the viewers are located in several different countries. For everyone who manages valuable accounts, using a secure connection while working is a small habit that protects a lot of work.
Turning Your Audience into a Salary
Having a wide audience is different from having a stable salary, and the chefs who survive long enough understand this very early. Reach is the top of the funnel; what really matters is what flows into it.
Successful routes tend to be mixed, rather than consisting of one source. Digital products, such as collections of recipes and paid courses, sell well because they cost almost nothing to produce. Membership brings the stable monthly income. Brand partnerships pay good money, although the chefs who keep the trust of their audience are rather picky about it. Some chefs sell physical goods from spice blends to knives; a few use their online audience to fill seats at their ticketed dinners and pop-ups in cities where they have never lived before.
The only thing that runs through all of it is respect. The chefs who create something lasting treat their audience as people, not as numbers. They reply, they remember, and do not sell too aggressively.
Local Kitchen, Bigger Table
Currently, it is possible for anyone to create content using modern technologies. Therefore, access to them is not the thing that differentiates the growing accounts from the stuck ones. The difference is patience and taste. Creating a following outside the neighboring area requires a point of view, content people are willing to save, direct contact with your best followers, several good collaborators, and a bit of care about the technical side, including keeping your accounts safe while working.
It does not happen overnight. However, a cook who shows up consistently, has something unique to represent, and treats his audience with respect can reach a table far bigger than any dining room. The neighboring area has been defining the reach of a chef, but it is only a starting point now.
