The case for creators

Getting to know you. Getting to know all about you.

Nobody works in food because it’s easy. We do it because we love it. The stories vary; on one side there’s the “I grew up in a home where something was always in the oven” narrative and on the other, there’s the “good food was absent in my life until adulthood” experience, with plenty of stops in between. Whatever the story, being a professional in the culinary world is more than simply a job, it’s an identity. 

When we set out to interview 30+ culinary creators, I couldn’t have anticipated how much ground we would cover. We wanted to understand what makes them tick, what feeds their creativity, and how they navigate career building, but that was just the start. Before we dig into the details, I just want to say I was floored by these culinary creators. They are overworked and underpaid, and they still love every (ok, most) aspect of their jobs. They do the heavy lifting to preserve culture, foster genuine connection across digital and physical planes, and overcome every roadblock to creative expression. Just… wow. 

Ok. Roll the tape.

Community first

Culinary creators are motivated by connection; engaging with their audience drives both their business and their creative spark. Every comment, every like, gets them closer to being in the kitchen with their communities, helping them cook step by step. It’s hard for outsiders to understand the sincere motivation of being a culinary creator. Every time it comes up, I get the humble answer “I just want to help people cook”. This seemingly simple statement belies a profound truth—there's an indescribable magic in the act of nurturing others through food. Words alone struggle to capture the power behind this unique blend of artistry and altruism.

DMs, comments, and email are meant to build closeness but managing all the volume across channels can become overwhelming and stressful. For a moment, imagine if an audience of 400,000 (on only one of four platforms) started asking you for cooking advice and product recommendations. Although this connectivity is the goal, it’s not particularly sustainable. Because community engagement is siloed and creators are spread thin across multiple platforms, some hire community managers to scale their outreach and answer each and every question that comes through. Despite these challenges, creators consistently say that there’s nothing better than learning that someone has cooked their recipe. It’s one of the highs of what they do, and it’s an important reminder that despite all the chaos, they’re cutting through and inspiring people to cook.

Recipes are not just “content” 

Recipes take a significant amount of experience, time and money to create but the quality of a recipe has little bearing on its commercial success. Even though consumers have made it abundantly clear that recipe quality is the most important factor in choosing a recipe, the algorithm determines whether it lives or dies. Creators are forced to shoehorn their work into video content, daily posting, trendings, etc to perform according to the algorithm. 

This price of entry to simply reach their own audience is becoming too high. Creators are burnt-out from the demands of daily posting, expense of recipe testing and high quality video production, and the pressure to conform in a world built to trend. Very few people understand the work that goes into developing a high quality recipe. When America’s Test Kitchen added a paywall, they advertised that each recipe on their site costs $11k to produce. Truly, I have so many questions, but it’s a glimpse into the time, effort, and skills needed to do it well. You better believe we’re going to tell the story of recipe development on our socials.  

The monetization dilemma 

How a creator chooses to monetize is based on two factors; how they think their audience perceives their value, and how their peers are monetizing. Think about it… it’s the location of paywall on substack (on recipe posts only, in the archive, etc), the decision of whether or not to have ads on a blog, the strategic location of a recipe on a post (caption, DM, link in bio, etc). 

There’s a camp who firmly believes if you give away years of free content, your community will one day buy your cookbook and there’s a camp who trains their audience to pay for everything from day one. It’s pretty heartbreaking listening to creators agonize over their own self-worth and constantly measuring themselves against their peers. The industry has become totally fixated on vanity metrics like follower counts and best-seller lists and still, it’s rare to find a creator who feels fairly compensated for their work.

My other worry is that the whiplash for consumers is not good for the industry and keeps advertisers enshrined in their position to subsidize the entire industry. Whether in the form of traditional ads or more subtle brand partnership, they are inescapable. Some creators accept that as truth, while others are well aware of the risk of not owning their value but unfortunately they have no alternatives. The latter are the creators welcoming a more robust conversation about sustainability, value and community. That’s our crew. 

Cookbooks are still king, but the industry is changing

You cannot talk about recipes without talking about cookbooks; today, they are synonymous. Every culinary creator wants a cookbook because in an industry with endlessly diverse business models, cookbooks are universally respected, celebrated, and measured. It hits every note in a culinary career although the financial benefits are widely debated (are you seeing a trend?). It brings recognition, relevancy, and opens new doors that are often associated with more financial stability (finally) but social media has drastically changed how publishers approach the vertical. 

Huge followings and viral content trump experience and high quality engagement frustrating many established recipe developers. Do likes and virality translate to book sales? No, at least not consistently, yet without better signals these are the numbers the industry relies on. Also, I understand why creators have to grovel for book pre-sales, but there’s got to be a better way. I can't imagine they like starting every post and newsletter with 'Please buy my book now' for two months straight. It's like being stuck in an infomercial, but instead of a Slap Chop, it's your magnum opus.

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I want to pause there and let that marinate for a minute. I love (wow, I’m a nerd) processing massive data sets like this straight into solutions because I’ve always enjoyed finding order from chaos. But I want to give you a moment to internalize this, and in that processing there’s an important distinction I want to make. These conversations speak to the system we’ve all been forced to operate in, not necessarily the way we want to operate. 

My favorite question to ask in any user research setting is something along the lines of “Imagine a world you could start from scratch. How would you build this (workflow, experience, product, etc)?”. So, with all that you know about your own experience with culinary creators, and now what you know about peeling back the curtain of their experience, think about what the next evolution of this ecosystem might look like. That’s where we’ll dig in next week. Until then, my friends.