From Imphal, Raina Wangkheirakpam runs an Instagram channel @house_4_ tasty to showcase her recipes and the street food culture of Manipur. Started during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, the account has 26,000 followers, which puts her in the category of micro-influencers, those with a following of 10,000 to 100,000. Brand collaboration requests are few and far between—maybe one or two enquiries a year, mostly barter deals. The horticulture student hopes more brands will reach out and pay for the reach and exposure her account commands.
In the throes of the pandemic and amid extended lockdowns, even those less inclined towards cooking had started looking up food recipes online, widening the audience base of many culinary content creators. When Instagram launched Reels, it led to an unprecedented reach, paving the way for ‘foodfluencers’ to attain remarkable follower counts.
Too many cooks
Foodfluencing now has perhaps the largest number of subcategories of content creators—from village-cooking and gourmet-baking to meal-prepping and myth-busting. But the monies in the space haven’t grown proportionately.
Meanwhile, short-video format is altering the way the art of cooking food gets documented on the internet, even as it puts pressure on foodfluencers to maintain visibility online, causing more discomfort than the heat in the kitchen ever did.
The launch of any food brand needs foodfluencers to create content around reviews and recipes, but the monetary growth has not been exponential, says Lakshmi Balasubramanian, cofounder of Greenroom Network, an influencer marketing agency.
“Unlike finance, which has fewer creators attracting larger audiences, food content is saturated with participants,” she says, adding that very few recipe videos reach a million views unless they are tied to a meme trend.
Industry stakeholders say while top tech influencers command ₹10-15 lakh for a YouTube video, celebrity chef creators get ₹5-6 lakh.
Things aren’t bad if you are a mega influencer—with over 1 million followers—in the food category. They often opt for long-term collaborations, and could earn ₹40-50 lakh a year through multiple videos. Some also explore additional avenues like participating in reality shows or curating menus for restaurants, fetching them a few more lakhs of rupees per gig.
For nano influencers (with 1,000-10,000 followers), monetisation options are limited. Most generate income by posting online reviews on food aggregator apps. Brand collaborations fetch most regional influencers (nano or micro) meagre compensations of ₹5,000-10,000.
If they are hugely popular in the region, they may get fourfive brand deals of ₹30,000-40,000 a month.
Praanesh Bhuvaneswar, CEO of Qoruz, an influencer data analytics firm, agrees that creating food content on the internet is trendy, but it doesn’t bring in much money for the majority of creators. Eventually, many food influencers find it beneficial to become hyperlocal regional influencers, he says. “Other lifestyle influencers might struggle with such a transition, but a foodfluencer can explore various city locales, trying out new food spots and evolving into a city influencer.”
He talks about Lakshmi Vignesh M, a creator from his hometown Erode in Tamil Nadu. “He began as a food blogger and has now transformed into a full-fledged regional and city influencer,” says Bhuvaneswar. Voice of Erode, which has over 200,000 followers, shares the “emotions of Erode district”. “He will post insights about the pav bhaji vendor whose name people may not recall but they will certainly remember the stall location,” he adds. Vignesh, who runs Voice of Erode, was unavailable for an interview with ET.
Pie chart
There is no dearth of opportunities for foodfluencers, especially with new players coming up in the D2C food space. But some companies are evaluating the need for foodfluencers depending on the stage of growth they are at. Says Akshay Awasthi, founder of Aweri Foods, a D2C startup making products inspired by his grandma’s recipes: “Currently, we make our own content and I feature in our social media videos because we are at the initial stage of growing our business and this seems like a better channel to drive feedback. I’m not opposed to collaborating with foodfluencers for reach and exposure at a later stage.”
There are concerns about the utility of foodfluencers, or influencers in general, from established FMCG companies as well. “Data tells me that 60% of my Gen Z consumers don’t believe in influencers anymore. They rely on messages their friends sent them on Instagram,” says Kopal Doshi, digital marketer at a global food major.
Some foodfluencers stay away from brand collaborations to maintain their credibility.
In April , Revant Himatsingka, a former McKinsey consultant, started making short videos to educate people on the alarming levels of certain ingredients on food packaging labels. Nine months later, the 31-year-old is widely known as Foodpharmer, and is believed to be a major force behind Bournvita’s new packaging label that showed reduced sugar content.
The Kolkata resident now has over 1.2 million Instagram followers. Despite this, he has done a grand total of zero brand collaborations. “Once you start promoting brands, people tend to view everything you say with suspicion. I want to be in the health education content space for the long term. So this credibility is dear to me,” he says. But bills have to be paid. “I have to find a way to earn from content creation without compromising on credibility.”
If Foodpharmer alerts people to the packaged food they are consuming on a daily basis, Krish Ashok dismantles their everyday myths and concerns. Even he hasn’t pursued any brand collaborations. “If you are debunking something, attaching ‘Sponsored by’ to the video would immediately compromise your credibility,” says Ashok, who is a technology professional, culinary author and musician. Ashok is far less worried about not monetising his digital presence than he is about the way short-video format is altering how cooking gets documented online.
“With Instagram Reels, people are creating more short vertical videos. And there are certain recipes you cannot do in that format or in under 90 seconds,” he says. There’s a selection bias towards visually appealing dishes as well.
“No khichdi unless it is embellished with edible flowers. YouTube was a place where ‘ugly delicious’ was also celebrated. On Instagram, people par-cook their food so that it looks aesthetic.”
Even as the format makes it harder for certain kinds of recipes to thrive online, there is an entire community whose food and culinary culture doesn’t find much room on the internet. “You won’t find Dalit food blogs or reels on social media because the new generation of Dalits don’t want to be reminded of what their ancestors ate,” says writer Chandra Bhan Prasad. He launched Dalit Foods, a packaged food company, to honour Dalit culinary legacy in 2016. In 2020, he shut it down after incurring ₹10 lakh in losses. “That experience taught me that anything ‘Dalit’ in the consumer goods category is not easily marketable,” he says.
Tired to the bone
Besides influencing the politics of food, foodfluencers are united in one thing: exhaustion from posting.
Instagram Reels initially granted content creators reach and influence. But soon, this evolved into a demanding cycle, leaving them fatigued. “There’s so much pressure to keep posting new recipes every day,” says Shivesh Bhatia, a self-taught baker and cookbook author from Delhi, who has been posting food content online since the blogging era. “Creating and posting one short video takes up as much time and effort as posting 10 pictures back in Instagram’s 1:1 block static image era,” he says. Bhatia’s YouTube channel, Bake with Shivesh, has over 1.4 million subscribers while his Instagram account is followed by 1.7 million. He falls in the category of mega influencers.
Regional foodfluencers often don’t have teams to take care of their content requirements or the monies from brands to compensate for the effort. Before Reels launched in September 2020, Hamid from Srinagar would upload just one or two recipes on her channels in a week. In 2023, she was uploading a recipe daily across platforms, along with doing voiceovers in Kashmiri for her Facebook audience, and in Urdu and Hindi for her YouTube and Instagram followers.
“Everyone knows that if you are not posting frequently, your reach suffers,” she says. She recently took a “break from this race” to prioritise her mental well-being.
Pot of gold
Then there are some regional foodfluencers whose success stories defy industry standards and theories. Like Suresh Pillai. Popularly known as “Chef Pillai”, this 45-year-old former participant of BBC’s MasterChef: The Professionals became a social media sensation during the pandemic by posting recipes of Kerala cuisine in his mother tongue, Malayalam, on Instagram Stories. “A random fish curry Story started getting 100,000-200,000 views,” he recalls, adding that his average views were 5,000 before the pandemic. Now he has close to 900,000 Instagram followers and roughly 200,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel. “NRIs tell me that because of the voiceover in my videos, their kids have learnt to speak some Malayalam.” Over the last two years, Chef Pillai has set up 15 restaurants in India and abroad, a feat, he says, his social media presence has hugely contributed to. So even if creating content feels like a lot of work to him, too, he treats it as part and parcel of his job as an entrepreneur.
Renu Dalal, daughter of the original foodfluencer, Tarla Dalal, is optimistic about monetising her digital presence, even though she has yet to actively start on that path. “There’s a lot of competition, but I’m confident the simplicity of my recipes will appeal to the younger generation,” says the cookbook author from Mumbai, who has over 31,000 followers on Facebook and 28,000 on Instagram.
Despite the financial challenges, food content creation offers a long shelf life, with videos providing opportunities for repeat views. The extended duration of food videos increases the likelihood of earning revenue through advertising on platforms like YouTube. The audience is also diverse, with a substantial diaspora section following these creators.
Perhaps this is what pushes Hamid to return to posting recipes after every break. “Sure, there is a lot of pressure, a lot of competition,” she says over a call from Srinagar.
“But I want to believe there’s enough sunshine for everyone in this world.”
