Creator x Foodtech: Exploring Unique Monetization Strategies for Creators
For those who didn’t know, I love cooking, especially baking. As I write this, I have a ramp and asparagus focaccia cooking in the oven. But, I don’t just enjoy eating my own creations, I also love exploring new places through bakeries. Since I moved to NYC, I have been trying all the bakeries I can and creating lists upon lists of all those I haven’t been to. Recently, one of my favorite Instagram bakers did a pop-up, which I attended and ended up inspiring this article.
In addition to baking myself and eating others, I do consume copious amounts of content from others. One of my favorites is an Instagram/Podcaster Artisan Bryan who does central and South American bakes, along with pizza. When he announced a NYC pop-up last weekend, I knew I had to attend. The pastries were great, but I didn’t think the experience would take me down a rabbit hole analyzing the innovations of food tech monetization outside of traditional methods (traditional I define as ads, cookbooks, and Patreon). Inspired by this thread, this piece will dive deeper into how three of my favorite creators are monetizing. I am not going to analyze creators doing their own CPG and virtual brands, as Mr. Beast has propelled them to the spotlight, and those typically can only be done by creators with immense followings. Instead, I am going to focus on methods any micro-creators can do.
Newsletters have been growing in proliferation over the past ten years. Ethan Chlebowski, a food creator who has skyrocketed from less than 15,000 subscribers in May 2020 to 1.5 million subscribers in March 2023, has seen the newsletters trend and created his own version. His newsletter is succinctly broken into 6 parts: new recipes, old video, recipes for leftovers, viral trend, reader Q and A, and user-submitted recipe. It has a good blend of equal parts new content, content he already created, and user-submitted content. Unlike many of the food newsletters today that are very spammy and filled with lots of links out, this one is very succinct and has beautiful visuals, like many of the business newsletters we know and love (a la Morning Brew). With this newsletter, he has a platform to engage with existing fans and a way to bring in new ones who may prefer a different medium. After a couple of months work, he has already over 24,000 newsletter subscribers. He doesn’t really have monetization outside the Adsense revenue of directing people to his old videos. This weekend, he launched a paid Patreon type subscription that incorporates the newsletter, but is more of a subscription to him, not one of his platforms. However, the base has been built, and the opportunity for ads or purchasable shopping links for groceries is mentioned. Time will tell what he ends up deciding to do, but branching outside Youtube will pay tremendous dividends in the long run.
ProHomeCooks was one of the first food YouTubers I started watching when I dove into food YouTube. Starting off as meals that were great to eat when you were inebriated, he evolved to be a channel focused on how to elevate your game as a home cook. For a long time, his sole monetization strategy seemingly was Patreon, courses, and ads. Most of his advertising seemed to be kitchen tools, like pots and pans. Recently, he rolled out a marketplace where the products he uses in his videos can be purchased. Unlike Amazon or other affiliates, he is able to keep the data and relationship with the customer. Plus, he is most likely making a higher commission. It is not exactly clear who he is using to power this site, it could be himself, but there seems to be some sort of app in the background, like Carro or Canal, that powers it. Still, this is a great middle-ground for creators as not everyone wants to go down the path David Chang did to raise $17.5M to create a CPG arm. Instead, creators are able to monetize the products they already use in their videos, without doing much lift by creating a dropshipping marketplace.
Unlike the first two creators mentioned on this list, Artisan Bryan does not use YouTube as his primary distribution method. Instead, he utilizes podcasts, Instagram, and a TV show on Magnolia Network to reach his audience. Outside of TV, the other two don’t have many built-in monetization abilities, like Youtube offers with Adsense. Seemingly, most of his monetization strategy has been from TV and cookbooks. The next evolution of his strategy was to create a Pop-Up bakery in a shared kitchen space, Nimbus Kitchen. Located in NYC, where he is based, presumably many followers are based, and where he frequently posts content about, this 6-month, weekend-only pop-up is a way for him to test having a brick-and-mortar location without requiring major upfront investment. Not everyone wants to follow Dylan Lemay to raise $1.5M to leap into building an ice cream shop from the beggining, this pop up is a smart way to prove the concept before diving full steam in. Artisan Bryan isn’t alone in turning their influence into a cottage bakery. In my hometown of West Hartford, Kevin Masse of Small State Bakery went from an Instagram account to a small brick and mortar in a food hall to now building out a full bakery. And he is not alone. Countless accounts popped up in the pandemic and had a similar path or are starting on that path (L’Apartment 4F in Brooklyn, Le Petit Four in Needham, and La Rose Pizza in Brooklyn are a few to name). This path is one that many will follow because it is a tried and trodden entrepreneurship path, build and MVP, test and iterate, and never stop building.
Out of the three options, I believe creators will utilize the second and third options the most. Commercial kitchens, like Nimbus Kitchens, and Shopify apps, like Carro and Canal, make these options super accessible for everyone from micro creators to people with millions of followers. Consumers want to support their favorite creators, but still want something in return, and these two options are a low-lift way to create other touch points with that fans. However, I think for creators with a larger following, a newsletter and other forms of owned media make sense. If disaster, struck and Youtube was down, Ethan Chlebowksi has a way to engage with 24,000 and growing of his most loyal fans. In conclusion, if you are a creator you need to be exploring alternative ways of monetizing your audience.
