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Eating with Kirby

By Joe Leary

Published 12:05 PDT, Fri October 11, 2024

It seems that as long as there’s been a social media scene, food has played a vital role in its development.

And we’ve seen a whole roster of ‘Foodies’ grow with it, exponentially.

“Foodies’ is the term coined for food-based contributors who come from all walks of life and regions of the world to promote it; shop for it, cook it; showcase it and often times, even consume it—on camera, for their legions of fans and followers to witness.

On the local social media scene, Kirby Ip is well-ingrained among the ever-growing fields of ‘Foodies’ who have found their particular niche and grown a fan base along with it.

As is often the case, it started with the written word and gradually migrated to the visual world. “I started my food blog back in 2011—before Instagram was even a thing,” she says.

“I loved reading food blogs and always loved eating out and recommending delicious spots to my friends and family. “I thought why don’t I give it a try and start my own food blog.”

One year later she did exactly that and watched her followers climb in numbers. “I made my first Instagram account in 2012. I did it as a hobby and never really looked at follower growth as a metric to strive for, but it grew steadily (but slowly) over the years.”

By 2017, Ip had around 3,000 followers; not a quick ascension by any means, given the five year span—but again, once you find your lane the sky’s the limit.

“Most of my follower growth came within the last two years where my cooking and rice paper recipes went viral. I began to create more recipe content that resonated with people.”

Her social media following grew to nearly 200,000 followers in a year.

And Ip’s ‘lane’ became evident. “Easy and simple recipes as well as food hacks are my thing. My recipes also lean towards Asian ingredients and Asian cuisine as that’s what I grew up eating”.

While she’s generally identified for her 15 Days of Easy Hacks and Recipes, Ip is likely most known for her creativity with rice paper and a one pot rice cooker. 

And while the food industry diligently seeks out the bloggers to help promote their wares, most respected ‘Foodies’ set a standard and draw a line in the sand at some point.

“I don’t promote anything I don’t personally use, even though I get a lot of requests for a variety of products outside my niche,” says Ip.

“My focus is food, travel and lifestyle—so things like cars, machinery, casinos and fishing gear (to name a few) are not products I would showcase or promote.”

And today’s social media platforms serve as the ultimate landscape for those like Ip to expand their brand. “Before YouTube, Instagram and Tik Tok became the kings of social media content, it was all about food blogd and it was a higher barrier of entry for people wanting to become food bloggers.

“Now it’s so easy to create a food account and start posting videos immediately. Also, content used to be super-finessed and you had to learn copywriting, photography, photo editing, website development, coding at times, etc…

“Now, text doesn’t have to be grammatically correct; videos don’t have to be polished (and in fact it’s not ideal to be). It’s about finding the best hook—the first one or two seconds of the clip—to grab the viewer’s attention to get them to stay on your video and therefore, the app.” 

It’s a pretty cool existence to truly enjoy what you do in life.

As the old adage says, “Find a job that you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Ip lives by these words every day.

“I get to make a living doing what I love,” she says. “I used to joke and tell people that I wish I could be paid to eat and travel. And to an extent, that is what I do now. It’s a dream come true and I never in a million years believed that I could make this a career.” 

eatingwithkirby.com • Instagram: @eatingwithkirby 

X-@reallyjoeleary    Instagram@joeleary

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