CK and Diana are a couple of foodies living on the edge of Washington, DC. Catching up with them was an amazing opportunity. Foodies who consider themselves influencers or just food lovers have a different perspective when it comes to finer cuisine. So let us explore.
CK and Diana, I am guessing there’s both of you running the HypeFoodies account. Please tell us a little about yourselves before we jump right in.
CK: My name is CK, I’m 29, and I work at Amazon doing minor logistics. My dream is to one day quit my job and make videos and post photos full-time!
Diana – Diana here, 28 and I’m a behavior therapist. I work with Avail Outreach and we work with Autistic kids. I too, share the same dream as my boyfriend CK!
Tell us about the HypeFoodies account. Where are you located, what are your favorite cuisines or restaurants that are an absolute must to go to?
CK&D: Hypefoodies is primarily located in DC (we live in Arlington right on the border of DC), but we love to drive up to New York every so often. We also love to fly to California once or twice a year! A favorite cuisine of ours is Vietnamese, due in large, to our several trips to Vietnam over the years. The combinations of salty, sweet, savory and fresh greens in the motherland blew our minds because the Viet restaurants in the states did not compare! A stand out restaurant for us is the local DC ramen shop, Daikaya. We’ve had the best from NYC to LA, but Daikaya’s unique smoky broth just does it for us every time.
How did you discover your passion for food?
CK&D: As we mentioned earlier, we’ve traveled to Southeast Asia once a year and that’s really how we knew we had a passion for food. Our friends and us woke up in our suite in Vietnam (suite sounds expensive, but it was actually $20 a person as the cost of living in Vietnam is super cheap) and they wanted something to eat. They suggested walking across the street for a bite, but we stopped them and said, “Hey, don’t you guys want the best Vietnamese coffee? The best Vietnamese breakfast?” We knew we didn’t have much time in this foreign country so we wanted the best the country had to offer. In turn, we applied this thought process to our personal life as well. We don’t have much time on this earth so it’s our duty to find the best food this world has to offer!
What is your dream destination to travel when it comes to food?
CK&D: Our dream destination for food is between Japan and Spain. We’ve heard nothing, but legendary stories of the culinary prowess in those countries and we are excited to try them one day.
You both separately have popular Instagram accounts, what made you decide to start a joint account in the food sector of Instagram?
CK&D: Before Hypefoodies we focused on travel content and art pop-ups. We had a lot of food content as well, but a bit too much so we decided to create hypefoodies to document our eats. Lo & behold, our food page grew immensely mainly because our food content was easy to obtain compared to our travel and art content. We can’t travel every day and all the art pop-ups were in New York. Food was just way easier for us to post considering our living situations.
If you could define the term influencer, what would the definition be?
CK&D: Personally, we don’t like being called influencers. I don’t know why haha it makes us cringe a bit inside. We just love doing what we do and we appreciate each and everyone that agrees with our “influence”
What is your stance on influencers being paid to post about brands? Should influencers be transparent regarding payment for posts?
CK&D: Honestly, we welcome brands that want to work with us. Money never came easy for us growing up. We are children of refugees. We did not grow up in the suburbs. Nothing was handed to us on a silver spoon. When someone wants to pay us to do something we love? Of course, we would jump at the offer! As for transparency, we 100 percent feel “influencers” should be honest in what they post. Not just adding hashtag ad or hashtag sponsored, but also being honest if they actually like the product or not. Misleading your followers into eating something not worthwhile is backward and defeats the purpose of influencing people, to begin with.
What brand sponsorships (if any) are you most proud of?
CK&D: We recently worked with Roy Boys Fried chicken & oysters that opened last week. The owners own a string of restaurants in the area making them the biggest partners we’ve come in contact with. They emailed us first, purely off seeing our skills and it made us feel confident that we were on the right path. Also, who doesn’t love Fried chicken?
What’s the most underrated aspect of working in social media?
CK&D: The most underrated aspect of working in Social Media is the skill and effort that goes into editing a photo or video. It’s unfortunate that there are very talented creators who are often overlooked just because they have 200 followers while someone with 300,000 followers gets so much praise even though their content is half as good. We really wish skill and effort would reflect more on a creator than follower count, but one can only dream.
How do you think the rise of influencer accounts on Instagram has impacted on the way that people discover restaurants/bar/food?
CK&D: It is a double-edged sword. This day in age, social media is extremely powerful for a business to thrive and succeed. A positive, a small business that’s well deserving of success can explode if every influencer account in the area posts about them. A negative, an undeserving business that pays everyone to post gains more success than businesses who are less in tune with social media. I guess you can say there’s good and bad in everything we do in life. We just hope to be an account that leads you in the right direction.
What techniques do you use to make sure the photos are the best you can take. Maybe lighting accessories or color editing technology? Before you post the photo on Instagram does it become a very time-consuming process?
CK&D: The best technique is natural lighting. Either sitting by a window or literally going outside. Any minor details we want to fix we usually use the editing tools in Instagram. It takes us about 15-20 minutes to post from editing, thinking of a caption, and keyword hashtags.
Anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
CK&D: That’s all we got folks. Hope you all enjoyed that interview. Remember to eat good and stay hype!
