How Bon Appetit’s YouTube Channel Changed the Game
Drawing from the strategies of both the Food Network and Marvel, the food publisher has switched up their playbook
Chin and Choo Taylor celebrated a milestone on YouTube last month: they passed 40,000 subscribers to their channel. The son and mother, who run a number of restaurants in Porlock and Porlock Weir in sleepy Somerset, England, set up Ziang’s Food Workshop in January 2017. Thirty-three months later, they crossed the key mark.
“We can’t quite believe it,” says son Chin, 33, who records the videos with his mother en masse, preparing and filming episodes over an eight-hour period between midday and 8pm on rare days off from running their food outlets. “We were hoping for 200 or 300 subscribers.”
Ziang’s Food Workshop started as a way to keep busy during long winter fallow periods for the Taylor’s businesses: “We’re really rural and where our shop is, in the winter there’s literally nobody there,” says Taylor. The YouTube channel gave the family something to do, and also were designed to act as a nudge to the fewer than 1,000 local residents within their catchment area: Our restaurants are still here, even if it is cold and dark outside. Come visit.
