This March, a new Thai restaurant called Sanae Thai Eatery opened on Alberta street. Struggling to attract customers, the small business reached out to their community. Not long after, they saw a shift and began getting consistent business.
The reason for their sudden success can be credited to local social media food blogger Michael Banh.
At the peak of Instagram’s success, many food lovers turned to the app to post and review their meals. However, the food blogging industry had actually come to fruition decades before. In 1997, two young men, Jim Leff and Bob Okumura, co-founded the online food forum “Chowhound,” which was later acquired by CNET in 2006. Following Chowhound, many other online blogs emerged, including “Eater” and The New York Times’ “Diner’s Journal.” When X (formally known as Twitter) launched in 2006, many began using the site for food recommendations and recipes.
“Around 2015, I would just have all these pictures of food on my phone that had no outlet to post them in, so I just started posting them on Instagram, and then from there, it was just solely, just my outlet, just posting all these pictures of food, things I’ve eaten and just enjoyed.” says Banh, who is known as @micbanh on instagram and @michaelbanh on TikTok. Banh first used his account for personal photography, but later turned it exclusively into food blogging.
Banh did not expect to go viral. When he posted his first Instagram Reel, after years of solely posting photos, the video suddenly gained immense popularity. After this spike in viewership, Banh started regularly posting Reels of the restaurants he visited. Now, Banh has accumulated over 40 thousand followers between his Instagram and Tiktok accounts.
“It was a way to turn something I was passionate about into a project, into something that could be sustainable for myself. So now it (has turned) into its own little business,” he says. Because of his love for food, Banh has been able to turn his account into what he describes as a “passion project.”
Many successful food bloggers use their accounts as a source of income. One of the ways they make money off of their job is by creating strategic marketing content that showcases their experience and highlights the cuisines of a small local business. Typically, the food blogger will be invited to the restaurant and is given a free meal in exchange for a video, and in some cases, the food blogger is compensated for the video’s success. “Those times they know I’m coming out, they usually will go above and beyond, which is kind of cool. So they’ll usually give us a lot more dishes to try to really showcase their whole menu,” says Em Snieska, who is known as @theportlandfoodies on Instagram and TikTok.
Even in instances in which a food blogger is making advertisement content, much of the time their reviews remain honest. “I try to keep my page as positive as possible,” says Banh. “If I do go to a place I don’t like, I just don’t post about it.”
Though, not all food blogging content is used as advertising. “I try to keep half of (my content) kind of what I originally wanted to do with my account (which) was just to post about what I love. I love to post about the restaurants I go to, the food I’m eating. I still want to share that, but the other half is definitely … helping these small businesses and helping these other companies to lift up their product or lift up their food or their restaurant.” Banh says.
Snieska began her account in 2021 after moving to Portland in 2020. She came into the food blogging scene in search of a means to explore the city’s food scene and meet new people. She similarly began her account only posting photos, but shifted her focus more to Instagram Reels later on when they became popular on the platform. Snieska began seeing more traction on her accounts after leaving her corporate job and investing more time into social media. Now, Snieska owns her own social media management company.
Last year, Snieska decided to create “Portland Supper Club,” a group exclusive to women and LGBTQ+ people. The idea stemmed from her husband, who works as a pilot. Since his job required him to be out of town for extended periods of time, Snieska rarely had a companion to try restaurants with.
Looking for company, she reached out to her followers to see if they wanted to meet up for a group dinner. Because of the support she received, Snieska decided to make Portland Supper Club an official group. She says, “It started off pretty small, like 10 to 20 people, and we would just go try restaurants, and then it just started getting really popular. Now we have 400 members in our group, and we do anything and everything. We go to dinners, we try workout classes.” Along with their usual dinner meet-ups, the club decided to visit Hood River in September and Whidbey Island, Washington, in November.
Yvette Chau, known as @yvetteciao on TikTok and Instagram, is a local online blogger who uses her account to promote lifestyle and food-related content. Chau first started her TikTok account participating in trends and posting personal videos, but decided to fully commit to blogging her lifestyle after her video highlighting a Chinese grocery store went viral. “Growing up in Oregon, it was kind of hard to find (Asian restaurants,) … This is just what I really like, where I like going, what I like doing. Being an Asian girl in Oregon is kind of hard growing up so I just wanted to start this for myself, but then it reached a larger audience,” she says. “Now, I’m like, ‘Okay cool. I can help businesses too.’”
Through her lifestyle videos, Chau hopes to uplift small businesses. “I’m hoping that, you know, when I do go, afterwards there’s an uptick in customers and business and awareness. That is my goal, just really to help them out. And while I’m sharing what I like, obviously, like, these are real people. These are local businesses. It’s cool to see something that I’m doing help them out as well, because I try to focus more so on the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) businesses, just because it’s so rare in Oregon.” she says. Chau noted that she received a message from the owner of Wok’ n Guys, a small Chinese restaurant in Beaverton saying the video she made about their business helped them get more customers — and many ordered dishes she had highlighted in her video.
Snieska has also been able to help restaurants with the assistance of Portland Supper Club. Recently, her group visited Morchella, a farm-to-table restaurant that features a menu of foraged and wild foods. “We were able to sell out two servings … of food for my supper club … It was a jam packed night for them. They got a ton of business … My supper club will then usually post videos and post stories and things like that themselves. So it’s just helping the word spread,” Snieska says.
Videos like Chau’s and Snieska’s have been able to bring people to restaurants all over Portland, helping small businesses market their cuisines. Now, after months of online marketing, the social media representative for Sanae Thai Eatery says, “We see a lot of customers coming in (and) when we ask the customer how they know us, they mention that they saw the blogger’s post from Instagram.”
Even though many bloggers’ goal is to aid and uplift small businesses, they continue to post videos because they are passionate about making content. Banh says, “(I love) the joy it brings people when they see a food dish that looks amazing. It’s the same thing (you) feel when you go to a restaurant and they put that food on the table — you just get so excited. You get excited to eat it, excited to taste it … It’s the same feeling I get when I post a video, I’m so excited to share about the food I just ate, the experience I had.”
