Hey, guys! This is me, Natalia, a.k.a. Chef Rudakova 👩‍🍳 

This week I was focusing on 2 things: AI and SEO.

I’ve been deep diving on the current possibilities of the AI with all the AI powered platforms that are on the market, just to understand what’s possible and most importantly how food content creators can leverage from the AI.

If you follow me on TikTok, you’d have seen my last video, where I used ChatGPT, Midjourney and LeiaPix to create one Unreal Lasagna.

My verdict so far, AI is great for food content creators mostly to get inspired… but not to actually use it to create the final piece of content.

I’ve also been optimizing the landing page for my beloved Online Culinary Academy with the SEO in mind.

More on this in the Creators Resources section below of this Weekly Snack.

As a bonus, now you can find all the amazing reviews & testimonials from my culinary students all in one place… there’re A LOT!

Ok, enough of my weekly updates. Let’s get to the fun food & creator economy worlds digest that you’re all here for.

Top Stories:

• The wait is over. Second half of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants of 2023 are revealed.

• TikTok is officially the best platform for creators to make money on.

• New shoppable video recipes app for food content creators.

• From food blogger to running a one of a kind cake sprinkle empire.

Trending

• ON YOUTUBE - Breaking the World Record with Gordon Ramsay - 1m views in less than a day 😲

• ON INSTAGRAM - GEORGE BENSON (@NAMUHUEMAN) - 17k Reels

• ON TIKTOK - #tinyfood - 19M views

• ON GOOGLE - Scrappy Cooking Peanut Sauce - +1,350%

Industry News Digest

🏆 The 2023 James Beard Foundation Restaurant and Chef Awards winners.

🥉 The World’s 50 Best Restaurants reveals restaurants ranked 51 to 100 for 2023.

🥫 The one and only Noma is now fully stocked up on their in-house line of Dashi RDX and Smoked Mushroom Gurum.

🥓 Uncommon, the lab-grown bacon startup raises $30m from (but not only) the founder of OpenAI, Sam Altman, while the product is still illegal pretty much everywhere in the world

✈️ Air Canada launches Book the Cook services, where international business class travellers would be able to choose a specific meal ahead of the flight.

☕️ The famous Emma Chamberlain adds another line to her coffee empire, ready-to-drink coffee. By the way, do you know the man behind the coffee production for Chamberlain Coffee… the extraordinary Deepfake Tom Cruise?

📲 TikTok is taking over the menus. While some restaurants get offended by the outreach from influencers offering to spread the word about them in exchange for a free meal, others embrace the social media and create their “viral” menus.

Go from a scared amateur home cook to a confident Chef capable of cooking absolutely anything.

Online Culinary Academy by Chef Rudakova is the shortcut to culinary mastery at your own time and pace.

Social Media News Digest

👩‍🎓 TikTok releases new free courses to its TikTok Academy.

🤑 Now more TikTok creators can charge for exclusive content with their Series feature.

💰 And even more monetization opportunities from TikTok: Open Applications feature is now available to more creators on TikTok Creator Marketplace.

🔮 The future of Social Media according to HubSpot. To summarize SM and AI will rule it all.

👯‍♀️ Spread the love with #ShortsFriends on YouTube and grow your content faster. 2023 is all about giving and community.

🤯 Mind blowing promise from Twitter.

✅ Soon Verified batch won’t mean much, rather than that you’re taking your brand seriously. Meta Verified subscription is now available to Indian customers.

Resources for Digital Food Creators

🍌 Flavrs is the new app for food content creators, where creators can upload their shoppable video recipes integrated with Instacart. Remember Instacart Tastemakers program for US-based TikTokers? Well, it seems like it may be the same thing… awaiting for a reply from Flavrs on their monetization program.

📈 Have you heard before about Web Stories? Neither did I… Apparently it’s a powerful tool to be used if you want to boost the web traffic to your food blog. I’m going to test it out next week and will report in the following newsletter on the results.

💯 During the past few weeks I’ve been focusing on the SEO for my main website, my online Culinary Academy and this newsletter + upcoming blog. RankIQ is tool that I’ve picked to use the most. It appears to be one of the most efficient SEO tools out there. Let’s wait and see the results. I’ll update you on the progress.

🍽️ How to develop a PROFITABLE menu.

Creator Spotlight

Chris Jay

Chef, freelance recipe developer and food content creator.

Chris had recently partnered with Anova as the content partner and now creates amazing recipes for the sous vide company digital recipe book.

Check out his plating and fine dining food content on Instagram and TikTok.

👉 If you are a Food Content Creator or know a Creator that’s worth mentioning in the next issue of The Weekly Snack, please reply back to this email and send me the details.

This section of the newsletter is FOR YOU! I care & I share 🫶

Video of the week

2 years ago I’ve started to work on a series of videos on tofu making… which I didn’t finish. But this creator did! Check out the whole Will It Tofu playlist.

Success Story

Sweetapolita by Rosie Alyea

Rosie had started out as the cake blogger, but while writing her cookbook, he had accidentally stumbled on the idea of creating a unique sprinkle company. And so she did.

Now she runs a successful business selling one of a kind sprinkles that would change your cake from mediocre to Instagram worthy.

She had also recently secured funding from one of the dragons of Canada Dragon’s Den.

Rosie says her key to success is listening to her audience and finding a perfect market fit.

Listen to her full story here.

What I’m Watching Right Now

And that’s it for this week!

Let me know (you can reply right back to this email) if you liked this week’s Weekly Snack.

What did you like, what you didn’t and what topics you’d like to have covered more/less of?

Have a good one! 🫶