THE ONE THING NO ONE TALKS ABOUT IN FOOD BLOGGING!
NOTE: This blog post is part 10 of my INSTAGRAM SERIES - content all about helping YOU manage your way around Instagram, food blogging and social media. In the INSTAGRAM SERIES I've touched on subjects such as why you're losing followers (and what to do about it) and how to set your price when working with brands. You can find all the other parts of the Instagram series here. Now on with today's blog post...
Is it just me or do we live in a society that only and always talks about (food) blogging in the context of success, fame and fortune!
''So and so left their boring 9-5 desk job to blog professionally and now is on the cover of Delicious Magazine.''
''Or such and such worked as a checkout girl and now blogs full time, with a following of 500,000 to boot and a sandwich at Pret a Manger named after her.''
Or my favourite:
''I started the blog as a little hobby and never could have dreamed that within 6 weeks I'd be making £100,000 just for mentioning on my Instagram page that I eat (insert brand)'s muesli every single day!''
And the truth is, it's fun to talk about everything that you've achieved. I get it!!! I totally get it!!! Moreover - if truth be told - I do this ALL THE TIME - boast about my sold out food photography workshops and Creative business mentoring sessions for food bloggers and food photographers as well as my dreamy collaborations and awesome experiences. That's cuz I'm a positive, upbeat kinda person and love sharing good news. It's also because things have gone really well for my little blog not least because of YOUR support! It's why I really like telling you what's up around here. You know, keep you in the loop as a sign of gratitude :).
However, success doesn't come without hard, hard, HARD work. It also doesn't come without stumbling blocks, failures and tough lessons learned along the way. And it's those uncomfortable truths which I'd like to tell you about today, openly and honestly;).
When Silvia and I decided to host our second supperclub AUTUMN GATHERING, I was feeling positive and confident. We had a STUNNING vegan menu, found a to die for location and secured incredible sponsors, who believed in us and understood our concept of taking plant based eating to the next level by making it stylish and cool. The question for me wasn't will anyone come, it was why WOULDN'T anyone come?
But ticket sales went slower than I expected and when a few weeks before the event we had only sold half the seats available, I was overcome initially with sadness, then doubt and subsequently with the realisation that we would potentially have to pull the plug on the whole thing as we'd not be able to cover our costs.
Then one night I just woke up, not sad, not doubtful, but incredibly determined that we COULD do better and achieve more. ALL we had to do was humbly accept defeat - on this occasion - learn the hard lessons this experience taught us and come back with a vengeance next time.
It's because I feel organic vegan food deserves to sell out at the appropriate price tag the same way that meat eating events do. It's because I know there are people out there who care about styling and the slow living experience as much as we do. It's because our incredible sponsors are AWESOME and deserve full recognition and exposure. It's because Silvia and I knock ourselves out every time we host these events; I feel WE need to show to ourselves that we can achieve what we set out to achieve - a full house of enthusiastic plant eaters who are happy to pay £45 knowing that this is the real cost of beautiful, organic vegan food in at a gorgeous venue! It just wasn't to be this time. Not until we put right the tiny little niggly things we did wrong on this occasion.
I know I could have made up some fake story about why we cancelled the supperclub. I could have sold tickets to family and friends to make it look like we sold out. Or I could have just not mentioned it again, pretended as though it never happened. It would have fit nicely into the well known narrative of how food blogging is the ''best job ever''. But it wouldn't have been real, or honest or genuine.
So here it is, the other side of food blogging. The side no one likes to talk about: Failure (which Silvia and I like to call a learning experience). Please know though that we're down, but not out and will be back in 2018 with another in person event. If you'd like to receive a notification when we run the next get together, please sign up to the mailing list below. We'd love to feed you some delicious vegan food :).
Thanks for reading everyone and for all your on-going support. I really appreciate it.
P.S. Want more honest and open conversations about food blogging? Why not tune into my podcast for food bloggers called Eat Capture Share?
P.P.S. For the recipe of the soup featured above, please go here. For the recipe of the chocolate cake, please click here.