Parents Turn to Food Influencers for Function Over Fussiness

Ah, early Instagram: The hashtags were earnest, the filters were frequent, and grids were filled with top-down photos of avocado toast, bacon and cronuts. The rise of visual-first social media happened concurrently with the birth of foodie culture, with the aesthetic presentation of food becoming a key part of the way consumers experienced their meals. 

But as social media has evolved, so has the relationship between social platforms and the food and beverage category. The video-centric nature of today’s social media channels means that while aesthetic is still important, there is more focus on the process and creation of dishes than there was in the early days of Instagram. 

As a result, consumers often turn to social media for recipes — but the ones that resonate are much simpler than what many brands may expect.

Millennials and parents are attuned to culinary content

Food and cooking remain popular subject matters for influencers. In fact, across all categories, consumers are most likely to follow influencers who post about food — 43% of U.S. adults say they follow content creators that post about food and cooking. But all cohorts are not equally interested. 

Gen Zers are rightly a target for brands crafting an influencer strategy as they are far more likely than other generations to say they follow influencers. But when it comes to food, they are only slightly more likely than Gen Xers and baby boomers, and much less likely than millennials, to say they engage with content creators in the space. Some of this may be due to their life stage, as younger Gen Zers may not yet be living and cooking on their own. 

But millennials have also long had a deep relationship with food, having coined the term “foodie” and built their own social media chops in the context of Instagram’s early days. It remains to be seen whether Gen Zers will follow in the elder generation’s foodie footsteps or if they will have a more detached relationship with food. 

Despite the fact that high-income consumers are more likely than lower earners to follow influencers in general, the difference in share who follow food influencers is much smaller. 

Parents are also more likely than the general population to follow food influencers: nearly half say they do. Certainly some of this is intertwined with generation, as many parents are millennials, but this cohort also finds value beyond the aesthetic when it comes to culinary content.

Burned-out parents leverage influencer-inspired meals more often than others

It’s one thing to follow food influencers, but it’s another to take what the influencers are doing and put it into practice. However, consumers that see content in this space are more likely than not to take action — in this case, the action being making a recipe or a meal that was shared by an influencer. 

U.S. adults who see recipe content on social media are 2.5 times more likely to say that they’ve tried a recipe than to say they’ve seen the content but never tried to cook anything. What’s more, 11% of U.S. adults say they make recipes from influencers often.

Again there are demographic differences at play. The gender gap is notable, as men and women are equally likely to follow food influencers but women are much more likely to say they see recipe content, and 13 percentage points more likely to say they’ve tried an influencer’s recipe. There are also generational divides, with Gen Zers nearly as likely as millennials (both more likely than older consumers) to say they see and try influencers’ recipe content, despite the fact that Gen Zers are less likely to say they follow food influencers in general.

But most notably for brands are parents — nearly 2 in 5 say they try recipes or meals posted by influencers “often,” suggesting that this is the most highly-engaged demographic when it comes to recipe content. For parents, influencers can help to ease the burden of meal planning by providing inspiration, offer tips and tricks for picky-eating kids, and offer options to make a grocery budget stretch further, all crucial support for a busy and often tapped-out cohort.

Simple dishes resonate with social media users

From time to time a TikTok recipe goes viral, and the ones that do are often the most unique and unexpected: who could forget cloud bread, butter boards or the infamous countertop pasta? But an open-ended analysis of responses about recipes that social media users have actually tried further underscores the idea that the value of food influencers’ content is more functional than fancy. 

Food items that appear the most often are staple dinner foods and ingredients: chicken, pasta, cheese and soup were the most frequently used words in responses. This is likely much more reflective of the way social media users consume recipe content — searching for simple and accessible meals to simplify their busy lives, rather than looking to reinvent how pasta is prepared (which, for the record, should never be done on a countertop).

Some recipes mentioned were restaurant dupes — for example, Olive Garden creamy Italian chicken, Church’s chicken, and homemade Taco Bell Crunchwraps were all mentioned by home cooks. The presence of these items on the list suggests that consumer belt-tightening is leading them to try and create their favorite restaurant dishes at home instead of shelling out for dinner at a restaurant. The appeal to parents of both simplifying weeknight meal planning and prep but also giving their families restaurant favorites is evident.

Despite the functional nature of most recipes though, open-ended responses also revealed some fun options: if you’re interested in Keith Richards pot pie, Frito bars with marshmallows, or something called Cheeto chicken, it appears there’s a recipe somewhere out there on the internet for you.