Orlando Peyton, Mary Asher, Braden Tewolde and Whitney Scherr
OF FRIENDSHIP AND FOOD INFLUENCING
St. Louis foodies have taken Instagram by storm and made lasting friendships By Rosalind Early / Photography by Carmen Troesser
“Do you want to get this pour?” food influencer Orlando Peyton is asking if fellow influencer Braden Tewolde wants footage of him pouring syrup on his waffle. The friend does and picks up his iPhone to pan the action. This is the world of food-influencing. It looks like someone just grabbed a few snippets of video while out with friends. But the 2-3 minute videos that pepper TikTok and Instagram are intentional, with influencers shooting B-roll, carefully selecting a table with the best natural light, ordering things that plate well, and photographing the food till it’s cold. And the pay is abysmal. Most influencers are buying their meals themselves and spend more than they take in, which means everyone has a day job. So how do food influencers juggle a full-time job, filming restaurants, editing reels, engaging with their platform, finding brand deals and the rest of life? We talked to four: Braden Tewolde of bradenstl, Mary Asher of mary.eats.stl, Orlando Peyton of epic. eats.stl and Whitney Sherr of whitneyinthecity to find out what a day in their life looks like. While no day is the same, they’re all filled with three things: photos, phones, and tons of food. 74 slmag.net
BRADEN TEWOLDE It’s 7 a.m. and Braden Tewolde is up checking email and his DMs on Instagram to see what’s urgent. He doesn’t just work a 9 to 5 recruiting for an insurance company. He also is food influencer BradenSTL, podcast host of Ope Cast the Pod, which highlights St. Louis creators, and he runs his own marketing agency Space Mission Marketing. “No day is the same,” he says. “But every day is busy.” Today, he spends the morning on marketing calls about Avalanche, a holiday pop-up event, and in meetings about a new hire for Space Mission. After that, he works his day job till lunchtime when he heads over to the season announcement for the Muny. After 5 p.m. Tewolde comes back to his influencer office at Tech Artista in the Central West End, gets the equipment to record his podcast live, and then heads home around 10 p.m. to edit a video. He may crawl into bed around 11:30 or midnight (or still be up answering emails) only to get up the next day to another jam-packed schedule. “People have different hobbies,” Tewolde says. “We don’t watch TV. We just create.” Tewolde is speaking about himself and fellow food influencer Orlando Peyton who posts as epic.eats.stl (for more on Peyton, see below). The two are good friends and Peyton credits Tewolde with teaching him the importance of good