The Bon Appétit magazine ‘Test Kitchen’ crew, comprising one of YouTube‘s most beloved cooking channels, is continuing to activate its massive audience for coronavirus relief.
Following a variety show on YouTube last month that raised nearly $200,000 for World Central Kitchen, the crew is now headed to Instagram Live for a benefit dinner alongside celebrity guests like DeAndre Jordan of the Brooklyn Nets, Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness, and Saturday Night Live’s Bowen Yang. Like the YouTube stream, the crew is seeking to raise funds for restaurants and service workers impacted by the pandemic, per AdAge.
The five-hour stream will kick off today at 4:30 pm ET on the Bon Appétit Instagram page, which counts 3.9 million followers. AdAge notes that the occasion will also harness Instagram’s new Live Donations feature with money going to the LEE Initiative, which is turning restaurants across the nation into relief centers. Over the course of five hours, Bon Appétit staffers will pair up with celebrities to host different courses of a dinner, including drinks, soup, appetizers, mains, dessert, and digestifs.
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The pairings include: Bon Appétit editor Adam Rapoport and chef Edward Lee; BA’s Alex Delany and Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend; BA‘s Christna Chaey and Yang; Andy Baraghani and actress Kiernan Shipka; Carla Lalli Music and Jordan; Claire Saffitz and Van Ness; and Molly Baz with Instagram’s director of fashion partnerships, Eva Chen.
“It’s clear Instagram Live is having a real moment,” Rachel Karten, associate director of social media at Bon Appétit, tells AdAge. “I think people are craving more personal social content right now, and both the immediacy and rawness of IG Live play into that. We’ve been dabbling with going live but when we heard Instagram was launching a ‘donate’ fundraising button, we knew we had to go big.”
