Welcome to Creators on the Rise, where we find and profile breakout creators who are in the midst of extraordinary growth. You can check out previous installments here.
Nadia Aidi grew up in a family that loved food.
“To be honest, I don’t even remember at what age I started cooking,” she says. “I was probably way too young to be handling heating elements. Then my dad had restaurants, so it was bred into me.”
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As an adult, she built a career in culinary, running her dad’s kitchen. But the job wore on her.
“[C]ontrary to popular belief, being the owner’s kid meant I had to put in more hours, more time,” she says. “I was there all the time, and it was really hard on my body.” When she got pregnant with her daughter, she knew she needed to take a break. But, “By the time I was ready to come back, he sold the restaurant.”
Aidi took that as a sign to try something else. She ended up in real estate, and while the job worked for her in lots of ways, it didn’t fulfill her creatively. She was still cooking, doing freelance private chef work for a few clients, but she needed more. That’s when she decided to launch Food My Muse, an Instagram account where she could show off her latest culinary creations. The account didn’t take off too much, and she considered quitting. Her husband talked her into giving it one more shot, and during COVID, she tried changing from photo posts to videos.
Now, Food My Muse has more than 600,000 followers, and is Aidi’s full-time job–all because that switch to video was exactly what it (and she) needed.
Check out our chat with her below.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tubefilter: Very happy to chat with you! Imagine somebody’s reading this and they’ve never seen your stuff, they don’t know anything about you. Give me some background about where you’re from and how you got into food.
Nadia Aidi: I don’t know how far back you want me to go, but I grew up in Mexico. My dad is Syrian raised in Paris, so there was always a lot of cultures going on. My mom’s Mexican, so I had a lot of all three cultures. Food has always been a huge part of my life, eating it, enjoying it, but also cooking. To be honest, I don’t even remember at what age I started cooking, I was probably way too young to be handling heating elements. Then my dad had restaurants, so it was bred into me. Then I moved here to the U.S. for college, never left, met my now husband, and just stayed here.
Then, I got into the restaurant industry, did that for a few years. I left it. Of all things, I became a realtor. I started missing food a little bit too much and then I started Food My Muse, and it was a hobby at first, and it just kept developing into what it is today.
Tubefilter: Did Food My Muse start as a website or a blog first, or…?
Nadia Aidi: No, actually, it started as an Instagram account where I was just sharing whatever I was eating that day. I just needed my creative outlet because real estate was definitely not, it wasn’t fulfilling that. Then it started growing, and it just kept growing. I started making a little money, and I’m like, “Okay, well, this might be a business.” I just kept evolving it from there.
Tubefilter: What made you leave the restaurant industry in the first place?
Nadia Aidi: My daughter. I was pregnant. It was too hard to set the hours, like I was there. A lot of people think, at that time, I was running my dad’s kitchen, it was a massive operation, and contrary to popular belief, being the owner’s kid meant I had to put in more hours, more time. I was there all the time, and it was really hard on my body. I was meant to just take a break for a little while. By the time I was ready to come back, he sold the restaurant. I just took it as an opportunity to do something else.
Tubefilter: Then Food My Muse, so you started on Instagram. What made you come over to TikTok and to video?
Nadia Aidi: COVID. To be honest, I did Food My Muse for about four years, and I had grown enough, not a ton, but I was making money here and there, getting a lot of trade. Then I started getting burnt out. I’m like, “I don’t know where I’m going with this.” I would see other content creators explode, and I wasn’t, and I felt stuck. That was right around the time TikTok started becoming big and reels and all of that, and I had no idea how to do video.
Honestly, I resisted with every fiber of my being. I’m like, “I like photos. This is ridiculous.” I told my husband, “I’m going to quit.” He’s like, “Why don’t you give it one last shot?” I’m like, “Okay, I’ll give it one more year.” I started doing video, fell in love with it, grew to 100k that year, and the rest is history. I’m here.
Tubefilter: You owe it all to your husband?
Nadia Aidi: I owe it all to my husband. “Don’t, just give it one more shot.” I’m like, “Okay, I’ll give it one year.”
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Tubefilter: It worked out! When you were going to give it one last shot, is there anything you changed about your approach?
Nadia Aidi: Video.
Tubefilter: Video exclusively, got it. Do you remember if there was a first video that took off for you?
Nadia Aidi: I do. It was a video on Pinterest. I cooked a steak. I never experienced going viral. It was on Pinterest of all platforms, it hit like 10 million views.
Tubefilter: Oh wow.
Nadia Aidi: It was crazy. I started growing my Pinterest, and I got a taste of what that felt like, and I loved it. I also got a taste of haters on that front. It was a steak with a pan sauce, very simple. That was it.
Tubefilter: Wait, is a steak with a pan sauce, and people found that offensive?
Nadia Aidi: Oh, you have no idea. It was the fact that I used a wooden board. Two different boards! And people are like, “Cross-contamination.” I’m like, “They’re not even the same board. You can tell very clearly.” You know what? It made me learn so much. I’m happy it happened that way, but it had thousands and thousands of comments of people being upset at the steak.
Tubefilter: Yes, it seems particularly popular on TikTok that every video has people telling the creator what they did wrong. Keyboard experts. So that video did well, and then how did things progress for you? Have you found that specific types of videos help grow your audience more? Are there types of cuisines that grow it more?
Nadia Aidi: There’s a few. I always made it a point, and I’m happy I did, actually, I’ve always grown pretty organically. I’ve grown a lot throughout the last couple of years, but it seems to have been steady. I never wanted to pigeonhole myself into one category. Yes, of course, there’s videos that always take off more like anything with raw fish, crispy rice, cheese, butter, whenever I do anything like one-pan meals. I always made it a point to keep it pretty open. I wasn’t just the butter girl or the cheese girl. I would say there’s so many things. Then there’s random things.
I have this grape soaked in tequila that went crazy, and I have 20 million views combined on those so it varies. I would say mostly my bread and butter is anything with raw fish or anything sushi-related.
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Tubefilter: Got it. Was there a point during the one year where you were like, “Okay, I already know that this is going to be something I keep doing”?
Nadia Aidi: There was. There were still so many like, “I’m done, this is not working.” There were a lot of, “If I hit this number, I’ll keep doing it,” and then I would and I would move the goalpost. By the end of the year, I knew I was going to stick with it.
Tubefilter: Is this your full-time thing now?
Nadia Aidi: It is.
Tubefilter: What does the average day look like for you in terms of producing content across multiple platforms?
Nadia Aidi: Usually I get up, and I’ve been doing some journaling, some meditation to just get my head right. I get up at 6:00 AM, I do that, then I get onto admin stuff. I edit, I write copy, I respond to emails. I’m working on my website right now, so doing all the backend for that. At around 10:00 AM, I work out, I get ready because by 11:00 AM, I have to be filming. I film every single day from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM, and that changes depending on the season. Right now is that time in the summer starts at 1:00, I film on direct sunlight, so I’m always chasing the sun.
I’ll film, and then I’ll edit again. I’ll get my post for that day ready. I do a little more admin. There’s a lot of things I’m trying to do right now, not necessarily just for social media, like my blog, like more resources for my followers. I work on that, and then I post exactly at 6:00 PM, and then I syndicate to all platforms. I engage a little bit and I’m done by around 7:30.
Tubefilter: Perfect. Sounds like you have quite a regular schedule.
Nadia Aidi: It varies if I have a call or something like that, but I usually do that every single day.
Tubefilter: Then in terms of, take, for example, one TikTok video, how long does that take you from conceptualizing the recipe to posting the video? How much time goes into the backend?
Nadia Aidi: Provided I don’t need any reshoots or the recipe works the first time, I would say about six hours. Six or seven hours.
Tubefilter: Where do you get your recipe ideas?
Nadia Aidi: Sometimes I dream them, sometimes inspired in something I ate at a restaurant, on a trip. A lot of it is just that creating is my passion, so a lot of it, as corny as it sounds, is just from my heart.
Tubefilter: What has been your favorite dish you’ve made in the last year or so?
Nadia Aidi: That is tough. I love my potato salad, that’s just such a good one. As someone that doesn’t love classic potato salad, I love my potato salad.
Tubefilter: What’s different about yours?
Nadia Aidi: I mixed both of my cultures. I did labne, I do some salsa macha, fried almond, a lot of herbs, capers, so there’s a lot of flavor in it.
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Tubefilter: Sounds very good. What has been your favorite part of this whole experience of being online?
Nadia Aidi: This might be cliché, but honestly, the connection. I get messages sometimes that it still baffles me that people, that I can cause such an impact. I don’t mean it in a conceited way. Some of the messages I get, I just find them and I’m addicted to it. I just love that connection I have with my audience.
Tubefilter: Have you noticed any demographics about your audience? Do you feel like you’re seeing a specific age group or is it across all?
Nadia Aidi: It’s across. I used to think it was mainly women, but lately, I’ve been getting a lot of engagement from men, but not in a flirty kind of way, in a chef way, like chef-y comments or messages. I think it’s very varied at this point.
Tubefilter: Oh, interesting! Chefs, that’s cool. If somebody really loves food and they also want to get into content creation, what would be your piece of advice for them?
Nadia Aidi: Can I give you three?
Tubefilter: Of course.
Nadia Aidi: My first one and this is very controversial, I feel like but don’t follow the trends unless you love that trend, because I believe in creating what you love, what comes from you because at the end of the day, that’s what’s going to resonate with people, not one dish done a thousand ways. I’ve done trends every once in a while, I really feel like I can contribute. That’s number one.
Number two, don’t lose sight of why you started because you can get thrown in so many different directions. If you started for the right reasons, just keep going. Number three, consistency. Actually, no, that should be number one. Just consistency. It takes a while for some people, it doesn’t. For some people, it does and don’t seek to go viral. Those are it.
Tubefilter: I’d love to talk a little bit more about, your whole family is very passionate about food. Did you lose that connection a little bit when you moved away to do real estate, and has this helped you reestablish it?
Nadia Aidi: I never lost it because when I was doing real estate, I failed to mention, from the restaurant, I had two clients when I left, they asked me to cook privately for them, so I was still a private chef. So I never fully left that world. Then restaurants, former people that I knew from the restaurant industry, started asking me to do pop-up dinners at their restaurant. I always had my toe dipped in there.
Tubefilter: Do you still do any private chefery or cooking for anyone else?
Nadia Aidi: I have one client that I love and I’ll never leave him. I stopped doing the private dinners, but I’m working– That’s a current project I have, is pop-up dinners. I want to start doing more pop-up dinners. I want to do one quarterly. That’s something I really miss, cooking for people. It’s not the same, making a dish and recording it, than actually seeing people eat your food, that’s just…
Tubefilter: Yes. Have you thought about doing something like that for your viewers?
Nadia Aidi: Yes. My goal is to obviously start locally, but I’d love to do them in different places, have the opportunity to sell tickets to my audience.
Tubefilter: Have you thought about doing, I know this is very early, but have you thought about doing a cookbook or anything else in terms of releasing products?
Nadia Aidi: I have. Like you said, I do still feel like it’s early. I know I’m going to do a book at one point. I have a vision, and I don’t think it’s time for that yet. When I do it, I want to make sure it’s right.
Tubefilter: Understandable. Any other projects or goals you have for yourself over the next year or so?
Nadia Aidi: I want to continue growing Food My Muse across all platforms. One little goal that I do have that I haven’t done too much of is I want to share more of my chef-y side, like more getting in front of the camera a little bit more and actually teaching people how to cook fish, how to clean it, all of that a little more technical side, I guess, when it comes to food.
Tubefilter: Do you plan to do that across TikTok and Instagram or do you plan to do something like a Skillshare class?
Nadia Aidi: I want to do a little more long-form on YouTube and TikTok and see how it reacts and then maybe transfer it over to Instagram.
Tubefilter: Have you tried long-form before now?
Nadia Aidi: I have not, actually. It’s the logistics of it, because I love being in front of the camera, I love talking, I love cooking, so I think it’s just going to be an adjustment when it comes to how to create it. I’m excited.
