The rise of the digital foodie

By Cortney Casey
C & G Staff Writer

» Click on image to view full size « Photo by Joe Hakim TheHungryDudes.com is capitalizing on the rising trend of documenting food adventures through its main site and various social networking platforms. Photo by Joe Hakim TheHungryDudes.com is capitalizing on the rising trend of documenting food adventures through its main site and various social networking platforms.

These days, camera phones and social networking have become seemingly as integral to dining as knives and forks.

West Bloomfield resident Henry Balanon finds it liberating. No more curious glances when he whips out his phone to photograph artfully presented restaurant fare; chances are, the guy in the next booth is doing the same.

“I think it is becoming more popular,” he said, “and it’s becoming, more importantly, more accepted in society.”

Nicole Rupersburg of Detroit agrees. “Even my friends who wouldn’t necessarily self-identify as foodies, even they do it now,” she said. “They’ll take pictures of their drinks, they’ll take pictures of their food, they’ll upload it to Facebook right away.”

The increasing appeal of chronicling and instantly disseminating food adventures — as well as devouring the down-to-the-last-morsel details from strangers and friends alike — is good news for people like Balanon and Rupersburg, who have developed a fondness for food into popular websites and affiliated social networking hubs.

At TheHungryDudes.com, Balanon and cohorts Joe Hakim, Dave Murray, Dave Benjamin and Angela Watts document escapades of both the dining out and dining in variety, complete with photos, recipes, product reviews and more.

The group’s goal, said Benjamin, is to be known “as a trusted resource in the region when it comes to food, with a heavy emphasis on Michigan restaurants and other food purveyors.”

Over time, the site has branched into myriad social media outlets, including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr and Pinterest — not surprising, considering Benjamin and Murray are both social media directors at their “day jobs,” and Balanon is a mobile app developer for Detroit Labs.

As they wax poetic about local food, extolling the virtues of bacon and posting photos of chocolate-drenched desserts, fans are eating it up.

Benjamin said research he’s reviewed suggests demand for food-focused TV programming is “growing exponentially,” so it’s only logical that the same is true online.

“You see these same people in all these different platforms,” said the Troy resident. “You start seeing kind of a growing foodie community .”

He regards the show-and-tell food mentality as a natural extension of the public’s growing tendency to record the minutiae of everyday existence.

“Really, in essence, they’re documenting their day to day through text, through pictures and through videos,” he said. “So many people share almost everything that they do.”

And the methodology is becoming simpler, making it more accessible to all, he said.

“I think the technology’s easier than it’s ever been to take a picture of whatever you’re doing and share it with your network in 30 seconds,” he said. “You don’t have to be a technical wizard to manage the baseline sharing and creation of food blogs, food picture taking and sharing.”

A few years ago, someone armed with a digital camera had to take the images home and download them off a memory card before uploading them to the Internet; now, they can do it on the spot in fewer steps with a smartphone, said Rupersburg.

Rupersburg said local food websites were few and far between when she launched hers, Dining in Detroit, several years ago. Last summer, it morphed into EatIt Detroit.com, through which she said she tries to make herself “the final authority on all things related to metro Detroit dining.”

Rupersburg — who interacts regularly with EID fans via Facebook and other social media — said she saw a marked increase in food fanaticism when the economy tanked and people sought relatively affordable luxuries.

With food being such a universal, shared experience, it’s not surprising that communities are coalescing online to dish about their edible escapades, she said.

And some are even taking that online relationship to the next level, shifting the vicarious, virtual exchanges to in-person interactions.

EID, for instance, offers tours around southeastern Michigan, and The Hungry Dudes have hosted happy hour events at local hotspots and parties introducing their own ice cream flavors at Treat Dreams in Ferndale.

Ferndale resident Noelle Lothamer credits Twitter for uniting her with her counterparts at Gourmet Underground Detroit, “a group of people who have a passion for good food.”

They’re the type of hardcore enthusiasts who may help each other cure meats one day and organize kombucha-making workshops the next. They meet up for picnics, holiday mixers and get-togethers at each others’ homes.

Besides a main website, primarily fueled by founders Todd Abrams and Evan Hansen, there’s also an active Facebook page and a Google group where die-hard foodies interact, asking and answering questions about the best places to locate specific foods and ingredients, said Lothamer.

“On my Twitter account, I follow about 1,000 people; I would say about 70 percent of those people are other food bloggers or chefs,” she said. “Once you follow one person, you see who they follow, and it’s easy to kind of chain reaction off of that.”

Besides occasionally contributing to Gourmet Underground Detroit’s website, Lothamer runs a blog, SimmerDownFood.com, where she records recipes prepared in her own kitchen. She also co-owns Beau Bien Fine Foods, a cottage food business producing jams, and coordinates the annual Detroit Holiday Food Bazaar at Eastern Market.

But ironically, while she’s chronicled around 150 of her homemade meals online, there’s one thing you’ll see her doing with less frequency these days: documenting her restaurant visits.

“I find that when I go out,” she said, “I just want to enjoy myself … and not be sitting there with my camera.”

You can reach C & G Staff Writer Cortney Casey at ccasey@candgnews.com or at (586)498-1046.