The Weird Side of Being a Food Blogger in Victoria

There is something weirdly anxiety-inducing about telling people I’m a food blogger. Which is funny, because if you ask me why I run Victoria Taste Buds, I will happily yap your face off about it.

I can talk forever about Victoria’s food scene. I can tell you why I think good food should feel accessible, why I care about highlighting places at different price points, why hospitality matters, and why I genuinely believe everyone deserves a spot at the table. But ask me what I do, and suddenly I get weird about it. There’s a little voice in my head that goes, Oh god, do they think I’m one of those influencers?

It comes up especially at food events. Sometimes I’m standing there taking photos of something that other people worked hard and paid good money to attend, and I’m very aware that my experience might look different from theirs. Of course, I work for my ticket in a different way. I’m taking photos, making videos, writing, editing, posting, linking, tagging, and hopefully introducing an event to people who might buy a ticket next year. But knowing that doesn’t completely erase the awkwardness I sometimes feel.

Victoria Taste Buds itself is also a strange thing to explain. It isn’t my full-time job. It’s somewhere between a passion project, a part-time job, a creative outlet, and an ongoing experiment that has gotten much bigger than I ever expected.

My actual full-time work is running my own marketing agency, which seems to make people assume Victoria Taste Buds must also be some sort of cash cow. So, in the spirit of transparency: it isn’t. Have I done brand deals that paid very well? Absolutely. Am I getting enough of those deals to pay my rent every month? Absolutely not.

A huge amount of what I do on Victoria Taste Buds isn’t paid at all. And, weirdly, that’s part of why I love it.

Victoria Taste Buds is my little experiment

I have worked in marketing for years, and Victoria Taste Buds has become the place where I get to experiment. The website and social channels are essentially my playground.

I try things. Some work. Some completely flop. I pay attention to what people save, what they share, what makes them comment, what gets ignored, what performs well on Google, and what somehow disappears into the internet abyss. Then I adjust and try again.

I’ve learned an incredible amount from growing Victoria Taste Buds because there isn’t a client on the other end telling me what I can or can’t do. I can follow my curiosity. I can write an article because three people asked me the same question that week, try a completely different style of Reel, build a guide because I couldn’t find the information myself, or spend an embarrassing amount of time figuring out whether changing one tiny thing on the website makes it easier to use.

But as the account has grown, I’ve also discovered there are some very strange parts of being a food content creator that I definitely wasn’t expecting.

The creator side can get… weird

I love meeting other people who are excited about food and content, and I’ve made some wonderful connections through doing this. But creator events can occasionally make me anxious because there can be a weird competitive energy in the room sometimes. Who was invited? Who got what? Who has more followers? Who got the better shot? Who posted first?

And sometimes it feels like the goal becomes getting free food and growing their follower count rather than actually contributing something useful to the community we’re covering. That isn’t everyone. Not even close. But it’s something I’ve encountered enough times to notice.

One of my personal pet peeves is the constant stream of “THIS IS THE BEST _____ I’VE EVER HAD.”

Really? Everything? Everything you’ve eaten this month has been the best version you’ve ever had?

Maybe this is just my own little food-content hill to die on, but I don’t think audiences need us to tell them everything is incredible. I think there is far more value in telling someone why you liked something, who you think would enjoy it, what the experience was actually like, and giving people enough information to decide whether it sounds right for them.

At the same time, if you follow Victoria Taste Buds, you’ve probably noticed that most of what I post is positive too. There’s a reason for that.

Why you don’t see many negative reviews from me

I don’t think one bad experience is enough to fairly represent a restaurant. Restaurants have bad nights. Someone calls in sick. A new person is training. A dish doesn’t land. The kitchen gets slammed. Things happen.

That’s why I always visit a restaurant at least twice before writing a proper review. I would never write a review based solely on one visit, and especially not solely on a comped visit. I want to make sure what I’m sharing is fair, balanced, and reflects the bigger picture rather than one off-day.

If I have a disappointing experience during an invited or comped meal, I will usually offer to pay for it. I’ll also privately explain my concerns to the restaurant and why I don’t feel comfortable posting about the experience. Then I go back and see if anything I said resonated, if I return and experience the same problems again, that’s different. At that point, there’s a pattern rather than a bad day, and I can feel more confident being honest about it. But sometimes I simply don’t post.

I don’t think being “authentic” requires publicly dragging every restaurant that serves me a disappointing plate of food. Victoria’s hospitality industry is filled with people who work incredibly hard, and I want Victoria Taste Buds to celebrate great local food while still being fair, honest, and transparent with the people who trust my recommendations. I take that trust pretty seriously.

Then there are the messages

Having a public platform also means people have opinions about what you’re doing, and I genuinely welcome constructive criticism. If something on the Victoria Taste Buds website is annoying to navigate, tell me. If there’s information you wish I included, tell me. If there’s a type of content you’d like to see more of, I want to hear it. But occasionally, constructive criticism turns into something else entirely.

After my Instagram account was hacked, for example, I received a message from another large local account. They started by saying they were sorry my account had been hacked and then suggested that, since I was “starting from scratch,” perhaps I should completely change my branding because what I had created was “childish and not memorable.”

They also spelt my name wrong, which, I have to admit, added a little something to the experience. They offered to talk to me about how they thought I could improve my branding while simultaneously acknowledging that they weren’t branding experts.

It was… a message.

And I wish I could say things like that simply roll off my back. They don’t.

Victoria Taste Buds gets far, far more lovely messages than weird ones. People tell me they tried somewhere because of a post. Restaurant owners send thank-yous. People ask me where to take their parents for dinner or where they can find a certain dish. Someone will message me because a happy hour list helped them discover a new favourite place.

Some of the messages that have stuck with me the most, though, are from people who have appreciated me mentioning things that don’t normally make it into a food review. I’ve had people thank me for being honest about a restaurant being loud or overstimulating, for example, because that’s information they genuinely need when deciding whether somewhere will be comfortable for them. It might seem like a tiny detail compared to talking about the food, but for someone else it can be the difference between feeling prepared to visit a restaurant and deciding that particular space isn’t going to work for them.

Those are the moments that remind me why I don’t want Victoria Taste Buds to just be a collection of pretty food photos and “OMG, you HAVE to try this!” captions. I want it to actually be useful.

The lovely messages mean more to me than I can properly explain. But the strange ones still occasionally make me wonder whether I should stop doing this altogether. I think that’s just one of the realities of putting something you’ve created in front of thousands of people.

Restaurants can get weird about it too

This is probably one of the trickier things to talk about because the overwhelming majority of my interactions with restaurants are wonderful. Most understand how collaborations work.

Sometimes a restaurant invites me in and clearly explains what they’re hoping for in exchange for a meal. Other times, we agree on a paid partnership based on my media kit – essentially a document outlining my audience, platform statistics, previous work, content options, and rates. That’s straightforward, and I really appreciate when everyone knows what the expectations are from the beginning.

Then there are the restaurants that have never followed Victoria Taste Buds, never interacted with anything I’ve posted, and suddenly appear in my DMs demanding that I share their latest post. Or the ones that seem offended when I don’t.

And then, occasionally, I get a message so bizarre that I have to reread it a few times:

One restaurant really wanted me to come in and told me that at least 40% of their customers wanted their store on my channel. Forty percent! I have absolutely no idea how that survey was conducted, but I admire the specificity.

They really wanted me to visit because apparently their customers “love my channel.” It remains one of the strangest pitches I’ve received.

The funny thing is, you don’t have to convince me very hard to try somewhere. I love discovering new restaurants. But if I choose to visit somewhere independently, I want to experience it naturally. I might need to visit a few times. I might need to order different dishes. I need enough photos and information to actually have something worthwhile to say.

And because Victoria Taste Buds isn’t my full-time job, that can take time. I don’t eat at restaurants every single day. My bank account would revolt.

There is a lot you don’t see

I think this is the part of content creation that’s hardest to explain. You see the finished Instagram post. I see everything surrounding it: the photos I took and didn’t use, the editing, the Reel that took considerably longer to make than its 12-second runtime would suggest, the caption, the research, the website article, the SEO, the links, the event calendar, the emails, and the DMs.

I spend a lot of time engaging with the Victoria Taste Buds community because, to me, that’s the entire point of having one. I talk with restaurants. I talk with event organizers. I answer questions. I research places. I update old website posts. I build guides. I have conversations about accessibility and how restaurants and food events can be made more welcoming to more people.

And then sometimes I spend 45 minutes making something that Instagram shows to approximately seven people. Such is life.

So… why keep doing it?

Because underneath all of the awkwardness, anxiety, weird DMs, occasional creator competition, and hours spent staring at WordPress, I really love Victoria Taste Buds.

I love when someone tells me they found their new favourite restaurant because of something I posted. I love watching a small local place suddenly get attention. I love talking to the people behind our restaurants, bakeries, breweries, cafés, food trucks, and events. I love learning their stories, trying something I’ve never eaten before, and having this weird little corner of the internet where I can experiment, write, take photos, and talk about food.

But more and more, I’ve realized that what I care about most isn’t just telling people where to eat. I want to help make Victoria’s food community feel easier to participate in.

Accessibility in the food world can mean so many different things. Sometimes it’s price, and making sure we’re talking about the incredible $10 meal alongside the special-occasion restaurant. Sometimes it’s physical accessibility. Sometimes it’s knowing whether there are options for different dietary needs. Sometimes it’s understanding how an event works before spending money on a ticket. Sometimes it’s knowing whether a restaurant is extremely loud, crowded, dimly lit, or overstimulating before you walk through the door.

Sometimes accessibility is as simple as making sure people have enough information to decide for themselves: Is this experience for me?

That’s something I want Victoria Taste Buds to get better and better at.

Food and hospitality can sometimes feel weirdly exclusive. There are places people assume aren’t “for them,” events they don’t know how to navigate, menus that can feel intimidating, and a whole world of food content that can unintentionally make dining out look like something reserved for people with endless disposable income.

That’s not the food community I want to contribute to.

I believe everyone deserves a spot at the table, and I want Victoria Taste Buds to help make that table feel a little bigger. I want someone who doesn’t go out very often to feel just as welcome here as someone who eats out four nights a week. I want people to be able to find something that fits their budget, their needs, their comfort level, or simply what they’re craving that day.

I don’t think I’m the best food photographer in Victoria. I don’t think I’m the best writer. I don’t think every opinion I have about food is objectively correct. And I’m definitely not sitting at home surrounded by piles of free food and brand-deal money.

I’m just someone who really loves food, hospitality, marketing, and this city and somewhere along the way, a little passion project turned into a community of people who apparently like hearing me talk about those things too.

So that’s a little glimpse behind Victoria Taste Buds. It’s fun and strange and occasionally uncomfortable. It’s far more work than I expected when I started it, but it’s also given me a chance to contribute to the food community I live in and care about.

If Victoria Taste Buds can introduce you to a restaurant you’ve never tried, help you find an affordable meal, prepare you for an experience that might otherwise feel overwhelming, encourage you to attend a food event you weren’t sure was for you, or simply make exploring Victoria’s food scene feel a little more accessible, then all those hours behind the scenes feel pretty worthwhile.