She is the cream of the crop – of food influencers in NYC.
Rachel Brotman – known as “The Carboholic” on Instagram and TikTok – has stood out to many foodies on social media with her positive and genuine approach.
“I don’t have an agenda, I’m not doing anything wrong or clicking to get views,” the 29-year-old told The Post. “I post about restaurants and bakeries around the New York area making products from scratch with high quality ingredients and lots of love … it would break my heart to think that I’m out there insulting the food that a chef put together heart and soul in.”
Her sweet style — she’s never posted a negative comment — has helped her gain more than 250,000 Instagram followers and provided a much-needed boost to the city’s restaurants and bakeries.
“Rachel put [us] on the map,” said Sasha Zabar, the owner of Glace, an Upper East Side ice cream and hot chocolate shop where tourists line up in frigid, scorching temperatures for viral treats.
“People still care about food critics, but at the end of the day it’s what they see on Instagram,” added Zabar, who now thinks about the ‘gram when coming up with new menu items.
The product needs to be “delicious” but also needs to “capture people’s imagination”, he said.
Brotman left her job teaching first grade at a private school in 2020 to focus full-time on content creation. She now makes her living from brand partnerships, consulting and payments from Instagram and TikTok when she reaches a certain number of views.
She’s also involved in the city’s LinkNYC project, which has turned old pay phones into wifi hotspots with digital screens showing the “best of NYC” — including photos of Carboholic food.
In the early days of Instagram, some restaurants were keen to have influencers photograph their meals, but most now realize that this is key to their survival.
“There is a real opportunity for social media to revitalize restaurants and other small businesses,” Brotman said. “Restaurants had to get really creative during the pandemic… It coincided with the rise of TikTok and [Instagram] The reels are rising and now you’ve seen a lot of restaurants creating menu items that are piling up and getting a lot of buzz.”
Walking around New York City, many of the lines you see—whether at Glace uptown or the healthy lunch spot This Bowl in Soho—are thanks, at least in part, to Brotman.
Caviar Kaspia, a Parisian restaurant that dates back to the 1920s and opened inside the Mark Hotel last February, saw lines start to grow around the block after Brotman posted about their $35 caviar bagel.
“I’ll be honest, it was a little overwhelming at first,” Etienne Haro, General Manager of the Caviar Caspian Overseas Hotel Mark, told The Post. “One day we had to send someone to the bagel shop six times.”
Putting caviar on a plate, Brotman notes, is a proven strategy for going viral. Coqodaq in Flatiron created an “Instagram moment” by putting a $28 chicken with roe on the menu.
“Restaurants understand the importance of the visual,” she said. “You really see it everywhere … it’s a bit aspirational.”
Scarcity is another driver of online popularity.
“Lord’s Downtown is an example of a restaurant where they do some burgers in the evening and if you want one, you have to be at their first place – it’s not even on the menu,” she said. “You can only get if you’re sitting at the bar and there’s this element of exclusivity.”
On the other hand, she said, the New Yorker also likes to align himself with the masses for something big.
“People feel like they’re together,” she said. “In a world where we’re all at home a lot and work is hybrid and we don’t go out and we’re on our screens so much… it gives people something to talk about.”
This story is part of NYNext, a new editorial series highlighting New York City’s innovation across industries, as well as the personalities leading the way.
Living in NYC, Brotman said he’s never short of inspiration — or good food.
“There’s so much diversity and every type of cuisine,” she said, noting the city has about 23,000 restaurants. “There’s always something new to see and then there are iconic restaurants that are over a century old.”
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Image Source : nypost.com