It's everyone's dream to have a job that they can say they truly love. It's a bonus to say you can run it with your three best friends. For Foodcouver, this dream has become their reality. We had a chat with Charlotte Lindahl, a co-founder of Foodcouver, who shared their story of overcoming adversity to develop a food blog that now as 52.5K followers.
Q: Can you tell me about yourself and how you and your team started Foodcouver?
My name is Charlotte Lindahl, and I’m a third-year commerce student studying at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. I was born and raised in Vancouver, BC, which is where I met my two best friends and co-founders of Foodcouver - Julia MacCosham and Liz Lesperance. We started Foodcouver when we were in grade 11. Foodcouver mainly runs through our Instagram account, but also use other social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and our own blog.
Besides running our social media accounts, we promote local restaurants and small business by highlighting our favorite spots to eat and drink. We originally started Foodcouver just for fun because the three of us wanted to post photos of food that we liked, but never thought we would make anything of it. But, a year later we had 10K followers on Instagram. That’s when we decided we could actually make something out of it. We started building relationships with various restaurants and growing our following. It eventually got to the point where we were able to charge restaurants for different posts on our Instagram or blog. Today, we have over 52K followers and are getting dozens more every day.
Q; How did you turn your blog from a hobby into a new business that generates revenue?
As I said, we started Foodcouver for fun and kind of a hobby for the three of us. We never would we have thought that we would end up actually making a profit off of what we were doing, all because we were just three teenagers in high school. When we first realized that this was something we could actually turn into a business, we weren’t even sure where to begin. We were confused about the prices we could charge per post and weren’t sure about the value that we could actually provide to restaurants. Once we understood the true value of our following, we began to generate revenue off of Instagram posts. We also experimented with partnering with restaurants for promotions. Once we gained the trust of a few restaurants, it became easier to book new businesses and create a strong business model. Restaurants became more confident in the value of the work we were doing, and it became very organic for us.
Q; What were the most impactful marketing techniques that helped you grow your follower base?
Our most impactful marketing tactics involve collaborations with different restaurants. Last summer, we had the opportunity to run an event for a new restaurant opening for a place called ¾ Full. We were in charge of bringing all the Greater Vancouver Food Blogs together. This event helped increase our number of followers, and we were able to connect with new restaurants as it verified our legitimacy as a business.
Other marketing techniques we use are promotional contests. So, the biggest thing we do is run contests with restaurants where we give free giveaways such as a free meal for two or a gift card. This drives a lot of traffic both to our account as well as to the restaurants. From doing this, we can provide statistics to different restaurants showing that we can help grow awareness for them and increase sales.
Q; How do you manage a Vancouver Food Blog while outside of the city?
I go to Queen’s, Julia goes to Concordia, and Liz goes to UVIC. As a result of us living in different provinces and being in different time zones, communication between us is very important. Because part of our job description involves going to various events, we have to work hard when we are home to plan for when we are not together. Luckily, we all get to go home to Vancouver over the summer, as well at Christmas. Another key advantage is that most of the events take place in the summer, so it’s pretty rare we have to miss an event. Also, since Liz is in Victoria, it is not difficult for her to come home for the big events that we have to go to.
Being in different cities is sometimes hard because our postings can get off schedule and one of us might miss a time slot. For example, I once forgot to post for two weeks. This happens sometimes, and we all understand that we may be going through exams and difficult times at school, so we are very understanding of it.
Q: How do you plan to continue growing Foodcouver?
We have had the chance to watch our company grow through the past years and hope to see it continue to grow in the future. We have expanded Foodcouver into Victoria with “Foodtoria” and the drinking scene in Vancouver with “Beercouver,” but I think all three of us one day hope to see it at a larger scale. I know we have talked about expanding to more cities such as Toronto or Montreal, but that would be further down the road.
Within the next year, we hope to continue to grow our follower base and build stronger relationships throughout the Vancouver food scene. Next summer, we are hoping to create a Foodcourver Food Festival with different food trucks across Greater Vancouver. The future is hard to predict, but I can speak for all three of us in saying we want Foodcouver to remain with us for a long time and we all see big things for it.
Q: As three young entrepreneurs, what were some challenges you have faced while running Foodcouver?
With starting any business, you are bound to face a lot of challenges no matter what. Ours began with figuring out how to invoice people and create a webpage. Then it was understanding analytics and keeping finances. It was a huge learning curve for the three of us when we first started making revenue from Foodcouver.
We also had to deal with people that didn’t believe in us and believe that Foodcouver could ever become successful. All three of us were made fun of for our food blog and laughed at for taking it so seriously. Fake accounts such as “Toecouver” were created to make fun of the three of us. It was hard to overcome all of this and still move forward believing in the work we were doing, but luckily, we did, and it turned out as a success.
Q: Is there anything you want to say to young, aspiring entrepreneurs like yourself?
All I would say to anyone thinking of starting up a business is to do it and be 100% confident in yourself. The hardest thing we went through was people doubting what we were doing and the three of us not truly believing it in ourselves. Once we got past that, Foodcouver really began to take off, and I could not be happier about it. Make sure to not be afraid of failure and to be ready to learn a lot along the way because it does take a lot of time commitment and dedication to succeed!
