Today we’d like to introduce you to Cory Wilkins.
Thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, how did you get started?
I’m a local food content creator in Charlotte, NC. I love to feature local hidden gems that people may need to learn about in the Carolinas and some fantastic cities I travel to. I got started back in 2018 by creating the website dailyspecialclt.com. When I moved to Charlotte in 2017, I found many food and drink specials around the city; however, it took a lot of work, and seeing them was difficult. I created the website to house all the food and drink specials in the city in one easy-to-view webpage where you could pick the day of the week you’d be out, the area you’d be in, and even the special you were looking for. This was great, and people loved using the website to find the best specials on any given day. From there, I created an Instagram account to post about the specials, but I started to see people giving great engagement on posts I did just showcasing where I was eating, and it started growing from there. I then taught myself photography and videography to create great content and make these lesser-known restaurants look as good as possible.
Alright, let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what challenges have you had to overcome?
With anything comes struggles along the way. I had no prior knowledge of photography or videography, so I initially spent hours and hours learning and watching training videos on the craft. I started getting better, which helped me get past the next hurdle – gaining respect in the restaurant industry here. One of the challenges at first was getting the restaurants and businesses to see the vision and collaborate on posts for social media. While this is a common thing now, back in 2018, social media and business concepts were new to businesses as a promotion tool, so convincing them would take time. I started visiting restaurants independently, ordering several items, recording them, and making them look good to post on social media. After restaurants started seeing spikes in business from my posts, word started getting around about how these videos were helping restaurants around town. Then restaurants started requesting that I come in. After that, showcasing these great restaurants and even getting behind-the-scenes content for the videos became easier.
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My goal is to help our excellent restaurants in the community thrive and help people figure out where to go when looking for great food. While getting people into the restaurants is always excellent, I also like to help set them up for the future by giving them feedback and tips to help their businesses. This involves ensuring their addresses are listed on Google so they’re easily found, updating hours of operation, and ensuring their social media feeds look friendly and professional. Some restaurants will hire me to create photography and videography for their pages.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you, and any essential lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
During this time, I learned to diversify my business and not solely rely on restaurants for my content creation and business, as when they shut down, it was harmful to the food content creation world. I then learned to create cooking content and other types of content. Now, I like to mix food-related content in different ways, whether grocery hauls, cooking videos, education videos, or promoting great restaurants. This also gave me additional skills in shooting various types of content, which now helps me become a better creator overall.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: instagram.com/ThaDailySpecial
Image Credits
Cory Wilkins
