Gen Z is Asking Better Questions
What today’s food creators need isn’t more reach.
Food creators ask a lot of questions.
Some are tactical. Some feel urgent. Some resurface every January with slightly different wording.
But underneath all of them is a quieter one that doesn’t always get named:
What am I actually building?
This issue of Blueberri Pi is about how a new generation of creators is answering that question—often without trying to—and what the rest of us can learn from it.
Meet Ari
Ari lives in Tampa, Florida.
Before she ever had an email list, she had a Fandom account.
It was called Second Verse Club, a space where she paired comfort food with the media that shaped her inner world: Taylor Swift eras, late-night rewatch shows, coming-of-age soundtracks, and pop culture that felt personal instead of universal.
She didn’t start it to grow an audience. She started it to document connections.
Meals inspired by comfort rewatches. Cooking tied to lyrics. Dishes that made sense if you felt the reference.
That instinct carried through everything she built next.
Today, Ari is primarily a TikTok creator. That’s where her recipes live first, where recognition happens, and where someone sees a dish, hears a song, and immediately knows if it’s for them.
One of her most shared recipes is a Midnight Blueberry Crumble, inspired by Taylor Swift’s “You’re On Your Own, Kid.” Soft. Familiar. A little emotional. The kind of dish you make for yourself, not for performance.
Her audience didn’t find her through a blog. In fact, Ari doesn’t have a traditional blog at all.
She now has 85,000 email subscribers, built entirely through platforms that prioritize feeling over form. Ari is doing this right.
Slay.
The Cultural Context She Grew Up In
According to Ogilvy’s Fandom Flux report, 91% of 18- to 25-year-olds say “mainstream” pop culture no longer exists.
Instead, culture is driven by people constructing identity around the interests that matter most to them—music, film, fashion, sports, and the communities that form around those interests.
As Reid Litman, global consulting director at Ogilvy, put it:
“For Gen Z and Gen Alpha, fandom is a way to explore themselves, to connect with other people, to find belonging.”
This is the environment Ari learned to share inside.
She never assumed her content needed to appeal to everyone. She assumed it needed to resonate deeply with someone.
How Ari Actually Shares
Ari doesn’t treat every channel the same way.
TikTok is where discovery happens. Short videos. Recognizable references. Quick moments that signal this is for you. No over-explaining. No stretching ideas thin.
Snapchat is where presence lives. Unpolished cooking clips. A quick look at what she’s making. Mood, not metrics. Nothing saved. Nothing optimized. Just continuity for the people who want to stay close.
Email is where everything connects. That’s where recipes arrive with context, inspiration is named, and where references get explained instead of assumed.
She doesn’t use a blog as a destination. There’s no SEO hub. No long-form archive meant to perform. Her content lives where it’s meant to be experienced, not stored.
She never asked, Which platform should I be on? She asked, What is this for?
What Gen Z Does Differently
Food creators aren’t short on questions.
Lately, they tend to show up as unease more than curiosity. A recipe that once performed now disappears. Traffic that used to feel steady feels fragile. Platforms change the rules just after you’ve learned how to play by them.
It’s tempting to chase answers in tactics—new formats, new platforms, new posting schedules. But underneath all of that noise is a quieter, harder question that doesn’t always get said out loud:
What am I actually building—and where does it live?
This issue of Blueberri Pi looks at how Gen Z creators are answering that question without obsessing over reach, algorithms, or platforms and why their approach offers a clearer path forward for anyone creating food content today.
Why This Works
Ari’s content holds together because it’s designed to.
Her recipes connect to each other, references reward recognition, and her audience knows where to find her and what to expect when they do.
Nothing feels forced to scale.
That’s the difference between sharing to fill space and sharing with intention.
Her work isn’t trying to be everywhere. It’s trying to be meaningful somewhere.
Why You Should Care
Gen Z aren’t trying to be trendy. They’re asking better questions because they don’t confuse reach with value.
They’re modeling a way of sharing that:
respects the audience
protects the creator
builds something recognizable over time
That’s not a generational advantage.
It’s a lesson, and a core pillar of my COSE™ framework: Share with intention.
From Screens to Real Conversations
This theme showed up everywhere for me over the last two weeks.
I was a little nervous speaking at CES.
But once the conversation started, it quickly turned into what I love most: listening, learning, and connecting dots.
I had the chance to moderate a panel, “Food Delivery 2035: Drones, Robots, and Underground Tunnels” with an incredible group of leaders actively powering the future of food delivery today, with:
Melissa Fahs — Coco Robotics
Whitney Pegden — Wonder (Blue Apron)
Heather Rivera — Wing
Across very different approaches, one thing stood out:
democratizing food delivery—making it more accessible, more reliable, and more human, well before 2035.
Wonder cooks it.
Coco moves it.
Wing flies it.
From CES in Las Vegas straight to LA for Tastemaker Conference.
There’s something special about seeing ideas move from screens to real conversations.
At Tastemaker, I led a 2-hour workshop:
The Hidden Engine of Recipe Content: How Technology, Structure, and Systems Shape What the World Cooks.
We talked about what actually sits underneath recipe content today—the systems and technical decisions that determine what gets surfaced, shared, and cooked.
Seeing the worlds of tech and the creator economy collide in meaningful ways is exactly where my curiosity (and work) lives.
Try This (10 minutes)
Before you share your next recipe, pause and ask:
Why does this exist?
Who is this for right now?
Where does this belong—and where doesn’t it?
If one channel is doing too much work, that’s your signal.
Sharing with intention isn’t about doing less.
It’s about doing the right thing in the right place.
An Invitation
I’m putting together an advanced reader group for my upcoming book,
Create Once, Share Everywhere™.
If you’re a food blogger or recipe creator with 100+ published recipes, have been creating for several years, and have felt the impact of platform changes (Google, Pinterest, and beyond), I’d value your perspective.
This isn’t a launch team. It’s not a promo ask.
I’m looking for honest, unfiltered feedback to help make the book right before it’s finalized.
Advanced PDFs will be sent straight to your inbox.
Blueberri Pi exists to help food creators understand the systems shaping discovery, and to highlight the creators already navigating them thoughtfully.
Ari isn’t an exception. She’s a sign.
And for creators willing to share with intention, the path forward is already visible. I’m happy to be your guide.
Your friend in food 💙
