Instagram, if you haven’t heard, happens to be the leading social media platform for people under 35 living in the United States. Unlike Facebook, it’s not very demanding of your time or your money (as a business). “Young, hip people use Instagram, old people use Facebook.” I often hear. Instagram is very simple. It’a made to work well from as smartphone app, and it’s designed to allow users to quickly post a photo, add a caption, some emojis and most importantly hashtags. If you don’t know what hashtags are, just go back to eating your hash-browns, and forget you ever heard about hashtags. They will take over your brain and have you looking like a walking zombie staring at your phone all day.
If you are over forty, you might not have heard either that, young people spend four hours a day looking at their phones. About two hours of this time is spent now on Instagram.
Instagram is the social media platform of choice for Utah Stories, Utah Bites and the Made in Utah Festival content we produce. So if you aren’t following us on Instagram be sure to do so. Or, if you aren’t on Instagram, and instead you wish to keep your head buried in the sand, and it’s time to pull out, spit the sand out of your mouth and to “Get with the program!” I’m talking to you Mom and Dad!
Anyhow, the best part about Instagram is discovering new users who are crushing it, and following them and their discoveries, (mainly restaurants, recipes and places). “Crushing it” is a term commonly used in social media. My hunch is that it refers to the number of likes, followers and shares a person’s posts are receiving.
So, without further adieu here are the top five Utah Instagrammers Crushing it!
1- @Saltncopper — Is operated by Kelly Cahoon.
I had the pleasure of meeting Kelly at the Utah Governor’s Economic Summit where she was sitting on a panel of Utah Influencers. Kelly started Instagramming only 18 months ago. She wanted to use the platform to hang on to and share recipes that she was working to perfect. Kelly received a certification at one of the top culinary institutes in the world (the American Culinary Institute of New York), and she certainly has an eye for photography. Top that off with she has a wonderful smile, warm demeanor and she is a Utah mom of a very cute kid, and there you have all the necessary ingredients to become an amazing Instagrammer. (I’m sorry to use the sappy cooking metaphor, I know that is so laime). Anyhow, Kelly currently has 65.2K followers, and she does deals with Traeger Grills and meat companies, because her specialty is BBQ. Her last post was on smoked chicken with a dry rub of spicy-hot cheetos. It received around 600 comments.
As for the rest of the Instagrammers I’m pointing out, I haven’t personally met any of them, hopefully one day we can cross paths, but I’m going to describe and recommend them simply based on their Instagram work.
2- @SLCFoodie — Chase has a nose for great food and excellent eye for food photography
He visits many of the same places we write about, but his photos usually look better than ours! This actually makes me kind of hate him– how do you make a gooey cheese steak look good? He figured it out, we couldn’t. He appeared on Good Things Utah, which is cool, unless they made him pay to be on their show (as they asked of me). Chase is also is very fit, and he posts about exercise, which is important if you are going to be pounding food all day to crush Instagram. But best of all Chase has a keen nose for sniffing out places that I’ve never tried. There are now three restaurants I want to go to after just visiting his page. Grubsteak in Park City is one, he recently posted this photo of their house ground steak.
3- @Utetastic — Justin is the man behind photographing massive-eating contest-sized-portions-yet-still-very-pretty content
Justin cooks tacos, burritos, giant juicy burgers and loves taking photos of his culinary creations with a variety of craft beers. Utetastic is very much a craft beer discovery page, as well as BBQ-lovers delight. Justin also works with Traeger Grills, who sponsors his work. Justin has 24K followers. His recent pizza-bun hamburger post (yes, he uses pizza for the bun of his hamburger) received over 550 likes and 56 comments.
4- @utfoodie — Cindy is the lady behind this content
Cindy is a self described “numbers geek, and not a foodie” but just someone who loves food (and shoes). From all the places she writes about these are the two restaurants I will be trying after seeing her content: Protein House in Draper and Fat Fish Sushi in West Valley.
5- @Utahgrubs — Will and Olivia Gochmour operate this idyllic-lifestyle looking page, that links to their blog
They love things like “dirty soda” which I refuse to try. They will also post on places like Little Caesars Pizza and get over 2,000 likes because their cute baby is in the photo. When first reading their stream I was a little confused about the reason behind their massive popularity. But then they find some really great places like Hokulia, who make these beautiful hawaiian ice sugary concoctions. They also post on Settebello, (so it’s a little of the budget-strapped-sugary fix (to replace beer and wine, as many Mormons do); mixed with the once-in-a-while-we-will-splurge couple. Will and Olivia are a very young and cute couple. They look like they graduated from high school this year. This also must add to their appeal. They love Disney, burgers, Even Stevens and a lot of good stuff that is within reach of the the young-couple budget.
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I know that we have neglected many amazing Utah Instagrammers. It was very difficult to limit the list to five. Please feel free to let us know who we should add and we will be happy to add them to our list that we will reserve for time and all eternity on UtahStories.com
