Eat Local Ohio: Behind the scenes of Ohio’s largest restaurant Instagram, TikTok accounts

“What’s up, Ohio?”

If you’re on Instagram or TikTok, there’s a good chance you read that tag line in the voice of Abe McCune or Rama Chamoun – two of the five content creators behind Eat Local Ohio.

Yes, we are referring to that account posting drool-worthy restaurant videos you always vow to visit.

Hillcrest Foods Services is the Cleveland-based distributor that created Eat Local Ohio, a social media account and app designed to raise awareness for local restaurants and give them a competitive advantage against national chains. Here’s how it works:

A local restaurant owner (using the company’s website) or foodie (using the Eat Local Ohio app) requests a shoot. An Eat Local Ohio ambassador visits the restaurant and takes picture-perfect photos and video of the cuisine it has to offer. That content is edited and then, voila – it’s uploaded to their social media channels and app for all to see (and eat).

“We probably have the biggest catalogue of local independent food content in the state,” said Pablo Lopez, Regional Vice President of Growth and Eat Local Ohio at Hillcrest Foods.

Eat Local Ohio is essentially the marketing division of the company, but instead of filming people move boxes — Hillcrest’s bread and butter — they cater their content to the patrons supporting local restaurants, whether those eateries partner with Hillcrest or not.

Founding of Hillcrest Food Service, Eat Local Ohio

The food distribution company was founded by the Abraham family in 1974 and is now in its third generation of ownership. They have quite a few Northeast Ohio icons as customers, including Gionino’s Pizzeria, Barley House, Fa-Ray's Family Restaurant, Angie's Italian Restaurant and Perfect Pour. Central Ohio restaurants are also on their delivery routes, including icon Local Cantina.

Dave Marzich, co-owner and chairman of Hillcrest’s board, tasked a company ambassador to take photos of the cuisine their customers created. The featured restaurants, which were also permitted to use the photos, called thanking them for the free service, as professional photography shoots can be expensive. It's this feedback that led to the founding of Eat Local Ohio.

“[Aladdin’s Eatery owner Fady Chamoun] was beyond grateful,” said Lopez. “He was our first customer, so [our] first shoot was Aladdin’s Eateries, and he was so, so impressed. And for someone at that scale to be impressed, we wanted to do it for every single local independent restaurant.”

The Eat Local Ohio's Instagram started posting photos in 2016 and, eventually, reels. It’s TikTok presence began in May 2021, just before the Eat Local Ohio app launched in October of that year.

The app itself is easy to peruse. Users input their location and scroll through the locally-owned deliciousness that they probably didn’t even know existed.

If someone has a hankering for a specific category, they can filter options according to what they are in the mood for, like American or Asian food, breweries, breakfast, coffee shops and more. Users can also bookmark restaurants, creating a bucket list of places to visit.

Behind the scenes of Eat Local Ohio

Watching ambassadors McCune and Chamoun stage a shoot is like watching a pair of painters mark canvas: A little blue here, a poke bowl there, maybe some grilled octopus to round it out and voila – a masterpiece of culinary eye candy.

Once the food is delivered, they are in the zone.

It might seem like an easy job: Receive dish. Take videos. Take photos. Eat the spread before you. But there are countless steps within each of those tasks that must be perfected to make the video worth watching.

Should there be additional lighting? No extra lights? Will it look more appealing if that bottle of sake is at the head or middle of the table? Let’s get twirling shots of the squid ink pasta first before the noodles congeal.

“Take the silverware out for a second. It’s too empty, we need something there,” said McCune to Chamoun while the two set a table at Cilantro in downtown Akron.

Lopez estimates that ambassadors have visited around 3,000 restaurants since their Eat Local Ohio initiative began. The company has two ambassadors stationed in the Akron-Canton area and one each in Cleveland, Columbus and Youngstown.

At any given time, McCune is booked out two to three weeks in advance with a varying number of eateries to cover. Chamoun said she can tackle three to four restaurants in a single day if necessary, but averages five a week.

Not only do ambassadors act as photographers and videographers, but they also teach restaurant owners how to improve their social media presence. In the past McCune has hosted social media workshops to teach them what Eat Local Ohio has learned about growing a following, sharing ideas on how to create content, what video editing apps to use and shortcuts to simplify the process.

“We have a lot of really great people that are specialized in what they're good at,” McCune said. “We take a holistic approach to whatever kind of help a restaurant needs. Is it legal advice? Is it helping them with a food cost? Is it helping them with their social media? Is it working on getting their labor cost down? We look at it as a whole organism and try to be the best support that we can for local [restaurants].”

Carley Stewart-LaRose, Operations Manager at Ken Stewart’s restaurants, has seen the impact of Eat Local Ohio firsthand over the years. Stewart-LaRose said the company’s ambassadors have done more than 10 shoots between their three restaurant locations.

“I’ve worked with them many times and [after] a couple of our social media videos I have had guests say, ‘Hey I saw this,’ ‘This is why we came in this Saturday night,’ ‘Tuesday night date night we’re coming in for this’, but they saw us [on Eat Local Ohio] so that has been very exciting,” she said.

Next on the menu for Eat Local Ohio

The videos produced by Eat Local Ohio are not restaurant reviews, according to Lopez, who said that they are simply creating a positive platform to showcase the creations of local independent restaurants.

“It just continues to grow,” Lopez said. “It's blossomed into something amazing and we're having a real impact on our customers. They love seeing us. They love having us come in. It’s really just all a feel-good mission.”

He hopes their reach will continue growing so that they can reach a million followers.

They may expand into southern Ohio, with ambassadors in Dayton or Cincinnati. But thanks to Hillcrest’s presence in Florida as Local Foods and New England Wholesale, snowbirds can use the company’s Eat Local Florida resources when living in their southern villas.

Got a restaurant recommendation? Contact Beacon Journal reporter Tawney Beans at tbeans@gannett.com and on Twitter @TawneyBeans. And follow her food adventures on TikTok @akronbeaconjournal.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Eat Local Ohio Instagram, TikTok uplifts Akron area restaurants