What’s Next for BuzzFeed’s “Tasty” Food Channel?

Even the best of tricks get stale after a while. BuzzFeed’s Tasty, a food-focused viral video factory, is starting to vary its content, and it’s a good idea to stay ahead of the wave.

If you’re unfamiliar with the anatomy of a Tasty video, I’ll break it down for you. A Tasty video consists of:

• The highlights of the cooking process, followed by…
• A beautifully presented dish, often exceptionally gooey, crunchy, colourful or elegant, which precedes…
• The maker of the meal (usually) taking an off-screen bite of his or her creation, then placing it back on the plate, concluded by…
• An enthusiastic surfer dude-esque “Ohhh yessss!!!”

All of this is done in between 30 seconds to 2 minutes, with catchy music throughout; the clips are snackable and addictive to watch. Tasty has many imitators, including a Forbes one-off, but it is undoubtedly the top dog in the short-form food video business.

Only the meal maker’s hands are shown in the video, making the food the star of the show. They also have channels for Brazilian and British fare. But, no Tasty video is complete without a buzzing comments section (where Tasty posts the recipe) full of people claiming that the meal was not “authentically” prepared, people telling the aforementioned purists to chill out, and someone pleading for more videos presenting healthy food.

Here’s one of my favourite Tasty videos.

There are some things to criticize Tasty for, like its over-reliance on cream cheese and crockpots, or its lack of healthy options (not for ethical reasons, but because a health food page would be extremely popular), but it’s a good set up in general. Perhaps repetitiveness would have been a criticism, but Tasty is doing new things, and they’re working.

In recent weeks, Tasty has had the world-famous Wolfgang Puck make Chicken Pot Pie for them, while sharing his thoughts on food. They also had ran a “Family Recipes” video featuring Claudia Restrepo, a BuzzFeed staffer, and her mom talking about childhood, motherhood, hangovers, and the recipe of choice, Enséñame Changua. Today, they ran a “#TastyJunior” video, with little hands helping grown-up hands prepare “Easy Pizza”.

Everyone likes a good story, and just about everyone likes food. Adding a storytelling element to Tasty will only improve it, resulting in more likes, shares and overall engagement. Even if these narrative videos get less traffic than recipes, they add some variety to the feed, and that keeps people interested. The chef concept is especially promising; Jamie Oliver would be a hit.

Tasty has many imitators, but it is undoubtedly the top dog in the short-form food video business.

The recipe videos should not go away, they’re great! But we all know what happened to Upworthy: they milked the curiosity gap too much and their audience got sour. So did the Facebook algorithm. In fact, even Clickhole, The Onion offshoot that satirizes clickbait culture, is tired of making fun of the ubiquitous “you won’t believe what happened next” trope. Tasty surely wants to keep being viral, but it’s making sure it won’t become a meme to laugh at.

Native video is king on the News Feed, and foodie culture is rampant. Tasty is going to be a key part of the BuzzFeed empire.