Trading Secrets - 292. Sistersnacking Spills the Real Recipe for Food Fame & Fortune

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

This week on Trading Secrets, Sistersnacking joins the show to dish on everything behind the scenes of the food influencer world. From their go-to favorite restaurants to the wildest brand deals they’ve ever landed, nothing is off the table. They break down how they actually make money in the food industry, what brands don’t want you to know, and the hustle it takes to turn snacking into a serious business.Plus, they open up about what’s next—hinting at the possibility of creating their own cookbook and sharing the kind of recipes their audience has been begging for.

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Track your cha-chings from every channel, right in one spot, and turn real-time reporting into big-time opportunities. Take your business to a whole new level. Switch to Shopify. Start your free trial today. Welcome back to another episode of Trading Secrets. Today, we are joined by Sisters, Turn Creators, who made a love for food into one of the Internet's best food creators,

Sister Snacking, originally created to document their favorite dining spots and recipes, inspired by diners, drive-ins, and dives the four sisters turned their love for food into a viral social media brand, earning accolades such as 30 under 30, content award nominations, and more. Today, their platform influences millions online trying new foods and restaurants and exploring new cities. But behind the viral videos is also a very fast-growing business, full of brand partnerships, monetizing content, substack recipes. Your online site even had abs popping up when I was on there. And you guys are building a modern media brand in the creator economy. So Carly Madison, thank you guys for being on Trane Secrets. Thanks for having us. All right. Well, I'm sure everyone listening to this has seen your videos at this

point. If they haven't, go check them out. They're fun. They're exciting. They're educational. Sometimes you guys have celebrities or reality stars. I mean, there's so much action. What I was thinking, though, is every time I talk food at all in any capacity on this podcast, it always takes me too long to get the best questions out. And people want to know from the experts some of your favorite spots. So we're going to do things a little different. We're going to start off with a little rapid fire. You've done hundreds and hundreds of videos. So this should be pretty easy.

You guys, ready? Let's run in. Okay. All the restaurants and places you've been to in New York, where it's the best pizza across the globe, best pizza. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Anywhere. I thought just New York. It could be anywhere.

You can't open that door. We got to stick with New York. You want to stay with New York? We have to. Okay. I mean, it's on brand, but we could sit with New York. We'll sit in New York for this one. For the pizza, we'll still in New York.

If we think of something beyond New York, we'll throw it in there. I like it. Throw it in there. All right. Best pizza in New York. Well, let's go first. I'll hit you with two. And I do think the best pizza isn't New York and New Haven.

Okay. So actually, I'm sorry. Sally's Pizza in New Haven, only the New Haven. That one's amazing. In New York, I would pick. series. Okay. Sourdough pizza and maybe Chrissie's in Greenpoint.

I would also go with Lindistry. Okay. Huge Lindistry girl. All right. There we go. Those are your recommendations. And if we're talking Connecticut, I have to shout out. I love Colony Grill, but only the Stanford location, the bar pie.

Every time. And actually, you think it changes, location or location? Yes. And I've been to multiple locations. The Stanford OG Colony Grill is the best one. Do you agree with that? I don't know. I've actually tried like a bunch of them now.

And there's one opening up in our hometown. So we will have to see. We'll have to see. Okay, this one I need you to go global here. Best dessert you ever had. Best dessert. Any restaurant, the first thing that comes in mind, best dessert. Oh.

The cheesecake from Trepanque in Florence. Wow. I'm going to go to Italy in June. I'm going to check this out. Osteria della Triponque is the full. Best cheesecake of all time. Yeah. Okay.

Any sort of chocolate soufflis. What do we have? Wait, how am I forgetting? The chocolate pie from Fort Charles. The chocolate pie from poor Charles, but I like a warm chocolate dessert. And why can I not think of any at this moment? I'm thinking of the chocolate souffle. I'm in a tavern where I'm getting married.

Oh, that's going. All right. I'm going to get back to you in dessert. Okay, back to me in the world. Can I keep going? You can keep going. Give it one more. The tir miss two good ones.

You're on fire with this rapid fire. Okay, let's go. Obviously, you guys will cover when things go viral. You'll go try it out and check it out. What's like the most viral snack that you've, tried that you're like, this has lived up to die. Okay, well, I think we kind of started this one, but Mario's Irish soda bread. Yeah.

And it's that good? Yeah. It is. Do you guys an agreement on this one? Yeah. Okay. It is that a snack? It's a scone.

A scone is a snack. Yeah, we'll call it a snack. There's like a tablespoon of carry gold butter. Wait, that's a snack. That actually might be an argument right there. Is it a snack? Is it a scone a snack? I don't know what you guys are doing in your free time.

We are snacking on a scone loaded with butter and jam. So it's all. Are a snack. Or like the new snack of the moment, Froyo. Froyo. Like you can kind of pick your quantity. So it can be a snack size. It can be a dessert size, meal size, whatever you want.

But a good little snack. You get a Froyo, add some of that cookie dough on top. I like it. Okay. Last one I got for you is we've seen Gary Vee talk a lot about the impact of video and how like one video can just sell out an item across the entire planet. When you look at all the videos that you've made, what is the best video that you think had the best impact for either that one item or that one restaurant.

We can go in chronological order. First, skirt steak, which is around the corner. Like our first viral video, we didn't even post it on Reels because Reels wasn't a thing. It was their skirt steak, $29 steak, like unlimited deal. Unlimited French fries. So that was like our first real viral video that took off. We were in Forbes and we just started seeing massive growth from that. then you're going to say pop-up bagels, which we went to in Connecticut.

Our sister Sarah made bagels in their shop when they had one location. Wow. They weren't even coming to New York. And that blew up. And then they came to New York. We blew it up in New York. And now they're all over the world. Fun fact, we were their first ever collab, shmere, cacher with pepe butter, which they do bring back sometimes.

And that was their first. Their first. You know how they do collab, shmirs every week? Yeah, all the time. You started that. Oh my God, that is a fun fact. But they're really, like, Adam who runs it is. Yeah.

I mean, he's good at what he does. And they're, they just opened an astral last week. Yeah, I know. I saw that. Oh, you got to go. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So that's, we'll, on the agency side, sometimes we'll do houses and they'll send a bunch of

stuff. Like, they're the best store. They're the easiest to work with. All right. A little rapid fire was fun. Let's go back in time. We didn't say the most impactful one. Oh, yeah, most impactful.

The hive in Hoboken. Their cinnamon rolls. That was, yeah, we had a blueberry pancake cinnamon roll with the hive in Hoboken. And they have a location in Jersey City. Now they're opening up in New York City. Okay. And it went really viral because Blake lively tried it. And then she came back and had Ryan Reynolds try it.

And they had massive lines. And it was just like this whole craze. And now cinnamon rolls are just everywhere. I'm not taking credit for cinnamon rolls. But cinnamon rolls are just people are obsessed with them. And you're doing like I just saw the last three videos. You guys just did a cinnamon roll with you, I think. Oh, Sarah went to a place in Maine that was just like named one of the best restaurant.

And that was it. Unbelievable. All right, cool. That was a fun rapid fire. Let's go back in time. So as far as rules, we have four sisters here. You guys are all, is it full time now? Three of us are full time. Okay. And who, my understanding is you're the CEO, right? And you're, I think in one podcast I listened to, you are called the chief legal officer. I have a couple hats that I wear. I'm a lawyer. So I am our chief legal officer. But we, you know, we have a manager and a team that helps do that as well. But I'm also our chief kind of like brand marketing officer. You're CMO. CMO. You sit in too. And then our sister Sarah is CFO. Okay.

And then our younger sister is here for the vibes. She's working on. She's a chief vibe officer. She just moved to the city and has like a full-time job. So she comes and joins us sometimes. Yeah. But she's just like ramping up getting used to it. I love it.

I love it. But I would say it's really hard to build a business partnership with a business partner. It's really hard to do it with family. And you guys are all doing it. When you sit down and say, we're going to do this, how do you have the conversations of equity and splitting it up or salaries or distribution? I think there are maybe siblings that are listening to this that could learn from you guys. What advice would you have?

And how did you guys do that? It took time. I would say it has been a steady progression. I think it was very clear early on that sister snacking kind of was a passion project of my own because food was just something so innate in me that I was so passionate about. I craved. I wanted to try. I wanted everything to be kind of related back to food. So in college, I did that. In my first few careers, I was working in food. And so it did kind of like come from my heart and soul. And then I was able to like bring my sisters into it. And slowly we started to see like,

there's business here. There's opportunity. And I think like, I mean, Carly kind of went, got, became a lawyer while we were doing sister snacking. Our other sister, she worked at ICM, and then she was like a talent agent there. So she has like that kind of background. And there was like a merger and she was what laid off. And she was kind of like, I'm just going to start doing this full time.

So she was the first one who was able to really like lean into it and be like, all right, let's just see what happens. So back to your original question. At first it was big on growth. Okay. And now that we're like a full-blown operation, we have management and things like that, we had to start dividing and conquering because not every person can do everything. Of course. At the beginning, it was a little bit of just kind of all hands on deck, just all kind of making videos trying to get that next viral moment before we were like really running a business.

So when you're in that growth phase, it was a little different. And then we kind of sat down and looked at what we built and realized that it doesn't make sense for us all to be doing everything together. It makes so much more sense to delegate. And it took time to kind of figure out where our natural roles lied. I think we all have different strengths. And I think you said there probably are siblings watching that might have questions about how to do it. And I think the biggest piece of advice is like play to your strengths. Look at what each person is good at and what each person can thrive in on their own without guidance.

because then you can sit back and work on your own things and all be increasing the value of the company at the same time. So it's like understand your strengths, stay in your lane, wear multiple hats, all kind of have a piece of the company and then work in your different directions full speed to make it work together. Yeah, I think there has had to be like from me kind of like, here's where I see each person's task kind of fitting in and saying, this is how I see my role.

Let's all give each other our own tasks and say, what is it that you want to focus on? And we kind of like just figure out like where each thing we work on what like buckets, buckets under, whether it's finance, whether it's more marketing, whether it's more strategic. Yeah. And so that's kind of where we've landed. But we've been at this for, what, 11, almost 11 years now. Yeah. And I think the past two years, we've really like hunkered down and figure that out. This episode of Trading Secrets is brought to you by booking.

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Yeah, that's when Sarah went full time. And then you were early 2023 and to 22. Yeah, yeah. And then I was right after I graduated. What I think is interesting about, this is like if you look to 2022 that's now four years ago which is insane I don't know what's crazy like first I was like oh that's a year that's like no that's four years yeah yeah crazy but when you think about what's happened for your business and financially and

professionally in your growth the last four years I feel like it's all kind of just been a absolute trajectory since 2022 I want to give people perspective though so they're not just seeing the highlight real the many years before that let's call it seven years now before that how well were you guys doing when it comes to a financials and social media. Well, just to really start at the beginning, we started posting on just Instagram in 2015 and then just did that and gained how many followers on Instagram? 20,000.

And that was five years of just posting like a photo or like, like, I mean, you threw on the sepia filter and you put an emoji and that was your post. For so much easier. I stopped so easy. Yeah, you didn't even have to say where you were eating. Now you got to be a whole production. cheese and it was just like, that's the vibe. Yeah.

And then in COVID, we were all home. We started cooking and making little funny family TikTok videos. Well, in COVID, I think we had our first deal was like a seafood company. It was maybe like, what, $125? Yeah, what was the chocolate? Oh, the chocolate one? No, that was when I lived in the city. Yeah, that was maybe, maybe a thousand, like maybe.

And those were for perspective, though. You're talking about, you're now at this for five, six years and that was your first brand deal. Yeah. Oh, but don't forget how many products were sent to us and Madison was like, I'm going to make a video of this or post something about this. And that was years of doing that. Just, you know, company, it was very early days of influencer marketing. It did not exist. So what do you think the biggest change has been from now to then? Video content on reels. It's a mix of consistency and having a voice and having an opinion. One thing that really, accelerator growth. I think it was 2021, 22 we started. We started a series called iconic or overrated. I think we got nominated for like a

Webby for it. I forget who it was Drew Ophalo. I love her. Well, anyways. You know her? Yeah, yeah. I was going to say that's good person to England. Yeah. She can have it. Yeah. She got fine. But this series was all about going to old school New York City

restaurants, you know, Peter Lugar's like the oldest bar, which is Ear Inn. Yeah. Grand Central Oyster Bar and saying if we thought they were truly iconic still or overrated. Real quick, while if anyone hasn't seen that segment, what is one restaurant that you said is still iconic? Cats is. Oh, yeah. And what is one restaurant you said is overrated?

Peter Lugar. Why? It's not flavorful. The meat missed the mark. Wow. I'll get a way better cut. It was like meatloaf. Didn't do it for you.

Yeah. It can change. I don't. don't know. I think I think that was to kind of look at how these heavily known institutions are still turning a huge profit. But at the end of the day, like after years, I think restaurants take their eye off the ball. And we kind of wanted to look at it and be like, which places are committed to keeping the consistency high? Like, it's hard, though, because we were really early on then and we knew those places. If we said something, it's not going to change their business

trajectory. I think now we're a lot more careful with our voice. And, you know, most of the times if we don't like something, we're kind of keeping it to ourselves. Like we're really trying to highlight more positive because it just feels like there's too much of an audience to be bashing on a restaurant. If it could break, it could break their restaurant. Do you feel, though, there's also a sense of credibility that has to be maintained because then if they're like if everything's good, then they're just like, how do I, like, you know, like Emeril or like these big chefs or like a Simon Cowell. You know, it's a jerk, but it's like when he talked, you listen because you knew when he said it was good. You're like, well, it must be really good. Do you have battle with that?

Yes, but I think and hopefully our audience knows that if we are sharing it, it is because it's good. So maybe I'm looking at it like the other way. Like if we are sharing it, people are listening. Got it. As opposed to like if we're just sharing the junk and sharing everything. Got it. So you're going to, you might go to 10 restaurants. And if you only find that two are good, you're not sharing those other eight.

Except we try not to. We'll go to a city also. Nashville, the food scene. I went last year, year before. It's getting good. And, you know, we'll do like 48 hours in a city. And we really try and highlight, like, a lot of places. And we spent a long time trying to pick them.

Did you ever do the lunch at Locust? I haven't done the lunch. I've been to the locus, not the lunch. Is that the thing? Yes. Oh, wow. What's the difference? You went for?

Oh, my God. They have this milk bread there. It kind of sounds like lunch at locust, the deliberation of the L&L. No, it's only on like the lunch at the Lodkis. I don't know. Well, to my point is that when we go to a new city, I think, like, New York is kind of our bread and butter where, like, people are really looking for our opinions. or like our recommendations, but on a new city, like there is going to be touristy places that you go to, like, Peg, like porker I went to.

Yeah. And I thought it was like solid and, you know, based on our research, that's where we wanted to try. So like sometimes not everything's going to be like a 10 out of 10, but it will help guide someone to say like if you want to try X, Y, and Z. Like, this is based on our research what we found to be like delicious and amazing and what we like. But there's so many other options. But New York, it's a tough scene. New York is hard to, someone who's visiting. It's intimidating. It's hard to crack. And I think that's what we do a good job at like helping break it down for people. Yeah, because there are so many of those tourist traps. And there are so many of those names you think you got to go to. But sometimes their food is not so great.

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but in 2020, things started to really take off. What does takeoff look like? How did you know that 22, 22, 2022, 2023 is like, okay, we have to be in this all time. And like, how has the business grown from 2022 when you guys went fully focused and really got into this?

It still feels like it's, like this steady climb that all of a sudden we turned around and we were like, hey, look at how look at how far away we are from where, you know, like I feel like it was never one aha moment. Yeah. It was more so that my brain was so consumed with what I wanted to be doing with sister snacking that I felt like my day-to-day job was getting in the way almost. And I was missing out on a lot of opportunities that, you know, you know, this influencer life. There's a lunch. There's a breakfast. There's a workout class. There's all these events. And there's networking that goes on with those. And do you remember when you worked at ShakeShack and there was that special dinner?

Were you still working there at the time? I worked at ShakeShack. She worked at Shakesh doing digital partnerships. Oh, interesting. Okay. You guys all had partnership. So you worked at ShakeShack doing digital partnership. And you once worked at CAA. And Sarah worked at ICM, right? So you guys all have agency experience. Yeah. So does that,

when you guys are structuring partnerships, is that, that's got to be helpful. Yeah. In the beginning, before we had a manager, we were doing it all ourselves. We knew how to negotiate.

And honestly, I feel like we relate to the game to bring on a manager because we were like, why would we give them 15, 20%? Like, we can do this. Maybe they're not taking our rates as seriously, but we can do this.

Have you seen a big difference in having management your income? Yeah. And it's funny when we were getting signed on, Carly and I both modestly posted on our own pages.

And they were like, we want to add you on to the contract, you know, Carly and your Instagram. We're like, no, this is like fun. We're not like, it's so small. Like we're not going to.

I like went viral on TikTok in the pandemic for something so silly. And so I like low key had like 100,000 followers on TikTok. and would just post like very random shit. And then, yeah, so Matt, we go ahead. It didn't even cross our minds. And now the way our management has really fostered even like our personal pages.

Because Sister Snacking is all food, food, food. But then each one of us are our own people. And we have lives. We wear clothes. Yeah. We're leaving money on the table. We have dogs. With the brands that want to work with us.

But we're so food focused that they're like, we have nothing to do with food. and then there's a trickle down to like our personal pages, Maddie snacks and mine. It's like when you look at a business, when you have more lines of business, you're creating more revenue streams. So you guys have your own personal pages, right? Then you have snacking and you can do. Like if the budget doesn't work for sister snacking, you can do it on your own page. Exactly.

So it creates that income. Exactly. That actually is an interesting take. This was a question. So people submitted to me was, what are your income sources? Right. So of course everyone will know that you're a food trader. You do brand partnerships.

But then, you know, I did hear that you guys have a substack and there are so many different ways in this space that all different creators come on. They tell us about things we didn't. We're like, oh, I didn't think about that. When you look at revenue sources, where do they come from? The big, big one for us is brand partnerships. Sister stacking is kind of become a place for like current happenings, whether it's like a new show is coming out.

We did things like with Amazon for with Blake Lively we did a food crawl for another simple favor we've done things with what is it? Bronchoman, Braun Strowman

the wrestler he has a food show that came out on like the USA network huge his hand yeah they's like this big and I was like yeah so like we took him on a tiny food crawl by the way

we fed him small things we gave him burger sliders we gave him like mini mochi donut It was the funniest thing. So good brand partnerships. A lot of them are going to be like, there's an event happening in New York. How can we help promote it?

Okay, let's go to sister snacking and let's have them post about it before and get some buzz and generate, you know, excitement around it. So grand partnerships, we actually have been doing, we do some food crawls with like companies, which has been fun. What would a food crawl look like? And then how is that, like what is the payment of somebody that looks like? How do you make money off a food crawl? So we had a rate from last year and we looked at just kind of the hourly time that we spent planning it, doing the outreach for it and like think about the connections we have that are our own that we lean on to make those crawls happen. You know, so it's like cutting the line at what we did Danny and Coops. Danny and Coops to get sandwiches.

Marios who's only open on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, like those places that we have a relationship with. So that's like baked into it. And then our time to lead a crawl for, you know, 40 people. So those are fun that we get tapped every once in a while. And those are like five figures or something. And in those situations then, the revenue would come from ticket sales, right? No, no, no. These are like companies that want to throw a food crawl for like their associates or it's all in hiring us.

Like a corporate food crawl. Yes. So like an Amazon would hire you guys and bring 40 other employees. Exactly. See that? That's why I ask questions. That's a brilliant way to make revenue. But we're not charging tickets.

You're not dealing with that. You're getting corporate sponsorship. That's so cool. We are actually doing a food crawl that is like ticketed, but this is with a partnership that we have with MasterCard. Okay. So that's going to be happening. What?

I guess it will be coming out. It'll be happening to it. But I think it's only for like MasterCard card holders. So it's one of those like experiences that they'll list on their website that you can buy a ticket for. But yeah, we, we love. bringing people on crawls and eating food with them. They're it's a great way to show someone like a little bit of New York and yeah. So we do those we do you should substack we have like our website where a lot of like the

substack it's coming from recipes so I do all of our recipe content too and so we we don't put a paywall on our recipe content but we'll put a paywall on guides so we make guides I spent like what three weeks in Japan and Carly spent like two weeks in Japan So we have like a really detailed Japan itinerary. So we'll sell these guides that we like work with a designer. How much is a guide cost? 20 bucks. It's a digital guide.

Yeah, very reason. But it's like 40 pages. Like I blood, sweat and tears. Wow. Oh my God. Madison spent. Yeah. How many of those do you sell?

I feel like every day we'll get like, oh, someone bought a guide, some about a guide. Like, you know, here and there. It depends on what we're pushing it. Like I've for years have been saying I need to make the New York City guide. And it's just. It's just, it's sitting there. It's hard. Carly made a really great, one of her projects was.

Oh, I made a master index of every restaurant we've ever been to and posted about. Oh, my God. So every time. How large is that? Oh, it's huge. It's got thousands of lines on it. It's no frills. It's an Excel sheet that you can like sort by city or by neighborhood or by cuisine, I think, by price point.

that took me and the help of an intern so long. And now we just keep up. Every time we post, we add the line to the guide. Our sister Sarah keeps up with it very well. Like she's like every week she uploads them. And like sometimes we'll have videos where there's like 10 places in it. And it's here's a video. Yeah.

On this place, you can go and see, all right, it was featured in our favorite restaurants of last year. It was featured in like top Indian restaurants we tried recently. You're like it was my point was like somebody. Now you can kind of Google. like sister snacking cats is, and like it might pop up. Sometimes I do that. But if you go on the guide, command F and look for whatever restaurant, like if you're going to Oresh and you want to know what did sister snacking say about it, you can find every time

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what do you think they're telling us? What's our expenses over the year? I mean, we don't always expense... And now I assume that a lot of restaurants will comp, too, but in general, if you had to take a guess, how much sister snacking has spent that restaurant? Over the 11 years. What do you think it is?

Just a shot in the dark. Like a million. It's got to be over a million dollars. I was going to say a million dollars. Yeah. I didn't know if that was. It was crazy. No, but... Because I'm thinking like a sick, you know, big meal, six-top.

We could do a couple of... 11 years. Yeah, yeah, that sounds... We love food. Oh, my God. We're a food family. We like to eat. That's it.

If you have, if you're in New York City, for people that don't live in New York City or rarely visit that are watching this, and you go to New York City for a family of four, let's say, not say four friends. And they're drinking, and it's a nice place. It's a nice place in New York. What do you think that bill's going to be? Four people drinking, nice place. 700? I was going to see 600.

That's what I was saying. Yeah, 800-ish. That's how I get it. We're all drinking. Because the price of food and the place of drinks out here has gotten so expensive. It's crazy. You can have water. Yeah, you can just drink your tap water. I love it. No, do you guys ever go to dinner and like not drink with your friends? You're like, it was free.

Dry January. Dry January. We're like, wait a second. This bill is nothing. It's ridiculous. It's like, got to buy the still water. Did you say it was like $40 for my chair? It's crazy. Wait a second. All right. What is the most like in the.

food space, the food carrier space, what's the most ridiculous brand deal or brand request that someone's been like, are you willing to do this? And you're like, wait, what? We get tapped for the ridiculous things that are coming in New York. So I'm thinking like there was like a monopoly ice cream. Like monopoly was popping up in an ice cream shop. And there was like, it was like, it was a monopoly ice cream cones. But we did that. We posted about it. I mean, if we want to talk crazy, it's when a restaurant's like, hi, I want to collect. lab with you, I will give you one appetizer, one entree, and one drink and one dessert. And in exchange, you'll make a reel, a TikTok, a substag, and five stories. Oh, and giving all the content.

No. Just like, no. It feels like, thank you. Yeah. I mean, that's, that is ridiculous. Yeah. Did you have anything as far as a ridiculous request before I go the next question? No, I mean, our sister just went last week to Kansas City to promote the reminders of him movie. So they flew. That's just cool. That's cool. Yeah. Okay. That is really cool. Well, that's crazy request. I mean, you think, I think what's interesting about that. Crazy can be anything. Yeah. I did get to go on the first ever Helman's Mayo brand trip. Wow. First ever. Wow. What's, what are those factors like? Oh, no way. Really? I had no idea. I went. Went to a Titans game. Was it, I mean, did you like take a tour of the facility?

Or did it was just a brand trip? No, we, I mean, we got in like a special room, like the one of the rooms and then they had that dessert cart. Have you ever been? Titans? Yeah. Oh, the dessert cart's incredible. Now I know what you're talking about. Yeah, they got the throne, all this stuff. It's not. And there's mayo in it? No. No, that's where I'm not throwing.

I was like the mayo. I was like, no. No, they were working with Will Leavitt. Will Leavitt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now he's not on anymore. He was like their official spokesman, and he came out with a mayo clone.

He's a, he's a quarterback. But he's not signed. No, he started. It didn't go great. Yeah, it was something else. But, okay, this is one I'm interested, because there was a food influencer. who went to this bakery on TikTok.

And she asked to, I think she was negotiating for herself to be paid. And then they're like, sorry, we don't pay, but we'll comp you this pistachio, whatever it was. It was a pistachio something. She took it and she did a really negative review on it. And the bakery snapped back. They're like, that's not fake pistachio. Everything we sourced is straight from Italy. They did like the whole breakdown.

And their clip went viral. I don't remember the name of it. I saw the restaurant's response. Yeah. Yeah. So she shows up and she's dragging the restaurant. And then the restaurant's like, everything you said is inaccurate. Like these are, so they source it and they show it.

And everyone, of course, of course, the restaurant. Yeah. Restaurant has like a half million followers now, all from this event. Now, one of the things I thought about this situation was the way she dragged that restaurant was wrong. Her facts were incorrect. And also she was very, very unlikable in this video. However, the concept of going to a. a restaurant and having a platform and using your platform to promote them and having some kind

of expectation return. Very fair concept. Where I have found like, you know, if there's a, I've talked openly in this, but there's a finance company, it's three posts or two posts and media and usage. We're going to talk six figures. But it feels like at the B to C level when you're a, when you're a business platform like you guys are, but you're working with like small mom and shop shop restaurants. It's kind of a, it's a, it's touch and go. You got to be careful because you don't know if these restaurants are going to say because four posts for you guys, that's a lot of money. That's, that's well over the five figures, well over, maybe six figures at this point.

And so when these restaurants are saying we need three posts and usage and all that, do you feel like you have to be a little bit careful because if you answer the wrong way, they're going to make this next viral clip of you? Yes. And that's why we are like so cognizant now that, not now, just like at where we are at our level, that we actually are so open. We want the opposite. We want nothing from them so that they can expect nothing from us. And it works always in our favor. When we genuinely love a place, we make a relationship with them after. We want the food, ourselves,

that we pay for, and we always want to pay. And we don't just say that. We mean it. We always want to pay. Like we don't ever ask for a free meal. If anything, we ask for a reservation if you can't get in. But like, that's it. Hold right there. What's the hardest reservation to get into in New York? Or the one, the hardest one that you've had a chance in it. 86.

86 right now. Well, Ray is a reservation. But to Carly's point, you know, I think at this point, we've made so many relationships. Like I'm thinking about today, we were actually out in Queens because the owner of Utopia bagels just opened a pizza spot. And so we have a relationship with them. we want to go film in the back like yeah he's given us a bunch of pies like we're filming them and there's kind of like that you know just exchange and we don't ever guarantee anything if we're

having something or filming somewhere because we might not like it and so if that happens like we just say listen we're going to see like what makes sense for our content we'll fit it in and I think even like posting about it in stories is helpful for these new business owners too yeah I like the idea though, expect nothing. And then you don't have to provide anything. We'll come by it and we'll try it. I'm sure you can imagine our- Or you have a relationship and they'll be like, yeah, take that. It's not like you're asking for it. Yeah. I'm sure you can imagine and people watching can envision what our inbox looks like with restaurants emailing us being like, I'd love for you to come in. I'm offering PR companies that work, that have restaurants as clients are saying, we'd love to set you up with this meal. X, Y, and Z.

we every time if we're saying okay we'd love a reservation next week if possible as you know we never guarantee any content in exchange no need like we're happy to pay for the meal sometimes restaurants just want to comp us because they might get a I don't know like they just want to make sure we have a good experience but every time we're saying just so you know we never guarantee any content and we're happy to pay so I just invested in a restaurant. It's called Lionsden. We want to have you guys come out.

See what you think. And I will tell you, if you want to rip it apart, rip it apart, it hasn't even opened yet. And it's just restaurants are just such a tough, tough investment. But one of the things, and maybe this is something for you guys in the business here, future, they hired a PR company. And I asked them how much, you know, and I'm not involved about them. I'm asylum investor. And I always say, like, come knock on my door when you want.

Like, I know this space well. Like, I'll give free insight. No one's not going on my door. And I saw one of the guys at the bar who runs it. And he said, yeah, we got a PR company. How would you think they charge for a month to work for the PR company for the restaurant? Do you have the answer? I got the answer here.

Oh, I was five to ten. I was going to say ten. Nashville, Tennessee is not New York or L.A. $15,000. Now, we work with PR companies all the time. And we work with L.A. base and New York City base. We have our town. PR is like 10.

It would be like, yeah, I was going to say like five to eight depending on like, who the person is. 15,000. Like, what the hell? Are they guaranteed? That's what I said. That's what I said. So I was just thinking, like with all your connections in the space, you guys might be

able to start a restaurant focused PR company. Seriously, though. You're like, we're done. I don't think we have the bandwidth for that. I don't know. I don't know. You don't want any more projects. Thank you for the thought started.

Yeah, I got you. When you do it, come back out, we'll pitch it. Love that seed. What about this, though? I think majority of people listening, they see food creator. They hear what you guys are doing. And they're like, this is the most glamorous dream job of the world. If you go to restaurants, you eat the best meals, you get to showcase the best meals,

and that's your job. What's one thing that looks glamorous or what's one thing that people listening might not know about the food creator's spot? That's not so glamorous. Sitting home editing on my phone and being like, Tass, grab the dog. Or like, can't do the voiceover because it's too fucking loud. Sticky fingers. Oh, yeah.

Cover. Just cakes and stuff. Do you eat everything that you put out? there we can't eat every single thing not every drop or bite but yeah we try it all yeah yeah yeah yeah we like to share we were at pizza place today and we ran into a guy we knew when he gave him pizza yeah but i think what i mean it's also like hard just like kind of bopping i'm in the suburb shlapping we're schleping we're bopping so i have bags i'm a new pumping mom so i have milk like i have nowhere to do it

Like, it's not glamorous because, like, we don't have, like, a home base. Yeah, at least in Brooklyn now. You're in a bathroom. Yeah. If we were, yeah, like, it's just, it's just literally. Yeah, we're just kind of running around. We've been in, like, three cabs today. Oh, yeah, we have been in a lot of cars.

Two subway rides. I've taken the train. Like, there's a lot of them clunking around, I would say. Yeah, with the camera and the tripod. But I think. Do you record everything yourself? Or do you bring a team? No.

Um, we have a team for those. We were talking earlier about the snacking, crawls with other people. When we're in it and it's not like a restaurant situation, we have someone film us with like mics and kind of just do it really nice so that it's just a better professional quality video when it's like that. But what we're just sitting at a restaurant, me and her, we have our own cameras that we film with.

But I mean, just to say back to your point when you said like it looks so glamorous, I think we can both admit like we love what we do. We have so much fun. and I wouldn't trade it for anything. So, like, there are downsides, but I, but it is such, it's so amazing. Like, we have the best time. I'm always trying to tell Jason that he doesn't have to do it all. That sometimes he might be better off and be more efficient if he brings an expert in to do

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That's upw-w-o-k-com. I love it. Maybe the answer to that is like, it is glamorous. The majority of it is glamorous. I would say it's like foodie fun. It's fun. It's glamorous to be like sitting in hair. Yeah, it's foody fun.

I like that. We work with our sisters and. best friends. Yeah, it's a dream. Carly's fiancee is also in the space. So then the three of us sometimes are just like running around, eating. And when it's so we talk finances and career trajectory here. When you look at the crystal ball, like do you have a financial goal of how much you want to make a year, a professional goal like that we want to get to at some point. Where do you guys look in the future as it look like? Well, I think last year, I think was in Forbes. Like we, we just scratched the seven figure. Let's go. Congratulations. Thank you. And then we have our own businesses.

too. Yeah. Carly's lawyer. We have our own pages. Yeah. So I think we're just... You do like entertainment law, right?

I do contracts and stuff. I do contracts for other influencers. Yeah, that's great. But I have to say, I mean, like me and Mass and we're actually just talking about this. Billing as a lawyer doesn't come close to the money you make making one video for a brand. Isn't that a crazy statement though? Yeah. When you think about that and what do you like an hourly rate for an attorney in the city is two to seven

on thousand bucks? Oh yeah. My rate is like a little is under. 400 hours. So I can ask you a question? Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you think that this influencer creator market is going to burst the bubble?

It's the hardest question to ask right now. I don't think so. I don't either. So I get studying, like I can tell you it is owning an agency, right? And we broker a lot of deals through people that are managed and we manage people exclusively and then we manage people not exclusively. And then we work with Brands Direct. So we kind of do it all.

We do events. We have podcasts. with Jesse Pagula and Maddie K's top tennis players. So we kind of have our foot in all the different areas. All we're seeing is growth. And then when I read case studies, it says that the greater economy is growing at a 22% annual growth rate every year. And I think the companies that were lagging, like in 2020,

you know, I started doing this 2018. So you guys have done it longer, but we've both been around in the teens, which is a lot, you know, 2018, 15, 16. That's a lot. That's OG. It's just growing every year. in those companies that were like, no, I'm not getting into that. All the companies are in now. I think what we're going to see is more efficiency with it. I think there's a lot of middlemen.

I think there's a lot of processes to get deals that come to fruition and like, you know, who casts for what. I think there's going to be like a lot of more efficiency. Streamlining at all. Yeah. I honestly, like, is someone who owns an agency, I think the best value we're going to be able to bring to our people is going to be creativity, management and business operations because I think like one day like in five years from now, it's going to be like a portal. You just like you put in your profile and they come to you. I don't know. I could be wrong, but I think the space is going to keep growing. I think the only thing from a creator side is the saturation of it all and how many people are just picking their phone up and recording. Now that you've seen such a shift in high quality

production to more authentic throwing up the phone and just spewing whatever comes to mind. So it's kind of like creators like us that have been around for a while need to rethink strategy almost. Yeah, I agree with that. But there's a difference, and I think we've all seen it on our phones. The difference between someone who picks up their phone spews something, whether it's hilarious or controversial or whatever it is, one video that gets the whole world talking does not translate into an influencer brand. Correct. Like it doesn't.

And it takes consistency and it takes recognition. recognition and like so many different factors that take that gets a fan base to be like this person like speaks to me or gets me or like I want to continue to follow their whatever it is and I think while that is so true on saturation that's that doesn't equal longevity sure so like I think there's only a handful of people that are going to withstand the test of time. and keep getting brand deals and making a business and a career out of this for, you know, for a while. Yeah, I think the idea of virality, right, you know the people that are trying to go viral all the time where they do like rage bait stuff or they'll like, you guys are foodies.

They'll, you know, let's just say they put a piece of chicken and they're cooking it and then they throw in like, you know, Dr. Pepper and cake and four things. And it's like rage baits making you watch. It's like crazy virality. or pranks or stuff. Virality creates a buzz. Buzz creates impressions, but impressions are like the people outside the store opening

that are like doing fireworks or troiling their sign. They create attention. But then if you go in the store, you don't have really good product in the store and like it's well done and it makes you come back, you're not going to the store. Right. And I think there are a lot of people that are doing this,

but that doesn't create any form of longevity. Sure. You have to have the store. And when people walk in a sister snacking store, they know what they're getting. Right. And that's what creates longevity. And I think one of the things is you're right.

There is oversupply. There's over saturation. The reason there is, though, is because there's a mass supply of money right now. All this money's flowing in. You're on Forbes and it says you guys are doing seven figures. So people are saying, I've got to start doing it. So the reason there's more saturation is because there's more dollars supporting that. So that's actually not a bad thing. What do you think about it like that. But what will happen? I don't know. I mean, no one knows. But I think it's, it looks promising from my perspective. I think it's so interesting, though. I actually just spoke at my for my alma mater, Syracuse, they're starting a... Did you? Yeah, I lived in Armory Square for one year. Shut your mouth. I was living in Armour. Oh, God. I think I was 21.

It was a year after graduate at college. And I was one year and done. Okay. There you go. What for? So I graduated in 2010, a mortgage crisis. And back then, what you wanted to do was get into banks and the banking programs. And then they would, like, put you on the career ladder.

Yeah. But a lot of the banks weren't investing in those anymore because the mortgage crisis. So there was a bank called Key Bank, which is a regional bank. And they had one of these management programs still. And I got into it. And I didn't know where it was going to be. It was in Syracuse. So after the year, their headquarters.

Did you go to any gains? Oh, yeah, of course. It's the best. Nothing else to do there. Yeah. It's a great. But what's so interesting is they are finally, it's how many years has it's been. They just now are making an influencer like creator.

Major. What? It's a combination. I was in the communication school, and it's bringing, it's a dual major between the business school and the communication school. That's true. Isn't that insane? Yeah.

So it was amazing. I love it there. But there's a agency side of influencer too. Correct. But there was never a major for that specifically. But influencing is so niche to like learn about. Yeah. Like old established managers and agents, they were like, what is this?

Then what is this? Now it's just like a money wrap. Now they're all just like. Yeah, now they're like, I need to be in on it. But I think it's so interesting to think about teaching someone how to be an influencer. And like I think at the end of the day, you have to have like a panache. You have to like have something that you're born with. You have to have something that you're authentically passionate about.

Or just like be funny or something. Something good at makeup. Like anything that's like so you and something that kind of can't be taught a little bit. 100%. That like you're comfortable like putting a phone up and just. like doing it. Doing it. And I mean, there are physical skills like editing and like post like little baby skills, but there's something you have to be born with to really have something. And I think that's so interesting people are like teaching it. That's why with this podcast, so we're like 300 episodes

for years in. And when I talk about why I start this podcast, it was because when I was a kid, I remember being like six years old, always being like, mom, how much does that cost? Like I would see a boat. I'd be like, what do we have to do to get the boat? And like I was just always curious about that. And I don't know why. It's like a gatekeeping thing. Like what, you know, I wanted the pizza at the hockey rink. It was $4. I was like, all right. I was always trying to figure out the numbers. Like, Dad, can I get $4?00? I don't know. I was always doing that. So that's kind of what started the podcast. And I think, Jason, you have to do three laps around the ring. And then you can come and then you get four.

And sit in the corner and that'll give me four bucks. He asked me for three. Go ask your mom for one. But then that's, I think food, obviously, passion. I think people. out there when you're trying to figure out what it is like go back to your childhood self like what are the things that you're just like curious about as a kid that you're run around doing there's probably there's possibly a brand there but I also found that even the best people in the world like the best creators that are out there from micro to macro the really good ones and you guys know this you have to be your own visionary like even yeah people can edit but people don't know how to edit the way you like it people you know what a good video is your two your your

your four eyes and four sisters like you guys can see it you're you're you're like, okay, this is a good video. There's, you can't teach that. That's just like from repertoire and knowing your brand. I think I can make a video and be like, that's going to go viral. Oh, instant. Like, I will know right away. Yeah, Madison's totally good at that. Yeah. I will know right away like great, right? And that's the hook, the camera work, the funniness, the timing, all of it. So yeah, I think there's, there is a science to it a little bit, you know? Yeah. All right. Well, this has been fun to awesome to talk to you guys. I can't wait to hear about what's next. Maybe it's the PR agency.

I mean, we talked about finances a little bit. You know, broke seven figures, but like, where do you all? Like, what does the dream look like three to five years? It's a mix. I think for, yeah, it's a mix because, I mean, as Madison said, we have our own personal brands that we're growing as well, which is really fun. But it all like feeds into each other. I think Carly is really good and focused on our interview series and we'll have to

take you on a food phone next time you're here. Next time you're here. Or if we come to Nashville. Yeah. Oh my God. That would be so much fun. Yeah. And like I was saying, I'm really big on recipes.

So, like, I think a cookbook could be in my future. Would you open a restaurant? No, I think it's just, you know, I'm going to be aware of restaurant life. But I think there's a world in which, like, I don't know, bringing people together around our food. I think the food crawls we do are very interesting and unique. It is time consuming.

But I think we keep trying to be a resource for all-think food. we also want to be a resource now for people and brands to come to us. Kind of like promote something almost not as like a paid partnership, but like you know, you're on your second book. No, you've done two. It's two books, yeah. Like a lot of people will come to us and say, I have a new cookbook coming out. Can we go on a food crawl?

Let's plug the book. Yeah. So instead of being a podcast, it's more so. It's like a content promote. I thought it was really cool as when you talked about the WWE superstar or an actor or actress when they have a new movie coming out. That's, you think they're trying to promote the movie, but you can do that in a very subtle way. So subtle.

And I'll take advantage of your platform. But it's still where they're bringing value to you, you're bringing value to them. Yeah. That's a cool. Yeah. And I mean, listen, everybody eats. Everybody. I would say 95% people love to eat.

Like, they enjoy it. Maybe some. Yeah. But there is a tie in with everyone. Yeah. Which has been cool to see. They call it, I think in the influencer like creator said, they'll call it Tam, right, which is total addressable market.

So your total adjustable market is the entire planet. Yeah. It's like every person has to eat. Yeah, there you go. There is no niche when every single human walking has to eat. Well, it's so cool to learn about kind of the strategy and how far you guys have come. The amount of years you've done it, Forbes 30 under 30, you get nominated for Webby Awards. You've built such an unbelievable community.

So it's exciting to hear from you guys how you did it, but we got to wrap with a trading secret. So it's something we can't learn from a textbook or a professor at S.U. at their influencer management program now. We can only learn from you guys. So what can you guys wrap with? You go first. Well, I've said this before and it's something from actually our mom. So shout out, Susie.

Our mom is really big on a positive attitude. And so it's actually funny to this day. And our older sister's 33. I'm 30. You're 31. Probably it's going to be 30. Like every day she texts us and says, today is going to be a,

and we tell her great. day every morning. No way. Every morning. My mom is saying in my house watching my child today. And she still text me. Did you leave the door? Did you leave to come to the city?

She said she's going to be out or she No, I texted. I texted while she was in downstairs. Okay. She was in my house. Every day. Every day. Do you want to say?

Yeah. So the point of this is that she is instilled this like positive mindset. So every day you want to. Another combo in between. Oh my God. So every day you want. want to start off with some positivity.

And if you, it's hard because every day you're not going to feel positive. But if you have this in the back of your head, have some positivity, same as like you make your bed every day. Like there's something, you're starting off on the right foot. I love it. So when she says that, you guys have to fill in the words? We say the same thing. We all say.

So today is going to be a blank day. And then does someone say like, do you always say great? We always say great. Wow. That's cool. All right. That's a good trade secret. That's a good one.

Shout out to your mom. Yeah. All right, Charlie. Oh, I mean, that, if we could conjoint, I'll say that as well. But I will say for specifically what we're talking about today, I think if you want to get into posting, if you want to get into influencing, start today. Start now. I heard people say start yesterday. Start yesterday.

Exactly. I think the sooner you start, the more. you will get used to and find your groove and find your niche and find your audience. And you're waiting to become whatever you're waiting to become perfect. You're waiting to become this version of yourself. But just like start scared. Just start now. Because you'll find yourself throughout it.

And I just think post now, start posting. Yeah. And the last thing. Good content always wins. Oh yeah. That's that's Bobby Flee. Good content always wins. Is that what he says?

Yeah. That's his thing. And you guys have worked with that. It's true. Yeah. That's a good way to wrap. He's a good friend. All right.

That's a good friend to have. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Well, guys, thank you so long for me on. Tray Secrets. Where can everyone find everything you guys are putting out? Sister snacking. Sister snack.

That's the website name. That's the Instagram, TikTok. Substack. All the above. All of it. YouTube. And then I'm Maddie Snacks. Carly Shapp.

Yeah. For some personal behind the scenes. Yeah. If you want to see what our lives look like behind. behind the food. I like it. With different more food, I guess. We have families, engagements, all the good stuff.

Well, thank you guys so much for your monitoring secrets. Thanks for having us, Jason. Thank you.