Top Chef as an exposure opportunity

But let's not forget our roots: good cooking

Top Chef is not just a TV show - it’s a jumping off platform for chefs to go from local stars to national stars. A big part of that is social media presence. Some chefs started the season with tens of thousands of followers (like Brandon Dearden), and others with only 54 (Cesar Murillo, Season 22).

I’ve been tracking Instagram follower counts, and generally, I don’t find it that interesting. However, since this is my second season tracking them, I think we can start to see patterns that we can’t see when we only look at one season. Not all chefs have the goal of remaining on a national stage, so there is no value judgement from me about the numbers of followers.

This season, Brittany Cochran started with the fewest followers (just over 500) and ended up with over 2,000. Two notable outliers this season include Jassi Bindra (the second chef eliminated) who had massive growth, and Day Joseph (the first chef eliminated) who ended up deleting her Instagram account.

Rhoda Magbitang, Duyen Ha, and Laurence Louie ended the season with the most followers, though Rhoda has almost double the followers that Laurence has. Even though Duyen placed 7th, she was a favorite (in our power rankings, she was in the top three for six of her ten episodes) and a bit of a front runner (as seen by her NPT+ in Top Chef Reference).

Where things get more interesting is when we start comparing seasons (Season 22 spoilers incoming!).