If you’re finding it hard to look away from Jessica Hirsch ’07 and her food, you’re not alone. She knows how to build an online audience.
Hirsch is the creator of CheatDayEats, a popular Instagram account and lifestyle brand with over half a million followers. Her feed is a near-daily flow of videos documenting her “cheating” on an otherwise healthy diet with outrageously decadent plates of food from the hottest restaurants and over-the-top indulgent recipes that she cooks – and eats – on camera, all while appearing eminently fit and full of zest. The contrast between her upbeat, energetic persona compared to how most of us would feel a few bites into a lasagna garlic bread boat makes for extremely engaging content.
But despite the catchy handle, the former high school math teacher who started CheatDayEats in her spare time nine years ago, no longer considers eating delicious foods cheating. For Hirsch, the life of a social media influencer is all about balance.
“I've always been really excited about food,” Hirsch says. Growing up in Rockland County, N.Y., she lived in a kosher household but was allowed to break tradition outside her home. She relished trying new meals at friends’ houses and being able to pick her own food while on vacation. Exploring the vast aisles of a Piggly Wiggly supermarket was a highlight for her on her family’s annual trip to South Carolina. “I still remember the amount of joy I got out of being able to get Lucky Charms,” which, she explains, is not kosher due to the gelatin in the cereal’s marshmallows.
Happy memories of food and eating punctuated Hirsch’s youth but she never considered making a career out of it. Inspired by both her math-teacher mother and a high school math teacher, “there was never any doubt” she would teach math herself, she says. “I never actually thought that my life would be where it is today.”
No one could have. In 2003, when she arrived at UAlbany as a freshman, digital creator did not exist as a career aspiration. Hirsch wanted to study mathematics and the University was the right fit. Despite the surprising shift her life took, looking back on her undergraduate experience she says, “I wouldn't trade it.”
As intended, Hirsch graduated in 2007 with a BA in mathematics, a minor in education and then went on to earn her MA in education at Saint Thomas Aquinas College. Seven years later, she had found her stride as a math teacher at Cardinal Hayes High School in the South Bronx. “I really loved it,” she says of her teaching career. And then she found Instagram.
In 2014 there was a growing community of people on the social media platform who were devoted to food in New York City. “It's something I noticed, and I wanted to be a part of because in my group of friends, people loved food, but I had crossed the line into being a little more passionate about where I was going to eat, what I was going to eat.”
Hirsch created her account and took documenting her restaurant outings seriously from the start, quickly ditching her cell phone for a real camera and investing in her skills as a photographer. “Jessica understands lighting and angles and knows how to make food look appetizing,” says restaurant consultant and fellow Instagrammer Alexa Matthews of @EatingNYC. Matthews was part of the food scene where the two women met and became friends.
Hirsch also made use of video well before it was popular to do so on what was then a mostly photo-sharing site. “For me, the picture was never enough,” she explains. “I always wanted to tell a bigger, better story and I felt like video was able to capture that.”
The community noticed. The quality of her @CheatDayEats feed stood out from thousands of other food-related posts on the platform. With the help of reposts from big accounts like @Foodbeast and @Infatuation, she was getting a lot of attention, sometimes gaining 10,000 followers in a day. “It was really exciting, and I was growing quickly,” recalls Hirsch.
Before long, restaurants were inviting her to dine in to be featured on @CheatDayEats and she was hired to run the official accounts of five well-known New York City eateries. Coupled with the sponsored posts she started getting paid to create, CheatDayEats was becoming a business.
Hirsch continued to refine her camera skills, bringing artistry to her content. Her posts may look spontaneous, a breezy visit to a newly opened trattoria where a forkful of pasta alla gricia twirls seductively on her plate, for example. But in reality, she spends hours on planning, production and editing before a video is ready to upload. Her talent has earned her a spot on the roster of SONY’s Alpha Collective, a select group of photographers that represents the brand.
In 2017, all this was happening in her spare time, when she wasn’t teaching algebra to ninth graders. “At 3 p.m. my second life started,” she says. “I was going to events, running the restaurants, doing the photography, at which point it became too much.” While dedicated to her education career, Hirsch realized she had a difficult choice to make. “I had a once-in-a-lifetime type of opportunity and I decided to go all in.” She finished out the school year, and CheatDayEats went from side hustle to main hustle.
The new entrepreneur quickly found that being a full-time digital creator is not just a job, it’s a lifestyle. The effort it takes to stay relevant on social media is relentless, so she is always on the clock. There are recipes to create, restaurants to showcase and other food-related experiences to document. But to Hirsch, it’s a labor of love that rarely feels like work.
And luckily, she has help from her husband, Brian Coogan a.k.a. @MrCheatDayEats. Together they run the original Instagram account in addition to two TikTok feeds, a YouTube channel and a Pinterest board. Followers are there for the eats but also for Hirsch herself, who appears in most of her posts. Balancing a private off-camera life is challenging when so much is shared with their fans, including their wedding and honeymoon. “Since the brand is an extension of our personal lives, it can be difficult at times to separate,” says Coogan. But, he adds, “We love sharing these moments as a way to connect with our audience.”
Personal engagement with their audience is a large part of the process. Hirsch estimates that she spends about half of her online time responding to comments and answering questions from viewers.‘’It all comes back to community for me,” she says. “That’s why I started this back in 2014, and it’s the number one driver for me today.’’
Hirsch even embraces the negative comments, letting the criticism roll off her back. “If I do a cacio e pepe and it has cream in it, I'm ready for the attacks. That's just more engagement for me,” she says. Mostly though, @CheatDayEats is a friendly space. Followers are there because they enjoy her content. “It's really only when something goes viral that it will get hate, just because there's so many more eyes on it,” she explains.
Another shift that has come from producing a steady stream of eating-focused content is deeply personal to Hirsch: a healthier relationship to food. “I'm around amazing food all the time and instead of denying myself something, I practice moderation and listen to my body,” she explains. She no longer has the binary view of certain foods as good or bad and uses her platform to empower others to enjoy a tasty treat without guilt as part of a balanced lifestyle.
Hirsch keeps her own balance by maintaining an overall clean diet and regular exercise routine while indulging about 20 percent of the time, both for work and pleasure. “Cheat day or not,” she says, “it’s about sharing the foods I love.”
Like anyone, Hirsch has bad days on the job. “If I'm not into it and I try to film, the process is such a disaster,” she admits. If she wakes up tired and not excited to whip up a crème brûlée grilled cheese on camera, she’ll spend the day editing or on another behind-the-scenes aspect of production.
The social media landscape is in constant flux. “You have to stay ahead, and you just have to adapt, otherwise you get left behind,” Hirsch explains. She continues to hone her craft, whether it’s keeping current on the latest digital marketing trends, upgrading to the newest camera lens or perfecting her recipes in an Italian Boot Camp at the Institute of Culinary Education.
Speaking on a panel at the New York City Wine and Food Festival, Hirsch discussed the imposter syndrome she can sometimes struggle with, especially when another account is in the spotlight. “I have to train my brain to say their success doesn't mean my failure. I'm on my own path and these things will come to me also.”
Clearly, many of them already have. With nearly a decade at the forefront of food photography and digital content, Hirsch has certainly proven there’s no cheating when it comes to her career triumphs.
Still Hungry? See more at cheatdayeats.com and @cheatdayeats
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First rate journalism in this article. Good technique in developing interest in this unique area of nutrition and health. Author made discussion of social media involvement very readable. Readers are made aware of the energy needed to develop videos and stay abreast of the constant changes in social media. Enjoyed reading it immensely.
Love her reels & video posts! Live in Atlanta, but enjoy her POV on all things culinary! Keep it up Jessica!