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Hosted by a Toronto-based sommelier Tasting Notes Toronto explores the people shaping the city’s food and wine culture—from Michelin-starred chefs and master sommeliers to restaurant operators and winemakers. Each episode goes behind the scenes of hospitality careers, restaurant culture, and the decisions that shape what we eat and drink in Toronto today.
I feel like a lot of videos that I see, you see a creator walk into a restaurant, they'll talk about it. Maybe you'll see the cheese pull or lifting of noodles high up, and then they say how good it is and that's it. What's your approach?
Quentin Melhoff:You will get views if within the first one second of your video, or even right off the bat, you're doing some big cheese pull or you got this huge mound of food in front of you. And that'll work, right? Like, we're very intuitive people. Like, you see a lot of food, you're excited to see it as a viewer, you're like, oh, I gotta figure this out. We try to do the inverse of that almost to a detriment, just because it feels a little bit more unique and personable and something that I feel good about.
Quentin Melhoff:I think a lot of it comes down to what are you proud of? And so the way that we shoot videos is a little bit more involved, tells the story of the restaurant through the lens of the chef and the restaurant owner or whoever we're talking to through their own lens. And some of these videos do very well, don't get me wrong. Some of these videos are still crossing the 100,000 view mark, but you could probably get a lot more views if I led with this gigantic cheese pull, or dipping fries in some sauce, or biting into a dumpling and having it squirt all over the place. But if I sit and I reflect on a Sunday night, what did I do well this week?
Quentin Melhoff:What did I not do so well this week? And the video that I put out that 500,000 people saw over the whole country, and it was me making myself look weird in order to get the view or whatever, I wouldn't feel very good about it. So, like, at its core, really, for me, it's just, like, making something that I'm proud of and then hopefully, in turn, something that the viewer finds meaningful and helpful.
Alex Abbott Boyd:When I'm scrolling Instagram or TikTok and a video comes up and it's really hyping a restaurant, who's usually paying for that?
Quentin Melhoff:95% of the food content that's actually put on social media really is just for the love of the game. A lot of it isn't paid for. The other 5% are usually creators who maybe are a little bit better at the game, so they understand, like, what a good hook is, how to get you to watch more than, like, twenty seconds of a video, how to get you to save or share it. They understand how the algorithm works. And so you'll see them more often, and then you'll get this false narrative that every viral video has been paid for.
Quentin Melhoff:So I would say really a lot of them aren't paid, So probably, yeah, I'd say like maybe 5% is paid for. Restaurants just don't have a big budget to pay influencers.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Okay. But so 5% of the videos, do you think it's like a higher much higher percent in terms of what actually gets the views?
Quentin Melhoff:Yeah. Yeah. I would say that but that's just generally a function of the creator knowing, like, how to make a video. If you looked at the overall social media landscape, most videos get let's use TikTok for example, because I think it's the best filter for if something's breaking through or not. Most videos get 300 views.
Quentin Melhoff:Probably 85% of videos get 300 views. And so you're really only seeing the videos that get, like, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, a 100,000 views. And again, those the money comes to the creators who are able to break through. So again, I would say a lot of it's just for the love of the game and for the potential and want to eventually earn money. Like, don't think anyone just does it strictly with no goal in mind to eventually make money.
Quentin Melhoff:But yeah, usually, think a lot of it's just someone trying to do something and having fun with it.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. So those people that figure it out and start to get those videos that do go viral, how are they typically making money?
Quentin Melhoff:A lot of them will obviously make some money through restaurants, and a lot of the restaurants that will pay influencers are typically the ones that aren't at the top level. I'm not saying all of them aren't, because I definitely think there are restaurants here and there that will pay influencers to do content, which is, I don't know, unfortunate. But yeah, lot of them will make it through small restaurant deals. Because at the end the day, restaurants aren't going be able to pay a lot of money. Like, maximum, a restaurant might be able to pay a creator let's call it $1,000 which I'm not saying is a small amount of money, but on 2026, say you're doing four paid posts a month, like 4,000 after taxes, like, you're not really you're really not breaking through.
Quentin Melhoff:You're not really living, like, a lavish life on that No. On that amount.
Alex Abbott Boyd:For the top influencers who are making, like, the big bucks Sure. Promoting restaurants, how do they make that?
Quentin Melhoff:I'm not sure. There are some that will maybe make a little bit more than $1,000 a post. There's probably a few that are making $5,000 a post. If you have a big following, some can charge up a 10 k. And some restaurants or brands might see that as valuable.
Quentin Melhoff:I think a lot of what a influencer does in terms of generating revenue isn't always through a restaurant review. You'll often times see creators diversify a little bit in terms of what they're doing. What comes to mind is you'll see somebody doing a restaurant review, quote unquote, and then their next video is a post for Swiffer, which you gotta do what you gotta do to pay the bills, don't get me wrong, but in in that turn, it kinda makes their content feel a little, like, disingenuous.
Alex Abbott Boyd:How did you settle on your format?
Quentin Melhoff:The process took a little while. So when I started filming videos in restaurants, I would go and film by myself, because that's all I had. I would get my crappy camera comparatively to what we're doing now, and my pretty mediocre mic compared to what we're using now as well. And I would film, and I would always ask, hey, can I come in the kitchen? We'd always set these up at the restaurants beforehand.
Quentin Melhoff:And I'd be filming, and while we're filming the chef making something, we're having a really good conversation about whether it's the state of the industry or stuff that they really like, things that they find interesting, or their story of the restaurant. And while I was doing that, it was so hard for me then to take what they were saying and try to regurgitate it an hour later when I'm doing my voiceover in the store. So I never really like doing like a voiceover after the fact. Like, hate the idea of filming a video and editing it, and then getting into the microphone at home and then talking over it. I just feel like it's adds more time, but it just like there's less energy involved.
Quentin Melhoff:And then basically, we were doing it like that, and those videos were actually, for what it's worth, were doing pretty well. And I had no idea what I was doing. But I knew that there was more there if we were able to sit down and actually have an interview, and then pick bits and pieces of that to format and see how it goes. And it took us a little while to figure it out, but yet we did it because it was it it just felt better to do it in that manner. It felt more meaningful.
Quentin Melhoff:It felt better to talk to operators and hear their story actually from their words.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Is this an unusual approach? I don't see nearly as many videos where people are sitting down with chefs for an extended period to get their background and their history and their favorite dishes.
Quentin Melhoff:I think it is unique, at least to here. I would assume happens in other cities. My background's in restaurants. I've been working in all these restaurants. I've worked with a lot of the people that we film with.
Quentin Melhoff:I was trying to figure out what is our unique advantage in terms of content. And I partnered up with my videographer, and he has a passion for filming and passion for food, so I thought his production quality was going be higher than the average person. And then I had a unique advantage in the sense that I was able to get into these restaurants, and I knew these people, and we were going to be able to get these exclusive interviews. Whereas I think it's a little bit more difficult for the average creator who hasn't worked in it, or they don't know these people to actually sit down and get these angles. So I think a lot of it comes down to really just can you actually do it and also then can you speak their language when you're having an interview with them?
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. Are the chefs generally receptive when you reach out? Or are they just inundated with these requests from influencers?
Quentin Melhoff:I think at first they were a little apprehensive, because you have no proof of concept. I think the first one we did it with was with Ike from Descendant, and this is the first time I shot my videographer. And thankfully, Ike was like, yeah, dude, do whatever you wanna do. No problem. I trust you, whatever.
Quentin Melhoff:And then doing one at, I think it was Liliana with Marvin before. I think it was like their first basically their first video that anyone has posted on social media for Liliana, he let us get the first one. And he was like, yeah, just like what you're doing, and I see that you're trying to push the envelope a little bit. So at first, I think they were a little apprehensive, because they just didn't know what they're getting themselves into. Right.
Quentin Melhoff:Like it's they do a video with food media company in Toronto, not to name names, but somebody shows up with a ring light and an iPhone, and they just shove it in your face, and sometimes they ambush you. And we show up with two cameras, a lighting setup, professional mics, and all that, and someone spotting the interview to make sure that we're not putting our foot in the mouth or making sure that we have follow-up questions if I forget something. So I think once they started to see how it worked, it got a little bit easier, especially when you start having videos do well. Once you have a couple videos cross the 100,000 threshold, more people are interested in having you do a video on them than the inverse, which is really cool. So yeah, they're at first, they got apprehensive, but then, like, now over time, I think they're generally pretty excited that they have the opportunity to tell their story and that we're not gonna cheap out on them.
Quentin Melhoff:Like, we're going to do our best to make sure that we tell it in the most meaningful way to some capacity. Like, obviously there's what we want to tell and what the viewer wants, and you have to meet in the middle somewhere. So it's a little bit tricky in that aspect. But, yeah, they've been pretty, pretty open.
Alex Abbott Boyd:You just mentioned that you're making a really big investment when you show up places, bringing great equipment, bringing a whole team. You And also mentioned you used to be on the other side and working in restaurants. How did you go from working on the line to showing up with multiple cameras and mics?
Quentin Melhoff:Yeah. I guess two stories. One would be I got into doing social media, content creation, whatever you want to call it, in preparation of opening my own restaurant. And I was in the process of finding a space, for raising capital, and I wanted to get to a point with an ability to shoot on a camera, tell a story, whatever, before we opened, because self promotion's the best promotion in an era where there's no food critics or really anything from that's, like, on a food media side that isn't really just influencers. You have no other way to get your name out there.
Quentin Melhoff:So in doing so, I think social media started to pop a little quicker than I thought. Like, I I think I understood how to do a hook properly, and like how to keep a viewer engaged. And as it kept growing, it was probably around this time last year where I just figured out like the amount of money that somebody can make on the content side was equal, if not to more than the amount of profit that I thought I was gonna earn running a restaurant on a monthly basis. And so I was like, if the end goal really is income at the end of the day, and doing something with meaning, I can do both of those things and probably promote the industry better than if it was just me running a restaurant and doing the industry more of a service. That's probably the best way to do it.
Quentin Melhoff:And then on the other side, obviously cooking and working in restaurants has been my entire life from, like, when I was 16, working fine dining. And then on other side, I love videos, I love film, I love anything really creative on the art side of things, and so when this kind of came up as an opportunity, it was like, oh, this is like my two worlds colliding. And so we have the video production side, which is awesome, and then my knowledge of the restaurant space and hospitality space. And I like to think I'm, like, decent as a host. I think I can always be getting better, but I I like to think I'm pretty personable, at least, like, in front of the camera, like, not all the time.
Quentin Melhoff:And so it's just, this perfect match of all the things that I really like, and it's, okay, cool. That's something that's interesting to me. Let's, like, really go all in on that, see what happens on the other side. And I can always go back to restaurants. I think I'd probably be pretty rusty if you asked me to work a service right now.
Quentin Melhoff:I probably wouldn't be very good. But I think after three months, I'd probably be okay again. So I can always go back to that if things don't work out.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Such a fascinating pivot. I would think opening a restaurant, was that something you dreamed about for years? Was that a hard dream or goal to give up?
Quentin Melhoff:Yes and no, just because I think it's always there for me if I want to do it. Like, that that dream never goes away and the opportunity never goes away. I think there's certain things that come up and you have to follow it when they do come up. So I know that, hey, if I wanna go back and open a restaurant I don't know. The older I get, the less and less I'll probably wanna open a restaurant and work sixteen hours a day in one space, but that opportunity is still going to be there, pending that I can garner enough capital to to do.
Quentin Melhoff:So I don't feel like it's something that I'm like, 100% giving up on. It's something that could happen one day. But most people in hospitality, their goal is to open a restaurant, or at least in the culinary side of things. Front of house is always a little bit different, but on the culinary side, if you ask, like, every cook in a fine dining restaurant, and we're talking Michelin star level restaurant, almost all of them want to open their own restaurant one day, or be an executive chef or something like that. It's like the only profession where everybody wants to be at the top.
Quentin Melhoff:Like, you don't work in a media company Say you work for a bon appetit or something, and you ask, like, a writer, hey, what's your goal one day? Like, their goal isn't gonna be like, yeah, I wanna start the next bon appetit. That's not a thing. Restaurants are very unique where everybody wants to eventually be at the top, which is makes it a unique place to work. I don't even know where I'm going with that, but I don't know.
Quentin Melhoff:Can you rephrase? I forget what I was He was just asking. Giving up on it.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. Did it feel hard to put that dream on pause?
Quentin Melhoff:Yeah. It's it's tough. Oh, I what I was trying to get at is that everybody wants to open a restaurant, and then they get into management at a higher level. You get into becoming like a director of operations, which I have. And then you see a p and l, a profit and loss statement for the first time.
Quentin Melhoff:And you're like, I don't know. Is this really most months you're losing money. Right? Okay. Oh, how much we did all that work, and how much did we oh, we lost $12,000.
Quentin Melhoff:Oh, do I really how much does this cost? 1,800,000 oh my god. Maybe not. Let's maybe not do it to do that. So I think everybody, yes, wants to open a restaurant, that's always a dream.
Quentin Melhoff:But I think as you go through the industry, a lot of people eventually find out that it's just not the most sustainable path. And so it makes it a little bit less gut wrenching to not do it. And that's why I think a lot of people have a lot less regret. You won't ask the average 37 year old hospitality vet, oh, do you regret not opening a restaurant? I think nine times out of 10, they would answer, no.
Quentin Melhoff:I'm pretty happy. I make a decent living, and I don't have to worry about if something goes wrong with the plumbing tonight, and I have two days off. That's a pretty good life for a lot of people.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. It definitely does seem a lot of stress. It's massive.
Quentin Melhoff:It is, like, all encompassing all the time.
Alex Abbott Boyd:What were some of the places you worked at?
Quentin Melhoff:My career mostly was spent with the Alafu Group. I would say going all the way back to the start. I worked at Richmond Station back in 2012, and I was at Bar Isabelle when they first opened for a little bit. And then I took the Italian postgrad culinary program at George Brown just as I finished working at Isabelle. I was working at a Michelin starred restaurant there, came back here, and started working front of house at Aloe when it first opened.
Quentin Melhoff:And then I worked through that whole system there. Having the GM at Aloe to which is just underneath before the pandemic, and then after the pandemic being the director of operations at Aloe at Go. And that was cool to see all different levels from Aloe being, at the time, one of the top 100 restaurants list listed in the world, to then a restaurant that I thought was, in my opinion, Aloe at the time, 2019, 2018, like, I thought we were doing some amazing things. I thought the food was amazing. Thought the price point was great, hospitality was awesome, music was good.
Quentin Melhoff:I really loved what we were doing there. And then going to Alawet Go where, yes,
Alex Abbott Boyd:there
Quentin Melhoff:was a goal to make the product really good, but it was more about creating systems so that you could have three or four or five restaurants and have the product be the same across the board and still have hospitality be good and also make sure that it's making money instead of hemorrhaging money. Like at a fine dining restaurant, sometimes you know that you're gonna just you're gonna lose money some months, and other months you're gonna make quite a bit because you have to make sizable investments, whether it's like glassware or something. Like, some months you gotta buy some Zaltos, and Zaltos aren't cheap. Whereas on the quick service side of things, you're like, yeah, man, we should be probably making money every month. Yeah.
Quentin Melhoff:We're not reinventing the wheel. So getting to see, like, all different levels of the restaurant industry, which I think has helped me in video production.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. I think I had I had some great experiences in Alouette pre pandemic.
Quentin Melhoff:So It's a I'm sure
Alex Abbott Boyd:you were there when I was having a great time.
Quentin Melhoff:It was a fun restaurant. I was I felt like I gave it my all there all the time. I think the team was amazing. I think we had everybody on staff there, like, in the management side of things in twenty nineteen, twenty eighteen, as they've all gone on to do really great things in the industry. Almost everybody there is either an executive chef, one of the sous chefs is almost Greg Barolias from owner of Burger Drops.
Quentin Melhoff:I had bartender, Pat Groves, is the owner of Contrada. The second in command of the bar is Mary, and she's, like, director of operations for the on premise Spazza a la Food Group. Laura, who's the other manager there, is the director of operations for the Julietta Group. There's just so many talented people. Like, Sam's the chef and Inga.
Quentin Melhoff:And so you have this really awesome restaurant full of super talented people. And I'm not even naming everybody. Like, there is way more talented people in that store. I was just so proud of that proud of that restaurant. And, yeah, I was at the helm of it.
Quentin Melhoff:I had a lot of sleepless nights because of it, because I was young and I was trying to figure it out. But it was just like a really good energy in that room, and I felt like every day we were putting out amazing experiences. And I think, like, it really reflected, like, how busy it was and how much people seemed to enjoy it at the time.
Alex Abbott Boyd:It's one of those special things where all the right people are in all the right place at
Quentin Melhoff:all the
Alex Abbott Boyd:right time.
Quentin Melhoff:It's everything. Your team is is everything. The best restaurants I ever worked in was because everybody who was good or everybody who was on the team was the best at what they and it's like you can't really replace that. Like, systems can only take you so far. Like, eventually, there needs to be talent to pull you through.
Alex Abbott Boyd:So you had these incredible experiences Yes. Working in restaurants. You're looking to open your own. You start messing around with social media just to figure it out ahead of that, and it starts to to pop off. When did you start to think that could become actually the career, and how did you go about like, it didn't sound cheap to show up with cameraman and a director and mics and great cameras to restaurants who are not paying you.
Alex Abbott Boyd:So how did you start to to make that work?
Quentin Melhoff:So the way that it works on our end is it's a partnership between myself and my videographer. And so everything that we get in from a brand perspective, anything that's paid is something that we share. Would it benefit me if I just paid a videographer for every shoot? Yeah. It'd be expensive up front, but for bigger brand deals, it'd make more money.
Quentin Melhoff:But we partner because I just think, not to steal a quote, but like greatness is in the agency of others, so let's partner up so that when the big deals that we have we're working on right now, those come in, he's able to win just as much as I am, and so there's a real incentive for us to go out and film really great stuff, because we know on the back end of that is significant opportunity. And we also view social media as a ladder, not like a finishing line. So I don't know where this goes. Do we think this is where our journey ends is posting Instagram reels that are forty five seconds long? Probably not.
Quentin Melhoff:It's probably something else. It's probably other long form YouTube. It's a media operation. It's maybe something in television, whatever it is. And so we wanna be partnered up so that when those opportunities come up, we can both win.
Quentin Melhoff:And that's allowed us to go and film stuff that nobody else is really able to do, and we're able to make money in other ways, whether it's personal projects or working he'll work on a film set. Alright. That's gonna cover the cost. It's gonna let us go do our thing and not worry about money. So that when we are given the opportunity to go all in, which at this point we are able to do, we don't feel as stressed monetarily, and we're able to actually, like, just go do the work and not worry about rent, which is pretty sick.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I know you've mentioned to me, oh, this was a great video and a great restaurant and a great chef, but it got 30,000 views. I did this because I like this person.
Quentin Melhoff:Yeah.
Alex Abbott Boyd:It gets harder to justify that when you're figuring out how to pay back Oh, a 100%.
Quentin Melhoff:I would be freaking out, man. There was probably a time where if video didn't hit at least 50,000 views, I would be really concerned. And now I'm like, no. We're pretty comfortable with our format. It's usually probably a function of subject or something.
Quentin Melhoff:Unless there's something very clearly obviously wrong with it. And usually, we can tell. I know before we upload, we screwed up that first shot. I don't think there's anything we can do to save it. Sometimes you're wrong, but yeah.
Alex Abbott Boyd:You said something interesting, which is that there's always more views for Yeah. A pizza shop than you find dining. Why do you think that is?
Quentin Melhoff:I think it's just accessibility is everything. So the way that the algorithm works, also the second part, the way the algorithm kind of works is a video that is saved and shared is like the paramount signal to the algorithm. More than likes, more than comments. Watch time obviously is going to be downstream of saves and shares, because if you're gonna save it, you're gonna probably watch more than ten seconds of it. I have more people that I could share a pizza video with than a video about a two star Michelin restaurant in Antwerp.
Quentin Melhoff:That's just the fact of the matter is that I can only share that one restaurant that's got two Michelin stars with the one person I know who loves fine dining, or maybe I'm not the best use case because I think my friend group is probably more interested in fine dining restaurants than the average 31 year old straight male. But pizza, I can share with my partner, all of my friends, my brother, my sister, my mom, my dad. So now I show those 10 people. Fine dining is one, so it's a pretty low a low rate. And then, yeah, it's just something that everybody loves.
Quentin Melhoff:Like, people everyone loves pizza. Everyone loves burgers. It's also it's cheaper. It's a $67 investment and not like a massive investment of your time, so going there seems like a little bit more realistic compared to going to dinner at Vespertine in LA, and what's the cost for two if for Vespertine in LA. I don't even know.
Quentin Melhoff:I know I'm not gonna look it up. Back in 2019, I think it was probably 700 USD, so probably now it's probably double that, and put that into Canadian dollars. It's pretty pricey. Like, I don't think I could I can't afford to even dine there right now. So just less likelihood that people will be intrigued.
Quentin Melhoff:But that's something that would do better on YouTube than it would on short form. So long form video is probably better in
Alex Abbott Boyd:that Well, I was thinking of Alexander the Guest Yes. Who's built an entire channel just on Michelin
Quentin Melhoff:nine. He's the best. He's he does such a great job at telling the story of the restaurant and breaking it down, being critical but not overly critical. Like, I I really do appreciate that there's some critical aspect to what he does. I think he's probably a little bit soft softened up a little bit over time.
Quentin Melhoff:I think with more exposure, everybody kinda softens. Like a movie critic that goes on like, a YouTube movie critic over time slowly becomes less and less harsh as their face is seen more and more often. But my big thing is that, yeah, YouTube is better for fine dining, for a subject that's really interesting because I'm not going to dine at per se, but I'm very intrigued of what the menu looks like right now. But if that were to pop up on my social media feed on TikTok or Instagram, it doesn't feel like the vertical video gives that experience. It does it a disservice, and so it doesn't really work as well.
Quentin Melhoff:I'm more likely to swipe away on that, but I'm way more likely to click on my TV to see what Perseille is doing, or The French Laundry is doing, or La Bernadette's doing, which is fine. That's just like a function of knowing what works and what doesn't work and generating the content towards that that audience.
Alex Abbott Boyd:It's fascinating because I did notice that a lot of the videos that you put on TikTok and Instagram, you don't put on YouTube. Is there a reason? Because even if they don't do as well, what's the harm?
Quentin Melhoff:I just find there's no harm, actually, to be honest with you. It's there isn't a big reason. I would say the YouTube Shorts algorithm is definitely, like, a little bit more funky compared to TikTok and Instagram. Like, I think TikTok and Instagram are their algorithms are so good, and that's because I think a lot of viewers in Toronto spend quite a bit of time on them, and it's more tailored towards them. They understand where to surface the content.
Quentin Melhoff:TikTok's algorithm is, like, an unbelievable. If I post a video on TikTok that talked about Australia, like, did a video talking about the best barbecue in the world, and it was in Perth, Australia, Big Don's Barbecue, and Andrew Golden from Golden Horseshoe talks about it. I post it, and I'm like, this is gonna be really hard for it to break out of the Toronto scene. But a day later, it's like, you look at it, holy crap. It's got like a 150,000 views, all from Perth, Australia.
Quentin Melhoff:Like, that algorithm knew where to put it, and boy did it hit, and same on and then same thing happened on Instagram with that. And I found with YouTube, it's better when there's content that has more of a global TAM, like a total addressable market that is all over the map compared to really local. Yeah. There's no harm in posting on Shorts. I think generally speaking, I'm just going to reserve YouTube for long form stuff, which is, like, in our, like, in our goals for later in the year as our team grows and we're able to spend more time in restaurants.
Quentin Melhoff:But we just need to grow the team first and make sure that we're set up for success. Like, all these things that go into YouTube are a little bit more intricate than, like, forty five second TikTok video. And if you can't hook somebody on a forty five second TikTok video, you're gonna get destroyed on YouTube. Right? So there's no benefit, I think, until you've figured out short form to then make that jump into the longer form sphere.
Alex Abbott Boyd:That makes sense. With the two platforms you're using the most now, Instagram and TikTok, what do you think are the main differences between them in terms of who's using them and how they're using them to discover a great restaurant, or are they pretty similar?
Quentin Melhoff:I think they're very similar. I think TikTok I think a lot of people know this post on the apps or you spend enough time on them that TikTok definitely leans more raw in terms of its style of content. So think of a video shot on your phone. I always say I'll can 100% get way more views if I just popped up with my phone right now and just was like, here are my top three favorite spots in Toronto with no visual overlays, nothing. No like, you might not even I might have never even I could literally just pretend like I went to those restaurants, and people would still be like, oh, cool, save, share, whatever.
Quentin Melhoff:Which is great. Whatever. Don't get me wrong, like, people can do whatever they want. Content like that usually doesn't do as well on Instagram. Instagram is a little bit more polished.
Quentin Melhoff:I found that the audience likes things that are, like, a little bit more high level. There's still room for both on both sides. Don't get me wrong. A video is if it goes viral, it's very rare that it only goes viral on one versus the other. We'll have some times where a discrepancy where a video hits, like, a 100 and something k on Instagram, where I think the audience for us is definitely more targeted.
Quentin Melhoff:And on TikTok, it gets like 20,000. Sometimes that happens. But we're not talking like one got a million views and the other one got 20. Like, they're usually pretty simpatico Yeah. And they go together.
Quentin Melhoff:So I I don't know. I don't really think about it too much. Almost every creator has one platform that they prefer. If you ask any of them, they'll all be like, yeah. My Instagram is doing better than my TikTok.
Quentin Melhoff:My TikTok is better than my Instagram. And you just focus on one or the other and try to do your best in that current lane.
Alex Abbott Boyd:So you mentioned earlier you created this structure with your cameraman where you're kind of Yeah. Sharing in the money that comes in.
Quentin Melhoff:Yeah.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Could you share just some more insight into how you did start to get money coming in for the videos? Because we know it's not from the restaurants. Yeah.
Quentin Melhoff:It's not from the restaurants.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Wants to pay you guys to make these videos?
Quentin Melhoff:There's one one deal that we're probably by the time that this closes is and maybe we can't put this in anyway, because I probably I'll probably put my foot in my mouth. But there's one deal we're working on that's probably is pretty sizable, and we're making content for them. And then they and we're also posting on our page and whatever, and then that's a big one. I can't talk about who that is yet. You'll see eventually who that is.
Quentin Melhoff:The other ones we have coming up, lot of it's with, restaurant tech companies, so think, like, POS software companies, schedule management companies, and a lot of that comes from, like, me working in the restaurants. Yeah. Like, I know which companies I worked with. I'm like, man, I really liked using that, whatever it was. Oh, man, scheduling.
Quentin Melhoff:I hated doing manual scheduling, then we got the scheduling software, and, yeah, it was a lot better. And then, oh, how are you gonna make money on this? And, oh, let me just message this company. Like, I have a contact there. Hey.
Quentin Melhoff:Do you wanna be featured in one of these videos? Like, they do really well. The amount of people who watch it in the industry is really high. It's probably a good, like, opportunity for you to get out in front of basically your ideal customer profile. Like, it doesn't get much better than this.
Quentin Melhoff:And so there's companies like that will sponsor the videos. You'll start to see it a little bit later in this year. That gives us a lot more, again, runway to do the stuff that we wanna do. Without the videos feeling, like, sponsored, because, like, it's critical to us that if there is a partnership involved, that the role that they play is very small. Otherwise, it's gonna detract from the story, and at the end of the day, we're trying to tell a story about a restaurant.
Quentin Melhoff:And that company, a POS company, restaurant reservation software or whatever, scheduling, insert, restaurant SaaS. There's a gazillion restaurant SaaS companies. They probably don't wanna be known as the company who's, yeah, we got an, we made an advertisement, and now nobody saw it. They want people to still see the video, have it perform well, and be like, we also powered that. Like we empowered that story to happen by paying a certain amount to both parties, which is how the revenues about to come in, which is cool.
Quentin Melhoff:Again, like, very similar to a software company. It's like you try to hockey stick your way up, and you never really believe it until it starts to happen. But, yeah, I think probably by the time this episode comes out, we will be in a spot where we feel very comfortable financially.
Alex Abbott Boyd:That's exciting. Yeah. It's wait. You look more scared than excited.
Quentin Melhoff:Well, I think with anything, more pressure comes with, okay, now there's more on the line. When it's just you and you're just like, okay, the only thing that matters is generating views for my own channel, Yes. The pressure is with you because you wanna do a good job, but it's not the end of the world if you flub a shot. There you go, oh, no. We didn't get that shot.
Quentin Melhoff:No big deal, man. It is what it is. But when somebody else is paying for it, then you feel like you need to really deliver, and we're thinking about how we can make sure that we don't mess something up. We very rarely mess something up these days, but there's added pressure. More people around.
Quentin Melhoff:More people are watching.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah.
Quentin Melhoff:We have two people usually total, And then you have a shoot where there's 12 people watching you get interviewed. It's if this podcast is watched and there was a audience. Yeah. You ask different questions. You react differently, and you need to be, like, prepared to try and make few people feel comfortable.
Quentin Melhoff:I'm used to be on your side, not on my side, and my goal is always to make them just feel really calm and chill so we get good sound bites. But if a bunch of people are watching, it's really hard to do that. So that's why I'm a little nervous because I wanna make sure it's good and it means a lot to me that the content's always good because that's what it's all about. Eventually, you have to make money. You have to make revenue.
Quentin Melhoff:Otherwise, yeah, what's again, it's great to tell stories. It's great to to do this, and I will continue to do this whether or not we make money or not for another year. But eventually, you gotta pay rent. You gotta eat. And again, that's why we don't wanna take any money from restaurants because I just think it's disingenuous, and I think it will call your credibility into question really quickly, so we will never do that.
Quentin Melhoff:And if we do, for whatever reason, there'll be a very clear and obvious reason why that's occurring, but I don't foresee that ever happening. So, yeah, we'll just find our other avenues. We'll work with these companies that want to empower restaurants, and that hopefully will allow us to do what we wanna do before we go down whatever path comes next because it's currently April. And this time last year in April, I was posting videos that were like skits. That's twelve months ago.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I think that's great. I think one of the most important things for an entrepreneur to be successful is to just constantly be evolving and learning and growing and not just stuck in what was working now, so I'm just gonna keep doing it.
Quentin Melhoff:That's, like, the only reason why I think we've had significant success is that I am so dedicated to evolving on every single video. Every video needs to be a little different. Whether the viewer notices it or not is one thing, but if I feel like we're not adapting, adjusting, making something a little bit better on every shoot, whether it be how we do an interview, how we set up a shot, how we tell a story, how we layer in music or layering on audio, we're taking a step backwards, and that comes from, like, my working in, like, restaurant experience, is if your sales aren't growing and they're maybe they're just the same, then you're actually declining. You're going backwards. And going backwards is, like, my greatest fear.
Quentin Melhoff:If we go backwards, we're gonna lose, and there are countless creators who still post the same content today in 2026 that they were posting in 2019, and they're complaining why they don't get views. And, dude, the landscape has changed dramatically. Why haven't you adjusted? There's all these tools, right? You can see every piece of data telling you what your skip rate is, what your average watch time is, your share rate, like rate, whatever.
Quentin Melhoff:There's so many tools. There's countless of, like, tutorials to figure out how to do something a little bit better. It's like, why not apply all those things and get better? Maybe eventually there's a time where AI comes in and wipes us all out. It could be a thing, man.
Quentin Melhoff:They make good vid the videos are getting better and better. But until then, hey. We're just gonna keep getting better at iterating with it, and then, yeah, like, seeing where that goes. If this style of video that we're doing today stops working, I'm not gonna just double down on it. We're gonna do something else, or we're gonna test it out more on YouTube and find our audience there.
Quentin Melhoff:Like, we're just not going to Yeah. Keep hammering the same button over and over again and expect for it to win. Like, that would be, to me I would just feel sad. And I think I'll notice it before the viewer notices it, which is good because you're in it so much Yeah. That you get bored of something before the viewer gets bored of it.
Quentin Melhoff:Same as a chef gets bored of a dish Mhmm. Before the diner gets bored of it. And so you pull it off the menu before they get sick of it. That's the key. And same thing with content.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. It's so sad. I my first business, I was a part of the huge New York City artisanal food movement. Right. It's like the Brooklyn pickle maker.
Quentin Melhoff:Gotcha.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Brooklyn chocolate maker, etcetera. And I just watched one of the Brooklyn pickle makers who was the best just go out of business because he couldn't make it work in Brooklyn, and he didn't realize people liked it because the pickles tasted great. He thought bro it had to be made in Brooklyn and kept couldn't afford Brooklyn rent, and he just literally went out of business and just liked it.
Quentin Melhoff:You don't need to do that.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. You don't.
Quentin Melhoff:You just need to find your thing.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Find what's working.
Quentin Melhoff:Yeah. And don't be defined by one thing. Don't feel like you have to be this thing forever. Like, most people how many often die or how often do people change their career, quote unquote, in their lifetime? Lifetime?
Quentin Melhoff:And I'm pulling this from, like, a grade 11, like, social studies thing or whatever, and it was like I think it was like seven times. If you're in content or food, you're changing that seven times in a year, and you have to. Otherwise, you're gonna be screwed. So, yeah, whether it's a pickle business or you're posting something online, like, it's so important to, like, always adjust and go with it. Like, right now, we're testing we're testing a new format that is working, but if it didn't work, would can it.
Quentin Melhoff:We are testing written content that's brand new, has always been in the works, and I have somebody working on that on the side because I wanna make sure that we are covering all our mediums, then we'll do long form. And so, like, eventually, some things are gonna work, some things aren't, and then that's okay. We're just gonna find what works and double down on our winners until they don't until we start seeing a decline, and then we're gonna try something new. Again, I think that's what makes us unique. We try new things every day and not be afraid to fail.
Alex Abbott Boyd:On this topic, what would you say is the state of food media in 2026? You mentioned there's very few critics that matter. Restaurants aren't paying. At least they shouldn't be, and there's very few that are. Yeah.
Alex Abbott Boyd:So what is the state of food media now?
Quentin Melhoff:So it's in a it's in a tough spot. I think there still are some publications in The States that do a fantastic job. Eater's still amazing. Still do a really good job doing in-depth written content, video content. There are people on staff that actually are paid to go to restaurants and review them and write about them.
Quentin Melhoff:And I I don't know what the world of, like, website visits are in 2026. I can only imagine most of the revenue comes from their YouTube videos, which is sad, but it is what it is. And running a food media company is very expensive unless you have massive advertisements. Like, it's really hard to pay a writer, multiple writers, a livable salary while paying for them to go to all these restaurants every year and be critical about it. It's like, to write a proper restaurant review, you gotta go three or four times and different time slots, weeks later, a month later.
Quentin Melhoff:The budget on that is is finite, and all the views are going to people like me who can post a forty five second video and condense this all down really quickly, which doesn't do a very does the restaurant almost always a disservice because we're not able to even if we wanted to dissect what our experience is in forty five seconds. And if I even made it two minutes long, guess what? If I made a video two minutes long on Instagram, most people are watching it for twenty seconds. So, like, you'd be like, oh, you make longer content. Dude, even if I did, average watch time's just gonna fall off.
Quentin Melhoff:Yeah. Even if it was the most engaging video in the history of engaging videos, it's not gonna pull its weight. So I think Fumi is in a really tough spot, and I don't know if it fully recovers. It's something that I one of my goals this year is to revive it in Toronto. That's a side project, but we are definitely going to try our best.
Quentin Melhoff:So there's gonna be written content, more in-depth stuff, more chef content, more industry insider stuff. Because, again, we're already doing this. We might as well put this in different mediums and give people a different opportunity to find and discover us. And if they wanna read more, if we do a list of Toronto's best pizza spots and we film it really nicely and we do all these static shots and because we I love static shots. And we go to each one, it's also like we need to give the viewer the opportunity to read about these places too in a short snippet.
Quentin Melhoff:Okay. Posted with that is our guide, and that's posted online. And if you wanna read three paragraphs on each spot, we're not doing crazy long things because, again, the average reader read time on an article is twenty three seconds also for what it's worth. Right? But giving people the opportunity to discover us at different touch points is what it's going to be.
Quentin Melhoff:And I think that's really what food media has become is just you have to spread all your tentacles out and give them opportunities so the reader's gonna find you there.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I like that. I feel like when I look at a restaurant's page on the Michelin guide, it's actually too little. It's usually like one short paragraph.
Quentin Melhoff:Yes. Like, give Three them little would be It's hard, man.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Because again, I'm not look. I'll be honest. I probably I'm not gonna read 10. No. But three that has, like, really value added insights into what it's gonna be like there.
Alex Abbott Boyd:I like that.
Quentin Melhoff:Yeah. So I got our food media calling it, it's called no subs. And the goal of it is to, again, give the reader options. So we'll have a flagship piece, so say it's something that we're we just did on Mosies, we did the video on Mosies, it did very well. We have this hour long interview, and the video is a minute long.
Quentin Melhoff:So, okay, now we have all these great tidbits and information. That could be a flagship piece, and so I take that, I condense that down, and then I have a writer who I work with who works for a couple pretty big publications and just wants to work with us, and she'll take that and she'll write a piece, and she'll make it more of a flagship. So we got that one there. And on the other side, you'll still get things like other snippets, our best our favorite taco spots in the city or whatever, and just written in a little bit more of a playful tone, less, I don't know, sanitized version of it. And just, like, again, just having different formats and stuff that, again, people can find interesting, they can subscribe to if they want.
Quentin Melhoff:They don't have to subscribe to if they don't as well. Some short snippets and long snippets. So if somebody wants to read long, cool. We got you. If you wanna read short, dude, I got an article I wrote on Friday, and it is probably 20 sentences, and that's all it needed to be.
Quentin Melhoff:And that's for that person as well. So we'll probably populate that over time, like, over the next month. That'll probably become a thing. Again, I don't know if it'll be the biggest success story, but we're gonna try and see what happens.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Could a restaurant survive in 2026 with great food and great hospitality and no Instagram page?
Quentin Melhoff:Yes. I think so. I think the cream still always rises to the top. Unless you have put yourself in such a vulnerable position regarding where your storefront is, if you are in truly the middle of nowhere, yeah, it might be hard. But if your food is undeniably good, your service is undeniably good, your prices are good, If you are good across the board, I still think you can be successful.
Quentin Melhoff:And the more that people like it, word-of-mouth is still really good. People now, if anything, have an amplifier to word-of-mouth. Back in the day, it used to just be like, had to just tell my friend. Now I can share it on Instagram and share it to 50 people if I really like my meal or something. Like, somebody can find it.
Quentin Melhoff:Right? And that's so I think it's a thing. I think you can still make it without social media, but I think you need to find a way to generate your own buzz as well. So, like, no excuses as well, unfortunately. But, yeah, you could still 100%.
Quentin Melhoff:I like to believe that a restaurant can still do it without social.
Alex Abbott Boyd:So given how much work it is, why doesn't every should every restaurant just ignore social?
Quentin Melhoff:I think it's a double edged sword because, again, you have to be willing to wait it out. And sometimes that takes a really long time in 2026. That could take it could take a year, but not everybody has the pockets to withstand losses for a year. So no but I still think again. And there's still a lot of food media.
Quentin Melhoff:There's still a lot of influencers. There's still a lot of people that, like, want to make videos about restaurants that are unheard of. Cause there's a real, like, benefit. If you are the first person to post about a restaurant, dude, your views are gonna be great. And so there's still a lot of people that are trying to, like, really dig in and find those spots.
Quentin Melhoff:So I think, again, I think if you're doing some really good things, you will get discovered. I think people are putting in the work to try and to find them, but you just don't hear better that often, unfortunately.
Alex Abbott Boyd:To close things off, I want to do Rapid fire. Rapid fire is something that you're usually doing. So your Toronto picks, most underrated.
Quentin Melhoff:Restaurant Stop on Ronci. Dennis is amazing. That is a restaurant that I think a lot of people in the the upper tier of dining, chefs, hospitality people, they love that restaurant. It's really celebrated within that community. Everything he makes there is amazing.
Quentin Melhoff:If you could blindfold somebody and be like, just pick things on the menu. Everything you're gonna get is gonna be amazing. The vibes are awesome. He's a great guy too. The fact that he's just so passionate about hospitality.
Quentin Melhoff:Yeah. I think he's just he's really good. People know about it, but I don't know if the overall dining zeitgeist doesn't know about it that much. We did a video with them. Their menu's definitely very different today than it was then, but honestly, anything you order there, I trust within a shadow of a doubt.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Best value restaurant? On the lower price side
Quentin Melhoff:of things, one of my favorites is for the last ten years has been Capletto. They do amazing things. That was two small stars. They're right off the top of my head, that's where I go. Best
Alex Abbott Boyd:date night spot.
Quentin Melhoff:If I wanted to be in a really sexy room with really cool looking people, great art, San Marco, close to Saint Lawrence Market, is just the maybe the nicest dining room I've ever been in. And the food's obviously amazing, but that dining room, they've put in so much money into that space. It is absolutely gorgeous. The people in the room like, when I went everybody there looks good. It feels good.
Quentin Melhoff:There's so much cool art on the wall. It's so meticulously designed. The food's amazing. The wine list is amazing. Hospitality's awesome.
Quentin Melhoff:That is a amazing date night, and then obviously the Dreyfus would be the other one that I go back to time and time again, and I think so many Torontonians go to time and time again.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Yeah. I always feel underdressed when I walk into Samarco. I'm not sure unless I was wearing a suit, would feel like I was appropriately dressed as
Quentin Melhoff:well. I think I wore a t shirt. And that's you know what? That's okay. But, yeah, I left there being like, wow, everyone looks good in here.
Quentin Melhoff:This is nice.
Alex Abbott Boyd:And then number one overall favorite restaurant here in Toronto.
Quentin Melhoff:I definitely don't have a favorite. I probably have a ton of people that I think are just doing things at a very high level. If you're, like, looking at the fine dining side, like, Aloe's amazing. Edgeless is amazing. Like, people aren't knocking off those restaurants.
Quentin Melhoff:I know people wanna smack about Aloe, but, like, Patrick tries at the hardest level to be one of the best. Edgiless is still at the top of the game. And then I don't know. There's just so many good place. Like, I can't pick I know I asked people to pick one.
Quentin Melhoff:I couldn't pick I couldn't pick one. There's so many great places, and I think everybody just needs to go and try places that they want to enjoy and then go from there. And the best is subjective. That's me saving my ass if anybody's wondering. I I don't know.
Quentin Melhoff:They're all I'm all my favorite when we go, and then also, like, I'm always obviously going to be very biased to the restaurants that we were just at. I'll be like, this is the best. Liliana was amazing. Like, Liliana's awesome. The best.
Quentin Melhoff:I don't know. It's up there for sure.
Alex Abbott Boyd:Thank you so much for your time and for coming on the show.
Quentin Melhoff:Yeah. Thank you. And, yeah, wish you all the best.