Food Blogging
The Colonel Sanders of South India
Find out how this food caterer went on to become a YouTuber
Seated on a dry patch of dirt overlooking a field in Tamil Nadu, India, a wiry, weathered man wearing a white lungi (a type of sarong) and no shoes holds up an enormous steel tray of a hundred raw crabs for the camera filming him.
Daddy, as he is fondly referred to in his videos, is a 61-year-old you tuber from Tiruppur, a small town near Coimbatore in western Tamil Nadu, India.
In just two years, this YouTube channel, ‘Village Food Factory’, has attracted close to 2 million YouTube subscribers, with 6,000 new visitors every day it has earned the family more than seven million rupees, or close to a hundred thousand dollars, in advertising revenue — a small fortune in India.
The ‘Village Food Factory’ channel — is the brainchild of Gopinath, the 27-year-old from Salem who gave up a job at Infosys to chase a dream that was planted in his head when he was in Class VII.
In early 2016, he moved back home and decided to start filming his father cooking.
Most significantly, the Village Food Factory has completely transformed the Gopinath family’s livelihood. They once struggled to scrape together five hundred rupees (about seven dollars), the minimum amount required by the local bank to open a checking account.
With their new revenue, the father-son duo has gone on to open their own hotel, in Madurai, south India.
Most of us know Colonel Sanders and the Kentucky Fried Chicken Story, Daddy Arugumgam story is another example, that anything is possible if you have the determination and if you’re willing to get out of your comfort zone, even at 61.
