But fellow chef and writer Jeff Crump—co-author of local food bible Earth To Table—urged her to join the service, telling her how good of a networking tool it is. At first, she was resistant, moaning at the notion of more online networking. But after a few weeks she became a convert.
“You’re learning new links, updates and ideas,” she says, between sips of her beer at 86’d, an industry night she hosts Monday nights at the Drake Hotel. “It’s a message board and a community. You’re messages go out to Toronto and to the world.”
Knight, who until recently was a chef at the Drake, saw potential in twitter, both to find local information and to discuss global trends. She now uses the service to subtly deliver political messages about eating local and boycotting factory farms. But on twitter, she says toning down politics into friendlier tweets works best. “Screaming about it in a PETA way is going to turn [followers] off,” Knight says.
And unlike some irate users, if Knight has a bad experience at a restaurant, she’s not going to tweet about it. “If it doesn’t appeal to me, I’m not going to shout to the world about it,” she says. “I have no intention of taking business away from restaurants where people’s livelihoods are at stake.”
While social media has changed how restaurants do business, it’s also changed Knight’s other business, journalism. Knight writes about food for the likes of the Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, and the Toronto Star, but predicts the old media’s style of food criticism will go the way of bata tapes as social media gains prominence. “Why pay [a journalist] when you’ve got a million people doing it for free with the same credentials?” she asks.
“It’s taken the monopoly away from one voice saying ‘this restaurant sucks, this one is great,’” she says. “It’s given it to the masses. That’s now the way the world works.”
Ivy, via her site: IvyKnight.com
Some Valentines we made at 86'd:
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