The cost of being a foodie

Cooking, feeding, eating isn't cheap. What when it's your passion and profession? Food bloggers and Instagrammers weigh in on the balance sheet.

Installing a built-in oven in the kitchen has come at a heavy price for Nikhil Merchant, 37, who posts about his food escapades at @nonchalantgourmand on Instagram. Merchant's insistence on making his own sun-dried tomatoes in the oven—it requires nothing less than five hours—and baking every time his friends show up for dinner, means that his electricity bill has shot up by nearly 50 per cent. "I am not just spending on ingredients; there are other hidden, invisible costs that I need to bear. But if you enjoy cooking and feeding, you have to take in your stride," thinks Merchant, who spends at least R10,000, when he calls friends over for a meal, which is twice every month. His monthly food bills come to R60,000.

Being part of the food lover's club was never meant to be easy on the pocket. In fact, a recent study by OnePoll on behalf of Blue Diamond Almonds of 2,000 Americans, who express themselves through food, revealed that four in 10 foodies spend upwards of $51 (R3,700 approx) a week on gourmet items, while the average consumer spends $3,300 (R2.37 lakh approximately) on gourmet treats per year.

Nikhil Merchant

Rhea Dalal, who runs the popular food blog, euphorhea.com, says, where people spend on new clothes, she treats herself to "bartans and masala blends". "At any given point, my pantry is over-stocked. Once every six months, I do the terrible thing of looking in there and clearing it out. It breaks my heart. The problem is that social media bombards you with exciting products and information [on food]; you can't resist." Dalal took to blogging 12 years ago, when the Internet was still being discovered. The coming in of "communities" on Orkut, and later, Facebook groups, saw Dalal engaging more with other foodies. "I suddenly found so many like-minded people on Facebook. It became a space where I could share what I was cooking with everyone else," she adds. Over the last few years, Dalal has become more mindful about her shopping. "Apart from basic groceries, I spend anywhere between R1,000 to R2,000 on rare ingredients every month. I have become more wise about my money, though," says Dalal, who is also an archaeologist. Where she continues to spend big is eating out, "My husband Kurush [Dalal] and I love to dine at some of our favourite restaurants; we do that at least once. The good thing is that it's just the two of us."

Four years ago, when Vernika Awal started Delectable Reveries, a blog where she writes about her culinary sojourns, the mounting restaurant bills for the freelance writer, meant careful budgeting. "I had to keep aside at least R4,000, so that I could continue doing what I was passionate about," she says. Things changed, when last year, she started a cooking project on her Instagram handle, where she wrote about vegetarian meals from her home state, Punjab. "From eating out, it has now become about me exploring and learning about my own roots. So, I ended up cooking a lot at home." Despite the shift, she still spends over R1 lakh on culinary indulgences, every year. "If you love food, you don't think a lot about money. When I am eating out, which is almost every week, I try and stick to a budget of R1,000. I can go overboard, if the food is good. Unlike before, I also ensure that I take as many pictures as I can when dining out, so that I have a bank that I can use for social media, later. This way, I don't have to worry about generating new content every day." And when you don't feel like splurging, there is always the home experiments that you can share with followers, says Merchant, who recently posted a picture of the cherry tomato pesto, he prepared over a weekend. "Being a foodie, is like running a home," he says. The more you are invested in it, the more you invest.

Rhea Dalal has been blogging for 12 years and she spends most on utensils, masala blends and eating out

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