Genius foodie: Nagi’s secret to building kitchen empire

Don’t call Nagi Maehashi an influencer — she doesn’t have the time to do her hair like one.

The loveable foodie is, though, influencing dinner plates all over the country.

She makes recipes impossible not to follow — even for the biggest culinary phobics.

In return, she has clocked up a million followers and won book of the year and illustrated book of the year for her debut cookbook RecipeTin Eats: Dinner.

“When people say I have a million fans it always daunts me,” says the Japanese-born Sydneysider.

“On a day-to-day basis, I don’t even think about collecting a million people! I just always feel like I am talking to one person.”

Aside from her genius food ensembles, she has a sous chef like no other, her 11-year-old retriever Dozer.

“He is the draw card!” Nagi says.

“He absolutely gets offered his own opportunities. He almost needs his own manager, to be honest.”

Despite a titanic online fandom, the former financier is oblivious to social media wars.

“I write like I am teaching the recipe to one person,” Nagi, 38, says. “Now there just happens to be a few of those people. I don’t (play) the social media card. I don’t consider myself an influencer.

“You know they talk about influencers, people with millions and millions of followers and they talk about themselves as creators and they work with brands for them to promote products. There is that whole industry of social media influencers. I just don’t see myself like that or operate like that.”

“All I genuinely want to do, because I love food so much and I am so passionate about cooking from scratch and not buying frozen meals — all I want to do is come up with new recipes, share and let people cook it successfully and enjoy it with their families. That’s what makes me happy.

“Not having lots of people following me on social media. I don’t care about that. Then you have to worry about brushing your hair when you wake up! I don’t have the energy for that.”

Nagi’s kitchen empire all happened by accident.

“For me I actually really enjoyed my old job. I was in finance and loved the people I used to work with. I enjoyed what I did, worked really hard, but for me I just always wanted to really do something for myself,” she says.

“I had a thing in my head that I am working so hard, giving blood, sweat and tears to a faceless corporate.

“I didn’t even know who owned the company – men overseas! I just wanted to have a crack at putting my time and effort into something I was passionate about.

“I just came to a time in my life where I saved up enough money that I could take a break from working 9-5 for a few years and putting a crack at putting capital into my own thing. I had a crack.”

She recalls: “Totally failed at my first thing, which was an app. It was a recipe app, a total dud. 18 months of my life on that. Complete dud. Next thing was the website and I am very glad that that worked. I definitely didn’t think this would happen.”

So with so many food influencers, what is it about her feed that stands out from the cooking crowd?

“I think I just bring a different angle,” Nagi says. “From my perspective, I come at it from a home cook perspective, not a chef. I don’t own a restaurant. I genuinely shop where you shop. I have the same appliances you have. I started in an Ikea kitchen. With one bench. I didn’t have a dishwasher. It was a cheap Ikea electric stove that would turn off automatically every 15 minutes. So you would be simmering something that wasn’t simmering!

“My house was crooked, my cakes would be wonky unless I carefully rotated the cake every 10 minutes to make sure it baked evenly.

“I don’t shop at gourmet stores. One of the big things chefs forget is they are fortunate to work with produce that we don’t have access to.”

And the ace in her pocket, or sniffing her pocket as she cooks, is her best bud Dozer.

“I don’t need a talent manager, he needs a talent manager!” Nagi says.

“It was so accidental. It was just me being me. My phone is full of photos of him. I just adore him so much.

“I just started throwing up photos of him on my website and ‘I made this, it’s delicious and Dozer agreed’. It got to the point that people just loved hearing stories about him and seeing his photos. If I didn’t mention him in the recipe, I’d get feedback! People would be like, ‘the food looks great and all but we want to know what Dozer is up to!’”

It got so intense she made a Dozer button for the site.

“He built such a fanbase I had a button built at the top of every post that it skips all of my babble about the food and goes straight to Dozer,” Nagi said.

“I had to get a Dozer button because people would say ‘recipe looks great but sorry I want to see what Dozer is up to and if I have time, I will read your recipe!’ “

And what does he think of her grub? “He eats everything he is allowed to,” Nagi says. “All the things dogs aren’t, like onion and garlic, I won’t give to him but other than that he will taste-test everything. It’s part of the fun for me. He is always by my side drooling at my feet. How can I not give him a taste?”

Get cooking at www.recipetineats.com