Brian Lagerstrom Doesn’t Give a Damn About the Algorithm

Happy (early) birthday, YouTube. To celebrate the site’s 20th anniversary, we present: The InsideHook Guide to YouTube, a series of creator profiles, channel recommendations and deep dives about the viral, controversial, unstoppable video-sharing giant.

My consumption of recipe videos skyrocketed during the pandemic. Whether it was old episodes of Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home or social vids from my favorite recipe developers, learning how to bake a loaf of sourdough or concoct the perfect stew was a great way to pass the idle hours of much time spent at home. For me, watching other people cook is soothing; in real life, cooking is a form of therapy as well.

Even though cooking shows have been around for decades, for a lot of YouTube creators in this space, the pandemic was a huge jumping off point. That includes Brian Lagerstrom, who posted his first video back in March 2020 and now — 300 videos later, running the gamut of pasta salad recipes to baguette tutorials — has amassed a devoted following of 1.5 million subscribers.

Lagerstrom was the sous chef at the now-closed Niche in Missouri and helped create Union Loafers in St. Louis. In 2018, he became a consultant at US Foods but was furlouged during the pandemic. That’s how he got the idea to start his channel, and it remains one of the most popular in the category — he didn’t even have to bend to YouTube’s desire for short-form video to keep his crown. I chatted with Lagerstrom about why he decided to get in front of the camera and how his new cooking career took off from there.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

InsideHook: How did you get into YouTube?

Brian Lagerstrom: I was a restaurant chef for a long time, and I got laid off during the pandemic. I’ve been a big-time YouTube fan for my whole adult life, and I had always wanted to start a channel. I didn’t really know what to do, but I’m the type of person who needs a project, needs to stay busy. So I was like, fuck it, now’s the time to give it a try.

I picked up a camera and initially made a couple of gardening videos because at that point in my life, I was super into gardening. I didn’t really see myself being able to make a cooking show because, if you watch them on TV, they’re multi-camera and super complicated. But there are all these gardening YouTubers who are just setting up their phones, filming themselves talking and I [thought], I can do that. So I made a couple videos and they were super dumb and I really, really hope no one ever watches them. [laughs] Like I really want to delete them off the internet, but my wife won’t let me.

That’s funny!

They’re terrible. Zero out of 10. From there I tried to see if I could make a cooking video by myself. Initially, my friends and family who saw the first food video liked it, so I made another and another. They kept watching, and it was something to keep me busy. I got addicted to the views, and that’s where it started.

You have so many subscribers and, to me, the pandemic really wasn’t that long ago. Did you blow up right away, or was it kind of a slow burn getting such a big following?

It was a grind for sure. I would say in the first year we probably had like 30,000 subscribers, which I see now is maybe slightly above average.

I was gonna say that’s still a lot. [laughs]

It depends on what your niche is, but we had a video kind of pop off at like month eight or nine [Editor’s note: it was “1 DOUGH 3 LOAVES | The Easiest (Actually Good) Bread You Can Make”], and then that really started to accelerate the growth. If you have enough good content, all of a sudden the recommendation algorithm starts really going off. But it took me a long time to figure out how to make a video that wasn’t totally shitty. So by year one, I think we had 30,000, and then by the following July we had 50,000 and then we got like 400,000 in year two. But that was also the height of COVID cooking and the absolute heyday of recipe YouTube for sure.

I was watching a lot of cooking videos at that time, and it seems like it was a perfect entry point for you.

Yeah we got lucky for sure. I think if I decided to start a cooking channel in the middle of 2024, it’d be a much slower build. It’s obviously more competitive now, and also there are less people who want straight-up recipe content. There are a lot of people who still want foodtainment, which is a different thing. It’s not like our videos aren’t entertaining, but they’re not entertainment first. They’re food instruction first, entertainment second. And that’s naturally going to have a smaller audience than people who are like, “I ate the world’s largest cheeseburger.”

Right. [laughs] Absolutely. But really, your videos are so informative. And I don’t want to say they’re for serious cooks because I don’t think you have to be a serious cook to learn from your stuff, but I’m sure people come to you to learn.

Yeah, our demographic is not really your total beginner. Our audience has a kitchen full of tools and wants to find the best recipe to make, not people who are searching for something like “How to cook salmon.” Nothing against those videos, but I haven’t figured out a way to package them to get views yet. A lot of people who are casually interested in food don’t really care about recipes. They just want to watch somebody make something, which is cool. But I don’t think I’m that charismatic to be that host yet. [laughs]

The InsideHook Guide to YouTube

For YouTube’s 20th anniversary, we’re profiling creators, recommending channels and dissecting the viral, controversial, unstoppable video-sharing giant

I think you’re selling yourself short. But speaking of your subscribers and audience, what are your most popular types of videos?

These days, a lot of people want fast, actionable recipes. Those tend to do pretty well, and pizza always does well. I worked as a pizza maker for a couple years, so I have some unique perspectives on the process that your random YouTuber might not have. So I feel like our videos have a little bit more value than your average pizza video — we’ve done probably 40 of them.

That’s a lot, actually.

For sure, yeah. I don’t really know, man. We’re always trying to figure out what works. It’s hard to predict. But junky comfort food is also gonna rip because everybody in the world wants to watch a video about mac and cheese. But if I do a video on Korean bulgogi, the people who are casually interested in food don’t even know what that is or give a shit.

[Our videos] are food instruction first, entertainment second. And that’s naturally going to have a smaller audience than people who are like, “I ate the world’s largest cheeseburger.”

– YouTube Chef Brian Lagerstrom

Going back to what you said about there being more competition now, do you think that’s because a lot of people got into the game during the pandemic, or do you just generally think YouTube has become more popular in the last four years?

Both, for sure, and there’s also a third thing, which is short-form content. The barrier to entry to get started on YouTube is extremely low, so the number of people who try will always continue to go up. And a certain percentage of those people will not quit. So over time, you have more and more high-quality content on offer. Four years ago, maybe there were three options if you wanted a similar flavor to what we do. Now, for whatever your personality type, there is somebody making a food video, and maybe 10 or 20 different options. If you want a certain type of cooking but also want low calorie, there are like 10 options there. If you want to see people recreate high-end restaurant dishes, you can find those channels. And it’s getting more niche over time.

Then there’s the short-form thing. YouTube straight up told creators during the pandemic that they were launching Shorts, and if you make Shorts, your channel will get preferential treatment in the algorithm. So a lot of people jump-started their channels by making Shorts. There are a few examples of creators who built a couple million subscribers in 10 months because they were posting three Shorts a day, and they were somehow able to bring that over to long-form.

But I also imagine YouTube is growing. Once you understand what YouTube is and what it can offer you, there’s very little incentive to watch television — because unless you really, really like scripted drama, that’s the only thing television does that YouTube really doesn’t. Or really high stakes challenge shows, but that’s even changing with stuff like MrBeast. So I think it’s hard to compete with because there are so many creators, versus Netflix where they’re throwing a pile of money at something and hoping it sticks.

I see that you only have one Short — I think it’s kind of badass that you were like, fuck the algorithm. You’re still very successful doing it the way you want to.

We’re very lucky — we don’t need to make Shorts. We monetized our channel pre-Shorts. During the introduction of TikTok and Shorts, I felt a lot of pressure to do it. But I think for the most part, this content is very low value and hard to monetize. That’s not to say you can’t make money through selling products with that attention, but it’s hard in terms of paid advertisements from brands directly with the traditional YouTube AdSense model. And I never felt incentivized to make them. There’s nothing I really want to say in 20 seconds.

What do you really want people to take away from watching and subscribing to your channel?

I don’t really know, honestly. If I start thinking too much about what people want, then the content tends to suffer. I just want to make something useful that people enjoy. I guess I haven’t thought about it much more philosophically.

At the end of the day, I really want people to use the recipes. I grew up on America’s Test Kitchen, Serious Eats, those types of things. So I always appreciated and really loved the side of the food internet that was testing recipes and putting a lot of effort into them because I’ve always been the type of person who’s going to make the thing that a lot of people who consume food content don’t give a shit about. They’re not gonna make the thing. But if they could be entertained and maybe inspired to try and cook some other stuff, that’s cool. But at the end of the day, if people make the recipes and they like them, that makes me feel happy.