Today we’d like to introduce you to Maria Viera.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I grew up in south-central LA and graduated with a degree in psychology and business in 2022. It’s in my St. Mary’s University and hoping to become a psychologist but during the pandemic, I began to film the DoorDash orders. I received a food deliveries. I created simple videos of my food and posted them on TikTok.
Someone voice-overs, which got a lot of attention. I was still finishing my degree during this time and slowly started getting more attention on TikTok. I decided to create an Instagram and TikTok aligned with food reviews and my experiences at restaurants. from there, I told my boyfriend about possibly becoming a social media foodie, and he agreed and developed the skill for videography. We both thought working together would create better videos and possibly something we could do full-time in the future. I started getting reached out by big companies and a lot of mom-and-pop restaurants the loved my visual storytelling. And this Contin of visual storytelling didn’t come earlier, and it slowly developed as I put my own personality to my videos on social media. I noticed my style of content got a lot of attention online, so I developed it to be more intimate and describe history, family, recipes, and details that are overlooked for food reviews.
From there, on a guy reached by TikTok and Instagram to be official ambassador in representing Latinx food culture. Now my partner Alberto Ramirez and I are full-time food content creators representing apps like Instagram and TikTok. We film the beautiful stories of family, businesses and vendors across Los Angeles, OC, San Bernardino, & the IE. We are currently filming a documentary series focused on the food, culture surrounding family businesses and vendors called “food with who?“ Which is coming out in June, where we will visit 10 locations and share a beautiful documentary series focusing on the hardships and achievements that the world deserves to know of these amazing family, businesses and vendors. The future is looking great, a lot of big companies that are focused on culture work with us because we love to tell the stories of culture.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has not always been a smooth ride, especially as a plus-size Latina. I’ve always dealt with bullying growing up to two medium plus size. But knowing that social media could be harsh to women with my type of body, I had to grow a thicker skin. I know what I signed up for once I started my social media journey and I know that the love I get from my community overshadows the trolls and negative people that only care about what I look on the outside versus amazing creative style that we put in the world to support family, businesses and vendors. Another struggle is that there’s not many Latina women in the online food space, it’s mainly male-dominated, and I don’t know many Latina foodies as I call myself that do what I do. And I think that’s important because I hope that I can inspire other young Latinas who want to celebrate the enjoyment of food culture even though in our society women, I looked down upon, is the indulgent food or seem to even get a second plate of food. I even tattooed on my left arm the words “Latina foodie“ because that is my identity and will forever be.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a full-time Latina food, content, creator. My partner, Alberto Ramirez is the videographer and editor, while I create the ideas and post the videos of our visual storytelling. The visual storytelling videos we create surround the intimate details of family businesses, restaurants, and vendors of LA food culture. We specialize in creating documentary-style videos that show another side and struggle family, businesses and vendors that the world may not always have a perspective on. I am most proud that I am able to work with my boyfriend as a partner in this creative journey, where we both are developing skills of photography, videography, directing, and networking. I’m proud that I can take the space as being a plus-size Latina foodie. I would love to forever be known as the Latina foodie! But I truly believe, such as apart from others, is our creative, visual, storytelling perspective. My voice, the narration, and the perspective of intimacy, with the owners, who are transparent about their day-to-day lives of owning a business/restaurant/vendor.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
The major wrists we have taken to become full-time for content creators is to give up our jobs. My partner and boyfriend, Alberto Ramirez quit his 9-to-5 job and so did I because we believe that the only way we would develop value and Netwerk is if we put all our time into the social media world. And we are happy that we made a decision because now we are successful in becoming full-time food content creators. We work with amazing companies that respect our values as well as family businesses that seekers for our creative style on social media. We believe that has risking everything, especially our jobs which we were totally dependent on financially, brought an opportunity for us to work even harder and becoming successful. There are days where we feel like we should have a corporate 9-to-5 job just to have extra income, but we know that we will make it one day where we can be financially wealthy. But for now, we are content with the income we make because we get to work with our passion and with no one to tell us otherwise.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/yumyumfeast
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCdXwdLDfeRiZSobP-h3ujLw
- Other: http://www.tiktok.com/@yumyumfeast
Image Credits
Alberto Ramirez, Maria Aguilar, Nayomie Mendoza, Gabriela Cervantes
