Meet Eat Small South Bay of South Bay of LA

Today we’d like to introduce you to Eat Small South Bay

Hi eat small, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
eatsmallsouthbay promotes small & family-owned food establishments in the South Bay of LA. We were born out of the pandemic when we saw how so many small businesses were struggling to make ends meet — this was a way to give back to the industry that really shaped us as people. Coming out of the pandemic, rising overhead and costs, and labor shortages have taken a toll on the small guys, and this was a way to expand their reach without any cost to them.

We’re anonymous foodies by weekend, and an educator and supervisor in the South Bay by week. We are a husband + wife team with 10+ years each in the resto industry.

Our philosophy: This account serves to support small & family-owned food establishments through an objective lens. We don’t collab or partner with any businesses we promote on essb. We started essb to help increase visibility to small guys with no strings attached.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The nature of this project makes it a smooth process. We visit anonymously, and post what we ordered to a community of followers. I think the biggest challenge is having capacity to visit more places, since it is self-funded and we can only eat out so much. To be honest, one of the biggest struggles is to watch some of the beloved businesses shut down due to rising overhead costs and labor shortages. Watching someone’s passion slip away is difficult.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
As an anonymous poster, I can’t reveal too many specifics about my professional self. However, as I’ve mentioned, I am an educator in the K12 and higher education sectors in the South Bay and my husband is a manager for a distribution center. We have worked different levels in the restaurant industry over the past 20 years, and it has shaped us to be who we are today. We are most proud of creating an account that strives to promote businesses without biases and with an as-an-objective-a-lens as possible without taking advantage of the “influencer” or “social media” trends to collaborate for free product or to be paid for a good review or content promotion. Objectivity is important for this project, as we believe that not everybody has the same palate and/or tastes for cuisines. So many people are opinionated — we try to take that out of the mix to give these small guys a baseline chance.

How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
We don’t collaborate with businesses. However, please feel free to send recommendations with the link in the bio of the essb instagram account or DM me with any questions you may have! My biggest ask is not only support us at essb by liking, commenting, sharing, and saving our content and engaging with the account, but also following and supporting your favorite small food establishments, too! We created this community to help spread the word and engage with the businesses we love!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.eatsmallsouthbay.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eatsmallsouthbay
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eatsmallsouthbay