A Zoom interview with Jessica Bangaree, co-creator of Madness Munchies

Over the past week, I was able to sit down and have a Zoom interview with Jessica Bangaree, co-creator of the Madness Munchies food account on Instagram. Along with her partner, Lenny Pisano, the two of them travel all over Northern Jersey and New York City to show us some of the best places to eat!

Jessica and Lenny are both 23 years old, from the towns of Little Falls, NJ and Totowa, NJ. They decided to begin Madness Munchies in October of 2018 and have grown so much since, with an overwhelming audience of 10,000 followers.

“We would be lying if we said getting a following base was easy. It took a lot of hard work getting the right quality of the of pictures, the right angles, the right edits, and the right food,” she said. “That was just the post part, but using different media platforms like Facebook and Snapchat helped us get our name out there for a larger following base and to notify people when we put up a new post. We also stuck to the media of Instagram itself with the use of hashtags. We researched and took the time to figure out what works based on our audience and profile,” she also added.

As a student food blogger, I’ve found that keeping up with my profile is both challenging and rewarding. I decided to ask Jess what she found to be the most challenging/rewarding thing while maintaining their site.

“The most challenging thing is keeping interaction with the fan base, and trying to create new content with our busy lives,” she said. “I would say the most rewarding thing is seeing our following base grow, our content gradually getting better, and the PR we receive from our posts.”

Because their content is based completely online, I asked what her thoughts were about web-based journalism. Jessica proceeded by responding, “I think the social aspect of our lives holds plenty for the future. Web-based journalism can lead to so many opportunities and can help gain the recognition news deserves by finding the correct audience and spreading the word ten times faster than seeing it anywhere else.”

I then went on to ask what she found to be the most exciting/interesting part about running a food blog. She answered, “The most interesting part is to be able to eat for free. It’s a blessing to receive such great attention, then be rewarded with something we can take for granted. We also just love being ourselves when we have to get creative. Being able to stand out is something we are good at, which allowed us to build our brand.”

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A huge thank you to Jessica Bangaree and Lenny Pisano for giving me the opportunity to learn more about them and their lives as food bloggers! Jessica finished off our interview by giving me some advice that I think we can all take as student journalists:

“Persistence is the absolute key. Without drive, you will fail or be average among people who are doing the same. Also, having fun while you are doing the things you love. Standing up in a restaurant and taking pictures with lighting props might not be the most ‘normal thing’, but when you’re doing what you love, you shouldn’t have to think twice!”

Follow me on twitter @unexpected_eats for more posts!