I GOT THE JOB…

By experimenting with YouTube. I had lots of different jobs before: waitress, delivery driver, assistant. But I always had this entrepreneurial spirit, I just didn’t know what to do with it. My first YouTube video was a vlog in 2017, about the difficulties of cooking vegan food on a trip with non-vegans – it makes me cringe now but I keep it up there for the memory. I started posting a new recipe every week, using my savings to buy a camera and editing equipment, and just figured it out as I went along. Consistency meant my following grew and grew. About eight months into it I got an agent and eventually a book deal, which felt huge.

MY TYPICAL DAY…

Begins at about 10am, when I start to organise myself. My week is usually split into days when I film and create content and days when I take external meetings and calls, but that definitely isn’t happening right now, so I have more of a casual checklist. At first, I didn’t know what to do content-wise. My persona is happy and jolly. Did people still want that? I didn’t want to seem like I was ignoring what’s going on. But the feedback I got was people wanted distraction and to feel good. So, I’ve been doing live Instagram cookalongs with things still available in supermarkets – canned tomatoes and chickpeas, for example, have been almost impossible to find. And posting easy-to-follow recipes, like my spiced apple ‘quarantine cake’.

A day in the life of Instagram vegan chef, Rachel Ama