Top 10 Foodie Video Ideas for TikTok and Instagram Reels
Calling all the foodie content creators out there, it’s time to step-up your video game. Whether you like to share recipes, show off your expert cooking skills or just really enjoy eating yummy food - there’s plenty of videos to be made.
This guide is for both beginners and the seasoned veterans alike (don’t mind my foodie pun!). If you’ve already been making food-themed content but are feeling like you’re in a rut and need some fresh inspiration, I’m sure you’ll find some new ideas listed below. Here are 10 of the best foodie video ideas that would be perfect for TikTok and Instagram reels.
Reach More People with TikTok and Instagram Reels
For those looking to quickly grow your audience, video based platforms TikTok and Instagram Reels are where you want to focus your efforts. These two specific areas of social media are very much trending, and truthfully are one of the few ways to organically grow your following and engagement. Many other social media channels have grown stagnant and dare I say irrelevant, but Reels and TikTok are thriving and provide the most opportunity for creators.
Have Fun Making Foodie Art with Garden Toast
Creating fun and easy food-art projects are perfect for entertaining Instagram reels and TikTok videos. The garden toast trend is essentially using a piece of bread as a canvas and creating a pretty garden scene with cut pieces of colorful veggies.
Garden toast is a great way to use any fridge leftovers. The best part? It's super easy to make. This recipe involves hummus, fresh veggies, and any flat slices of bread. Brownie points if you can use fresh herbs, vegetables or edible flowers from your own garden.
Watch my Vegan Hummus Garden Toast video below!
Share Your Favorite Recipe with An Instructional Video
Have you ever thought about creating your own version of a "Food Network cooking show?" One of the top video ideas is to cook a recipe while recording all the steps to create an instructional video. Viewers are intrigued about how things are made. Your audience can get an inside look at your kitchen and glimpse into your cooking style.
Creating clips while you are cooking and then compiling them into an entertaining "food cooking show" video is a captivating way to share all the details of your favorite recipe. You can also get creative with photos and captions, or use a combination of both video and images. Video editing is made simple nowadays with so many easy to use editing programs and template tools.
Watch my English Trifle recipe video below!
Make a Video on How to Make Healthier Versions of Junk Food
We all have that guilty pleasure junk food that we just can't get enough of. Maybe you love making healthier and guilt-free versions of junk food (mine is keto ramen). These healthy hacks mean that you can still enjoy the food you crave, even while you're making efforts to avoid processed foods, saturated fats, excess sugar, etc. Sometimes it can just be a couple ingredient swaps with healthier alternatives.
Air fryer recipes have also been a popular way to reduce the amount of fat used to cook meat, veggies and more. Try this frozen chicken patty made in an air fryer!
To help your healthy video content get discovered by new users, use related trending keywords and hashtags such as keto, paleo, low carb, sugar free, etc.
Watch my keto ramen video below!
How to Make the Perfect Charcuterie Board
Be the hostess with the mostest with beautifully crafted charcuterie boards. These plentiful finger food platters are super versatile and fun to create. You can make a million different combinations of foods, and you can easily customize it for dietary needs or themed parties. For example, check out my vegan and plant based charcuterie board, plus my tropical Hawaiian luau grazing table.
There are many helpful tips and tricks that I have learned while creating my own charcuterie boards, which I outline in my beginner’s how to guide to charcuterie boards. Having the perfect charcuterie board for your next party or holiday gathering is about more than just creating a great looking display. It's also about having a balance between proteins and fresh produce, while also taking into consideration a mix of sweet and savory flavors.
When you’re creating your video content about charcuterie boards, try using the stop motion technique of filming to show how you put together a fabulous board. Make sure to incorporate a variety of colors, textures and maybe a few unexpected surprises (like maybe a mini complimentary desert board!).
Make your charcuterie board video go viral with these hashtags: #charcuterieboard, #grazingboard, #bringaboardnight, #cheeseboard and #charcuterieboardsoftiktok.
Food Diary - What I Eat in a Typical Day
A growing trend in video content is documenting your routines in a typical day. This is a fun way to share your personality and for viewers to get to know you on a deeper level.
Break up your day into segments and share your breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner with some fun clips and photos. Shine the spotlight on some of your favorite restaurants, food brands and even your favorite coffee mug!
If you’re traveling then make sure to make some travel themed Instagram Reels and TikTok videos, including all your vacation foodie adventures.
Share Dupe and Copycat Recipes
Dupe, copycat, replicate or clone, whatever you want to call it, these are popular foodie videos on TikTok and Insta. The concept behind these recipe videos is to replicate a popular restaurant signature food or drink in your home. If you’re really a talented chef then you could possibly improve on the original.
Creating an imitation of a wildly popular foodie favorite can be a great way to get more exposure, which brings higher engagement rates and followers. Some of the best dupe recipes I’ve seen are recreating Starbucks drinks, Crumbl cookies, Chick-fil-A sauces and sandwiches, and many more.
To help your dupe recipe get discovered, use popular keywords and hashtags such as dupefood, dupe recipes, copycat recipes, copycat coffee recipe, etc.
Budget Meals
People love watching videos with a budget theme, it’s like a sport! First came extreme couponing and now we have the TikTok trend of super cheap meals. The point of this game is to see how far you can stretch your money.
Start your content with planning out your grocery list and then head to the store. Recording yourself grocery shopping could be really fun and also be something really relatable for viewers as well. You could even do walking tours of each aisle and find the cheapest brands and compare them. Back at home, make the recipe from scratch with all the ingredients you purchased at the store.
When editing, use text captions how how you're saving so much money by comparing prices side by side of restaurant meals with your home cooked budget meal.
Popular taglines for these kinds of budget meal content include “feed your family for $3 a day” or “meals under a dollar.” To help your video get more views, use hashtags #brokemeal, #budgetmeal, #cheapmeals, #studentmeals, #budgetcooking and #groceryhaul.
Van Life and Camping Meals
With the recent boom in digital nomads, remote work and full-time content creators, people are embracing the outdoor lifestyle more than ever. When you’re out camping in one of the many stunning national parks, you still want to enjoy a delicious and hearty meal.
There’s a whole genre of foodie content built around campfire meals that go way beyond your typical hot dogs and s’mores. Many of these campfire meals include cooking with cast iron cookware, dutch ovens, mug meals, foil trays, tin foil and specialty camping gear. There’s even a lot of prep and shopping guides for the beginners who have never packed for an outdoor kitchen before.
For your outdoor cooking themed content, create campfire meals that are inventive but logistically simple to cook over a fire. Help your audience get into the spirit of outdoor living with insider hacks and tips to enjoy their camping lifestyle to the max.
After you’ve created your campfire foodie content, use these hashtags to help your content rank well in the algorithms: #campfirecooking, #campfirefood, #campingideas, #castironcooking, #cookinginnature, #campfirerecipes and #rvcooking.
Fun and Creative School Lunches
Preparing school lunches for children can be a pain, especially if your kids are in a food rut and burned out of all the typical lunch meals. The chore of making school lunches can be even more of a drag when you're short on time in the morning.
Create content that empowers and motivates parents to be creative and think outside the box when it comes to prepping school lunches. It’s no mystery that children love fun and yummy food, so film kid-friendly foodie recipes that have a touch of whimsy along with healthy food options. You can also include timesavers for parents, and even make the night before meals to save precious minutes in the morning.
Finally, a fun video concept for school lunches could be to record a reaction video with your kids seeing their new lunch for the first time. Have them open up their lunchbox to find a sandwich cut into the shape of a flower or a new cool bento box with cute compartments for snacks. Be creative and colorful!
When writing your TikTok and Instagram Reel captions, include keywords such as school lunch for kids, easy lunches for kids, kindergarten school lunches, etc. Related popular hashtags are #omiebox, #schoollunchideas, #momlife, #lunchforkids and #bentobox.
Tips and Ideas for Healthy Meal Prepping for Work Lunches
We talked about content ideas for school lunches, but let's not forget that adults need fun work lunches too. Your viewers will love to see foodie inspiration on new ways prepare healthy lunches for the office.
Meal prepping your work lunch serves three purposes: save time, save money and conveniently eat healthy. If you are repeatedly eating out for your lunch hour then you’re likely spending too much money on meals, and you may be eating greasy fast food too. Help your audience streamline their workday lunches my prepping the entire week of meals in advance.
As an example, I wrote a blog post about using meal prepping to help me lose the baby weight I gained after my pregnancy with my daughter. I created a meal prep chart that gets a lot of love on Pinterest, which could easily translate well into a video format.
You can also incorporate additional meal prepping topics such as making freezer meals and using up dinner leftovers. I personally also love my Pyrex glass food prep containers, which could also be a video topic.
Get more eyeballs on your food prep content with hashtags #mealprepideas, #sundaymealprep, #mealprepweightloss, #sundayreset and #freezerfriendlymeals.
