Knowledgeable Passion – Thomas and Sheena – YouTube – Chasing a Plate – Food Channels

Imagine a delicious steak and ale pie as a statistical pie chart that illustrates the total time we all spend working, sleeping, and doing everything else during our lifetime. Turns out that the split is even, with the pie neatly slicing into three equal tranches: one-third working, one-third sleeping, and one-third on the rest which is basically enjoying life. If one-third of our life spent working consists of work we really don’t enjoy then that’s a long time spent not really enjoying things. When you don’t really enjoy things for prolonged periods of time it generally means we’re less likely to sleep too well as a result. Not sleeping very well will then impact our ability to extract maximum enjoyment from the final one-third that’s meant to be the fun bit. To keep with the edible pie chart analogy, if the one-third of the pie that represents our work life has a soggy crust and hardly any filling, then it’s highly likely the other two slices will too.

Any search engine will hardly need to open a digital eye to find a plethora of rather worrying statistics about the increasing dissatisfaction of the world’s workforce. A 2022 global Gallup poll revealed that a whopping 85% of employees are not engaged with their work. This percentage increases to 90% in Western Europe. A recent Monster.com poll found a staggering 94% of employees they polled said they had been bullied in the workplace. One always needs to be careful with surveys and statistics, but the sheer volume of statistical data pointing towards workplace dissatisfaction surely means that people are less than happy at work.

Overlooking the beach, just north of Auckland New Zealand, there resides a couple who would probably unintentionally crash the global servers of all survey companies if they were to take their online workplace contentment tests. The software and hardware engineers may simply not have fitted their servers with processing chips capable of handling such a throughput of positive engagement. This couple’s positivity, knowledge, and passion for what they do is utterly infectious, these foodie extraordinaire creators are, Thomas and Sheena. Their delicious YouTube channel is aptly named, Chasing a Plate.

Historically, at some point, I’d obviously let slip to YouTube’s algorithm that I was partial to a pie or four. A penchant for pies is a secret that’s hard to keep with all the foodie-related searches I do. Serendipitously, on this occasion, YouTube’s algorithm guided me to a video of Thomas and Sheena doing a tour of some of New Zealand’s top pie makers. In this instance, I did say a short prayer to the Greek goddess of algorithm, I believe she is the step-niece of Apollo. Seeing as New Zealand has a reputation for making some of the best pies in the world, this video was guaranteed content gold for me. However, I soon forgot about my beloved pies as, almost instantly, I could see that Thomas and Sheena were two of the most talented YouTube content creators I’d seen on the platform, and I’ve watched lots.

We’ve written past pieces about what ingredients are in the secret sauce that makes some YouTube creators operate on another level. We’ve covered cadence, storytelling, videography, polymath ability, being brilliant at being yourself, and other elements too. Thomas and Sheena have all the prementioned ingredients in spades but they also have a talent that we’ve not yet fully explored – knowledgeable passion. Simply being passionate about a topic means you’ll likely be entertaining to your viewers, but this does not necessarily mean they will find you informative. True creator engagement happens when their viewers find them both entertaining and informative. When this occurs, a level of trust is formed between the creator and their viewer community.

Many foodie channels will film a location and its food but will leave you not entirely sure whether you’d also enjoy the experience in the same way they did. When Thomas and Sheena visit a place and like it, you are left certain that you’ll like it too. One key reason for this ability to convey the real DNA of a place/food is that they’ve clearly done their due diligence pre-visit so as to ensure quality. However, once they get there, they are then so blooming good at not only describing the food but also talking to the proprietor or the head chef so as to really bring out the foodie DNA and story behind the food they are tasting. In essence, they’ve mastered the technique of bringing the person behind the food to the forefront, this is the future of foodie YouTube content, and these two have been doing it for years.

Their refined technique of looking at the person behind the food is as often used to champion the most well-known and esteemed businesses, as it is to shine a light on the lesser-known hidden gems. Whether they are in the kitchen talking to one of Auckland’s most talented and well-known chefs at Hello Beasty; talking to an equally talented but relatively unknown husband and wife cooking duo at Fu U Roast & BBQ (a hidden away gem in Northland); or talking to a start-up Filipino food truck business, Hapunan – Thomas and Sheena are always on point. It’s so lovely to watch them engaging with these chefs and proprietors who are clearly delighted that they are being asked to talk about their personal stories, and not just about what they cook and/or produce.

The food IQ of these two is also immense, foodie DNA runs through their veins. Sheena’s family ran a Cantonese roast shop when she was younger, herself and Thomas are two of the most brilliant describers of Asian cuisine varieties and tastes on YouTube. They don’t just eat Asian food, far from it. There is hardly a cuisine type that they’ve not tasted, a simple search within their channel gives you the geographical array of their food knowledge and content. Their palates and food descriptors are always clear, concise, and yet 360 at the same time. Yes, they generally focus on the place, the taste, and the person behind the food, but they will also bring in other real foodie elements whenever they can. A super example of this was their explanation of food provenance displayed during their recent visits to Northland’s Sage and Duke of Marlborough restaurants. Both these establishments have taken provenance to the next level. Thomas and Sheena brilliantly shine a light on how the head chefs at these two restaurants are obsessed with sourcing ingredients from the Northland area. Sheena’s description of her Māori boil-up at the Duke of Marlborough would give the late Anthony Bourdain a run for his money, you will quite simply have to have a boil-up after listening to her description. They conclude their Northland series at Matich’s, possibly New Zealand’s best fish & chip shop. I’m from the UK where fish and chips are an institution, but Matich’s looks entirely on another level. On top of serving the freshest, most divine locally caught fish, the restaurant is also a dine-in and has a wet section where you can buy fresh fish – what a brilliant combination.

Knowledgeable passion has three constituent parts of the process:

1. The knowledgeable passion from the originator.
2. The audience being entertained and informed by it.
3. The resulting positive and authentic engagement between the originator and the audience.

In the corporate world, this could take the form of a knowledgeably passionate boss helping their team to achieve outstanding results by inspiring them all to go above and beyond what they thought they could possibly achieve. In the education world, it could mean an outstanding teacher helping their students to engage more than they normally would, learn quicker, more deeply, and get better grades as a result. On YouTube, it means that these certain creators have subscribers who watch more of their videos, for longer, keep coming back to watch more, and become positively inspired in the process.

85% of the world’s workforce aren’t engaged at work because they don’t enjoy their work. If you don’t enjoy something then you’ll never be able to be knowledgeably passionate about it and inspire others around you, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy and an ever-decreasing circle. What Thomas and Sheena have done so brilliantly is to double down on their pie chart of life, removing the one-third work element that many of us don’t much care for, and replacing it with their knowledgeable passion. The mathematics for all this is no doubt complex, I guess it’s a little akin to Warren Buffett’s theory of compound interest. Thomas and Sheena haven’t just removed the ‘less than fun’ one-third element from life, but they’ve then replaced it with something they don’t just like but actually love.

There is another type of pie, it goes by the name, Pi. Its 3.14 can be sliced into three equal number tranches, but you are then left with a mysterious .14. Perhaps by making their knowledgeable passion into their work, they’ve discovered how to unleash that extra .14, which turns their content into content to the power of pi. 

I’d imagine that Thomas and Sheena’s subscriber community is made up of lots of foodies who love to travel, but I’d hazard a guess that there are also many C-Suite executives piling in to watch, and subsequently taking ideas back to their HQs to help their struggling 85%

Links:

Thomas and Sheena’s YouTube Channel – Chasing a Plate: https://www.youtube.com/@ChasingaPlate

Website: https://chasingaplate.com/

Hello Beasty Restaurant video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-29X5JoZGA  

Website: https://hellobeasty.nz/

Fu U Roast & BBQ video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fV6xE-q_tU

Website: https://www.fuuroastandbbq.co.nz/

Sage and Duke of Marlborough Restaurant video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk2mPyOFjrs

Sage Restaurant website: https://www.thelindisgroup.com/sagerestaurant

Duke of Marlborough website: https://www.theduke.co.nz/

Matich’s Fish Shop video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWTyxcVpbmw

Social: https://www.facebook.com/MatichsTakeaways/about/?ref=page_internal

Hapunan Filipino Kitchen video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwHgXrdscDk

Website: https://www.hapunan.co.nz/

Thomas and Sheena’s collaboration with Northland Inc, Te Tai Tokerau Northland’s Economic Development Agency:

Website: https://www.northlandnz.com/visit/food-and-beverage/food-itineraries/wine-and-dine-on-island-time/