How the man behind Instagram's Brunch Boys eats for a living

Jeremy Jacobowitz has loved food since he was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y. With his parents working all the time, he quickly realized it was up to him to teach himself to cook so he could make his own dinners. Decades later, his whole career depends on working alone and eating food.

"I was all over the country, every single day in a different restaurant," Jacobowitz told In The Know. "Food Instagrams were becoming a thing, I had the opportunity where I had content. Brunch Boys was an accident, so Instagram took off and that became a thing. It wasn't strategic at all of, 'Oh I'm going to have this Instagram account and I'm going to blow this up.'"

Jacobowitz started the Brunch Boys Instagram account in 2014 while in between working various TV jobs. Five years later, he transitioned from working behind-the-scenes for Bobby Flay to making Instagram his full-time job. The account now has more than 457,000 followers.

Jacobowitz knows it sounds like a dream job for a lot of people — he definitely feels the same way — but clarifies it's a lot more work than people realize, especially since he's doing everything on his own.

"All my videos are done by myself. I'll get messages being like, 'Oh, would love to hire your photographer!' And I'm like, my photographer is me with a camera on a tripod that I control with my phone."

Just like cooking, he taught himself everything too. "I've taught myself how to film, how to edit, how to light, how to do audio and be on camera. I live and die based on my decisions."

To run a viral Instagram account requires a lot of content. In addition to Brunch Boys, Jacobowitz is active on YouTube and TikTok, and, unrelated to the rest of his "food porn" brand, he also co-hosts a weekly podcast called Monday Night Pod, which covers wrestling. He works seven days a week maintaining all the accounts.

The perks of the job, however, include checking off travel bucket list items.

"I do get to travel a lot. I went to Japan with All Nippon Airways," Jacobowitz said. "Going to Japan was my dream, and the fact that I was able to just document pretty much every second of it is just totally, like, the experience I never could have ever imagined."

Even with long hours and a tight travel schedule, Jacobowitz values the fact that food — something he's loved since he was a kid — can be his whole career.

"Yes it's my career, yes I have to worry about it way more than I ever thought I would, but my perspective is: This is my passion project still, let me just keep putting my passion into it."

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