Food Blogging Retirement

Well, ladies and gents, readers from all over the world, the time has come; Greg's Gourmet is shutting its doors.

Truth be told, this is a decision that's been several years in the making. I haven't considered myself a "regular" food blogger since 2013. While it was fun to write about all the crap I'd eat, it became repetitive and boring after a while. How many times can I write about the latest burger or about how Company XYZ sucks at life? It takes a toll on you. I tried numerous times to rebrand and relaunch the blog but every attempt was short-lived. Between those rogue relaunches, I set myself to a system of posting once per month to the blog, just so it didn't look abandoned.

But I simply can't do that anymore. My heart is no longer in it. My appetite is no longer what it once was.

My eating habits have changed drastically. Gone are the days of four slabs of prime rib, giant chocolate chip scones, and mountains of candy. Present are the days of fruit salads (every day is Fruit Salad Friday), green salad once a week, and trying my best to go vegetarian during the week. Aside from a few token appearance, I'm completely off dairy, I've cut my candy down to almost nothing, and I'm in the process of cutting bread and related products altogether. Not that I needed to lose much weight, but I'm down half a belt size. The flip side of that is now my pants don't fit; they're either too loose or too tight. Just can't win.

We've had some fun times here. We've had contests, giveaways, challenges, videos, events, television recaps, reviews, Hall of Shame rants, food news, and even the occasional troll. It's been a blast to say the least. I started this blog in January of 2011 as a joke where I would post pictures of the food I'd eat for the world to see. For some reason, people seemed to dig it and I watched its readership grow. After about a year the blog gradually transformed into the visual layout you see today, which was the result of going back to school to learn various coding languages.

Greg's Gourmet was more than a blog; it was a playground. It gave me the freedom to experiment and try new things to see what worked and what didn't. Today in 2016, when people reference Greg's Gourmet, they're not referring to the blog; they're referring to the brand. I created a brand and even after the blog posts dwindled, people still saw me as Greg's Gourmet. That's when you know you've done something right.

I want to thank everyone for your loyal readership and enthusiasm over the years. It's been fun. Greg's Gourmet the brand will continue on in its own way. I'll still take pictures of my food and I'll still post them to Facebook and Instagram and the such, but as for this blog? It's been a good run. There may be a time in the future when the site is revived but right now I just need to focus on other things.

As always, thanks for reading.

Return to Blogging

Little bit of a soapbox ramble tonight. I more or less retired as a full-time blogger for nearly two years before deciding to revive Greg's Gourmet and return to the blogosphere. There were two reasons why I stopped: 1) It was getting old posting the same junk food over and over. You can only post a picture of a hamburger so many times. 2) Gordon Ramsay. While the schmuck took my viewership to new heights, writing up nightly recaps for Hell's Kitchen and MasterChef took its toll on me. Pair that with the fact that Hell's Kitchen has been sinking in quality faster than Bob Filner's political career over the past few seasons, so that made it extra arduous to try and come up with content for. That was 2013.

The evolution of the archive

In 2014 I only updated the site once or twice a month just to show that I'm still maintaining it. After putting so much work and effort into Greg's Gourmet over the years, I didn't want it to turn into a digital graveyard. But as you can see, 2013 & 2014 combined doesn't even come close to the kind of content I was producing in 2011 & 2012. So...what changed my mind?

Google+

Yes. Google motherfarking Plus

I was doing a bi-yearly check of my page and was looking at some profiles of my friends when I noticed a new feature: profile views. Well how about that, Joan has 10,000 page views. That's great. Hey, Jett has 80,000 views. Not sure how he managed that but okay. I wonder how many I have?

???

Half a million. Where in the world did that come from? This is far and away more than anyone else in my circles. In fact you can add most of their views together and it wouldn't even equal this. I did some research and the number is "legit" in the sense that there is a formula, though naturally it's inflated because Google has to save some face for its failed social network. Basically whenever a piece of content that you've created is seen in someone's stream then that counts as a page view. They don't necessarily have to click on anything but just as long as it shows up. 

For example, if someone is doing a search for cheeseburgers and one of my pictures shows up in the results then that counts as a page view. Since the formula combines all content created from all of Google's services, there's opportunity here for big numbers. Since Greg's Gourmet is produced via Blogger then it made sense that my pictures have been showing up in a lot of view streams. Regardless of what kind of traffic resulted in that I still think it's pretty cool. It means at some point I was kinda sorta doing something right. That's when I felt my blogging passion return. Don't get me wrong: Google+ still sucks. It's been a failure of Dane Cook proportions and I even wrote a rant on it a couple years ago. But it has served its purpose. 

So here we are in Greg's Gourmet's fifth year of eating and I'm happy to be back. I don't think I'm gonna go as nuts as the early days but I still want to make it as fun as possible. And with a return means a little change of branding, as I'm phasing out the cartoon version of me and sticking strictly to the fire letters. Check out the evolution of the logo:

Starting in the upper left is a sketch drawing that Rich Samuels made of me years ago. This was the first "official" logo as I was developing the site. Then the burger came along followed by the cartoon version of me holding said burger. This is the logo that most people affiliate Greg's Gourmet with. And then lastly we've got the fire letters which is what I'm going forward with. 

So I'm hoping to stay consistent and maybe blog regularly on certain days but whatever I do I'll try to keep it fun.

Thanks for reading!