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Cinderella Cooking: The Crazy Story Of Ron Yochananov Israel today

2022-05-26T11:41:53.239Z


The life of blogger and food influencer Ron Yochananov is a crazy roller coaster • Behind the hundreds of thousands who follow his recipes on the networks, a TV show with his wife and daughters and a fresh cookbook, hiding girls in a complex economic reality, closing a restaurant that led to an anxiety attack and parting from his mother. Today's variable is difficult to define dreams, "he says," but you always have to be ready and insane. "


Anyone who does not yet know Ron Yochananov, has probably never approached the kitchen, has not opened Facebook or Instagram.

Who knows?

Well, he just thinks he knows, because the complex person behind the smile and the viral recipes has only fully opened up just now.

Still, for the benefit of the unfamiliar, Yohannov is one of the biggest food bloggers and influencers in the local culinary world.

It has hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram, more than half a million on Facebook, tens of thousands on Tiktok and its own website with millions of hits a month.

Along with all this, there was also a lot of TV content, a new recipe book that became a bestseller, and now also a family TV show that recently aired on the food channel.

Outside the kitchen and screen Yochananov is married to Ella and the father of two daughters, Lior and Hila.

He is only 42 years old, but his life story, which includes upheavals, dramas and changes he went through or was forced on, can perhaps be summed up under the heading "When did he get through it all?"

There are great successes alongside tragedies, joy mixed with sadness, endless ups and downs, and also what seems like a happy ending.

The freshest and most painful example of those upheavals is the tragic death of his mother, the late Raya. It happened at the end of February, just before one of his highlights - the release of his first recipe book. " ", He recalled," in the end it did not happen because the book was not ready, and I planned to bring it to her the next morning.

At three in the morning they called and asked me to come urgently.

Until I arrived, she was no longer with us. "

Her death happened by surprise?

"She passed away in the blink of an eye. Her caregiver returned to Uzbekistan to visit her family after three years, and my mother took her 'departure' very hard and really went into depression. We were with her, but it did not help. She developed anxiety of abandonment, did not function and hardly ate. "Three weeks. Because she was quiet and did not speak, we did not understand exactly what was happening."

"Working from the age of 11"

Yochananov grew up in Netanya, in a family of eight brothers.

There was no money in the house, not even ordinary youth, but still - and perhaps because of that - a cohesive family name was created for glory.

"We are eight brothers, each completely different from the other and we all had an amazing bond with my mother. She won everything for us and held us," he says, "Now we meet every Saturday and eat together for her. We were broken from her death, but we came out strengthened hoping things would work out For us. "

Tough to grow up in an eight-sibling family in a complex economic reality.

"I would be gentle if I said I did not have anything from what my children have now. Even basic things - my own room, TV in the room, all the facilitation around. I certainly did not have a father who takes and takes me back from places or pushes me 100 shekel bills here and there.

"I started working at age 11, and all my siblings went out to work at similar ages. There was no choice. On the one hand it felt normal to us in the family, but to tell you that my friends also started working at that age? Absolutely not." 

In retrospect, would you like a normal childhood?

"I was angry, but it passed me by. For many years I cried for Mr. Gorley and regretted not flying abroad after the army or not enjoying my bachelorhood, but bottom line I do not think I would have gotten where I was with a 'normal' childhood.

I had a kind of Cinderella story. "

The beginning of Yochananov's affair with the world of food also happened thanks to his mother.

It was love at first sight, and he took it one step, or a thousand steps, forward.

"My mother's profession was 'community cook', and I went into the kitchen to help her and stayed," he recalls with a longing smile, "my mother was my inspiration for all the love of the food world. .

In short, foodie.

"I was like that even before I knew there was such a thing. Cut out recipes and everything."

But then came the ringing cape stage.

Yochananov was at a crossroads where every avid food lover who also has a cooking talent finds himself - the question "Should I open a restaurant?"

"I do not know what I thought to myself when I did it, really," he recalls, "I took all the money I saved - pension, provident funds, study funds, everything I poured on this thing. I thought I would get on the highway that would bring me to the estate."

Then you go into statistics.

"Yes, the restaurant I opened closed. It turns out that it is not enough to love and want. Life is one big tuition and learning from mistakes, and other clichés. I do not want anyone reading the article to give up on this dream. It is better to regret something you did than give up in advance."

Has the love of food been hurt?

"At first unequivocally yes, but it's not a collapse that was due to my food not being good. The collapse was the product of three bad weeks, which drained into me and turned into one big mix that made me mentally crash." 

The closure of the restaurant, which greatly hurt Yochananov, was also the beginning of a much more difficult period, one that culminated in a collapse and an anxiety attack.

"It had signs of a heart attack at first," he says, "my heart didn't function and I just couldn't breathe. I don't really know how to explain it."

You were only 35 then.

"I went through a life with a lot of challenges, ups and downs, probably relative to my age, but I had no anxieties. I was always in control, but the situation and the situation broke me. Meeting payments, customer satisfaction, employees and staff. I'm not lazy. "And it drank my blood. I knew a restaurant was a difficult thing, but I did not know how much."

It did take time, but Yohannov recovered.

"One day I decided to start a group on Facebook," he says, "a community where people can talk, designed for people like me and you who are looking for recipes and want my content. I had recipes at the time, and workshops I already ran. Within two days 50,000 people came to the group.

"I was relatively familiar with the niche and my recipes went around in all sorts of groups, but I did not have any official stamp, until that moment. I did not know it was possible to make a living from it, I had a website but I did not think it was possible to put the recipes on Instagram or Facebook. A kind of mass abandonment of journalists and bloggers from Facebook in favor of Instagram, so a vacuum was created on Facebook, a large part of which I filled in. True Instagram was the kicking sexy thing and the organic and commercial demand was for this content from it, "There is enough space and demand for everyone. In the end, I also reached Instagram."

So the message to dreamers is not to despair?

"It worked for me, and maybe it will work for them sometime too. When I wanted a cooking program I did not wait for them to come to me, and the new book is self-published. Book publishers did not contact me, so you do not need them. The recipes, but in many other worlds I am ignored.

"Half a year ago I would tell you it really sucks, now I do not refer to it. In my eyes, someone from the field and still does not know me is unprofessional. Know why? Because when I was a foodie, and even when I was a brand manager and marketing manager, I knew about each and every one Who just mixed an omelet on social media. " 

Now comes the stage in the article of "Then came the corona".

As you may have guessed, John's life is a ping-pong between dramas and tragedies and great joys, but the virus that shocked the world caught him just at a time when it was already beginning to succeed and gave him, out of necessity, just the boost needed to become what it is today.

"I sat at home and made content all day," he says. ? '

"I opened the camera and took a recipe for tuna patties with five ingredients. At that time there were no more restaurants and it was not possible to go to the parents to fill boxes, so here, every morning and afternoon during the most helpless period there is, my two daughters and I make entertainment and recipes. People cooked with us. "And we clung to this content. In each closure, the number of my followers increased by tens of thousands."

"Tweaking myself"

Yochananov's success and knowledge of making complex recipes accessible and easy to make - and thus more available to more segments of the population - have drained into the new recipe book, which, if you ask him, is the fulfillment of all his dreams.

The book, not surprisingly, sold tens of thousands of copies at the early sale stage and became a bestseller.

It was self-published, and Yohannov personally signed and sent each and every copy of the thousands of first copies sold.

"It makes no sense, is not perceived and is not normal," he exclaims, "before you arrived I was sitting in the studio signing books, and yet my feeling sometimes is that I need to tweak myself that I got to it."

Here too, of course, there was drama.

"A few months ago, when the book was ready and we were in the final touches, the file was deleted and everything went. To this day I have no idea how it happened. It was such a strange week that both the book disappeared and Instagram and Facebook were blocked for a few days. "My whole thing disappeared. I sat for two months with my daughter Hila for a few hours every night and we rewrote everything. We did the usual, linguistic and culinary editing - everything anew."

The book, "Cooking and Baking with Ron Yochananov," is, according to its author, "basic, unpretentious and unassuming and one that speaks at eye level to all cooks at all levels, with products that are accessible in every city and everywhere.

"I do not like to entertain with the tongue out and find myself all weekend in the kitchen when guests come - and the recipes were built according to this approach.

Do not come at the expense of quality time with family and children.

I do not want to make people dizzy, but to take things that are in the kitchen and pantry and prepare them with regular kitchen equipment.

I do not feel like sending readers on trips to kitchen equipment stores or special writers.

Everything is simple, cool gimmicks and patents, original method.

It's my DNA and I'm dying for it.

"Today I'm developing recipes as someone who 'has no power' to the kitchen. I'm looking to work less, without it coming at the expense of taste or visibility. This?"

Along with the book, you also return to television.

"Yeah, but a little different. It's kind of a non-trashy family reality show, involved in a cooking show. My whole family inside, it's fun."

"There are terrible reactions"

A sensitive point in Yohannov, as in quite a few bloggers and influencers, is in the feedback.

Ordinary people do not always remember that even when it comes to a community of hundreds of thousands, behind it is a human being.

In our case, one who sits and reads any feedback or comment.

"I get an unprecedented amount of love and it's free love," he smiles. Lots of love and support. Lots of times I get messages and cry. People who don't know me write me things that are nothing short of amazing - and all because of recipes, yes? "

I guess even the least nice reactions are not received by you indifferently.

"I read and see everything. I can read 500 responses and get moved to tears, but one generic bad response will ruin my day. "There are terrible reactions you get from people who could be your parents, I can not understand that."

And besides, is the "influencer"'s life really as glamorous as it looks?

"Not really. I work 16 hours a day, including Saturdays. There's no question of celebrities here, in case people are wondering. Even behind a few minutes item on a morning show are a few hours of work."

And yet, you and your ilk sometimes get reactions like "commercialized."

"Yes, and I do not quite understand why. It's a privilege for me to find out that I'm able to empty shelves, and that collaborations with me are yielding profits and success for the commercial companies I work with. I could not have done everything called 'Ron Yochananov' without the commercial companies. "The program, not the blog and not even the maintenance of the site. I really thank God for making me an influencer, but it does not come at the expense of authenticity. I will never post a product that I do not connect to."

And how do chefs and restaurateurs treat people in your status?

"There's something about our work, the food makers and influencers, that makes some people underestimate. There's a generation of chefs who 'missed' the momentum of social media. "Obviously there is some frustration. There are a lot of excellent chefs, the best in the country, who do not even have Instagram or have and are barely maintained. It is difficult for them and they do not have time to answer. I answer all my followers almost every question."

So here's a question, what awaits you in the future?

"The most important thing for me is to keep what I have. The arena is changing, so it's hard to define dreams. It used to be enough to be a blogger to be successful in the food world, but today even a regular 'celeb' or model can advertise olive oil. "Do not miss the train. Today I still do not have me in the writers, so it is a dream that I am working to fulfill it. I feel like creating a line of products in my name, both raw materials and pots and housewares."

shishabat@israelhayom.co.il

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Source: israelhayom

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