Meet Ashley and Christian of @HungryHungry_Hipsters in Highlands

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ashley and Christian of @hungryhungry_hipsters.

Christian and Ashley, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Christian and I met working in the same photography lab that my parents met at many years earlier. We bonded over weird memes and gas station hot dogs on our lunch breaks. We decided to move to Denver on a whim and found that our time spent together at dinner was really when we connected the most over the trials and tribulations of moving to a new city and being thrust into adulthood with no real safety net. We didn’t have any friends or family here, so we started posting photos of our incredible meals on Instagram. This was before the dawn of the InFlUeNcEr, we just wanted to keep that connection with our friends and family back home. Social media is a funny thing though, and we ended up finding an incredible community of like-minded (aka hungry) individuals to talk about food with and who have wound up being very close friends! We have had the pleasure of meeting so many spectacular Chefs and seeing some of the most beautifully designed spaces in the city. Being part of the foodie community in Denver helped us feel like it was our home. Our date nights are so special to us, we spend our meal times laughing over the nostalgia of growing up, and dreaming together about what our future holds. We post on our page to encourage others to get lost in their meals and their partners and to hopefully feel inspired to find the connection to something meaningful.

Has it been a smooth road?
There are many “struggles” in the Instagram community, specifically being branded an influencer. There is a ton of negativity on this topic. If you feel inclined to ask “What is an influencer?!”, then you, sir, are being influenced. “Get a real job”, Hunny, we both have full-time jobs. I work in finance and Christian works in IT. Are there influencers out there that take advantage of opportunities? Absolutely. Is it fair to think that an entire group of people are trash because some of them are trash? Do I even have to ask that? Another issue is stealing content, innocently or otherwise. We have found our photos on other people’s pages without credit and asked for credit to be given. Sometimes people care and sometimes they don’t. Photographs are intellectual property. Being from a photography background ourselves, we always respected this and decided to never post content on our feed that was not our own.

This decision was reached for the aforementioned reason but also because we believe that to encourage others to have an experience, we would have wanted to have it ourselves and then decided if it’s worth recommending. We see others in the insta community using photos that are not theirs, pushing experiences they have not had, and that’s not the way we chose to run our page. We have never bought a like, follower, or otherwise used services that up our numbers in any way. We try to run our page with integrity and speak about our positive experiences in a way that shines a good light on the businesses we respect. We chose not to bash businesses, our page is not for critiques but recommendations! We respect the Chefs and small business owners out there busting their ass for what they believe in, and love sharing their stories with our audience.

Please tell us about your business.
The thing we love most about our page is that it is completely and utterly ours. Our content, our voice, and our experiences. We chose to work with businesses we believe in and chose to share things we think others might enjoy. Believe it or not, we say no to things all the time, free things! Why? Because if it’s not something we would enjoy, what reason do we have to push it on someone else?

Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
The incredible Chefs in Denver truly introduced us to world-class cuisine. This is totally embarrassing but I used to order chicken tenders everywhere I went! Now I love when the Chef chooses what’s sent out, what they are most proud of and want to showcase. I love eating something when I have no idea what it is! I love trusting the talents of the Chef and eating what they believe in. We appreciate the drive we see in our peers in this city, and maybe most of all the constant focus on sustainability. I love learning about the journey of my food from farm to table, how local farms stimulate the local economy, and the cycle of respect for what is grown or raised in Colorado. What do I like least? Traffic.

Contact Info:

• Email: hungryhungryhipsters303@gmail.com

Image Credit for photo under Headline:
Cassie Rosch, Photographer | www.cassierosch.com

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