The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
the b-side
Thursday, February 4, 2016 — 3B

Spoon, a college 
mag for foodies

A scrumptious 

look at the online 
food magazine.

By MARIA ROBINS-SOMER-

VILLE

Daily Arts Writer

I’m a foodie. At age 10, I fell 

asleep with a copy of the magazine 
Cook’s Illustrated draped over 
my face. I consider going to the 
grocery store an adventure, and 
sometimes I read Yelp reviews 
while I’m sitting in the restaurant. 
My sister laughed at me while I 
tried frantically to keep a few herb 
plants alive on my windowsill, 
and when I told her that I wanted 
to only eat produce that was in 
season to “enhance my culinary 
experience.” The most serious 
love poem I’ve ever written is a 
three-page ode to pizza. Kitchen 
clumsiness and a few too many 
pieces of burnt toast aside, I’m 
pretty sure I’m a foodie.

You don’t need to be a gourmet 

chef or a food scientist to be a 
foodie. Sometimes, you can be 
a foodie just by falling for those 
suave 
Tasty 
videos 
clogging 

your Facebook newsfeed (and 
maybe clogging your arteries) or 
finding deep satisfaction in seeing 
“The 16 Presidential Candidates 
Reimagined as Food Puns.”

A foodie is a person with an 

especially refined or particular 
interest in food. They can be found 
with a camera lens at table level as 
a sunny-side up egg seductively 
spills out of their burger at Frita 
Batidos, or perfecting a bird’s-eye 
shot of latte art at Ann Arbor’s 
Lab Cafe, all for the perfect 
Instagram. You may find them 
perusing aesthetically pleasing 
food blogs for a recipe to christen 
their recent freedom from dorm 
living, or texting friends to make 
a game plan to tackle Restaurant 
Week.

The rise of foodie culture is 

inextricably linked to the growing 
digital 
world 
and 
increasing 

dependence on social media. The 
organization Spoon University 
has ridden this trend in the online 
food community to success both at 
Michigan and elsewhere. “Spoon” 
is an online publication run by 
college students that focuses on 
producing food-related content. 
The website was launched in 2013 
by Sarah Adler and Mackenzie 
Barth 
during 
their 
time 
as 

undergraduates at Northwestern 
University.

Spoon currently has more 

than 100 chapters at colleges and 
universities across the country 
and has even begun to expand 
internationally to the University 
of St. Andrews and the University 
of Edinburgh in Scotland, as well 
as University of Delhi in India. 
The chapter here at Michigan was 
one of the first five chapters.

I 
met 
with 
LSA 
senior 

Sara Estes who is currently 
the editorial manager of the 
University’s chapter of Spoon, to 
learn more. 

As editorial manager, Estes 

is responsible for overseeing all 
written content and for helping 
writers 
through 
the 
article-

writing process.

“I usually come with a few 

things I want to get written about 
restaurants that are opening or 
closing, or events on campus,” 
Estes said. “Throughout the week 
I’m helping writers if they have 
any questions, and editing all of 
the local articles.”

Writers choose to write local 

articles (Ann Arbor-specific) such 
as “15 Reasons You’re Gaining the 
Freshman 15 at Michigan” or “The 
10 Most Instagrammed Foods in 
Ann Arbor,” which go through 
the editing process at the local 
chapters “National” articles such 
as “5 Ways to Cure Your Nasty 
Cold With Help From Beyonce” 
are sent to Spoon Headquarters in 
New York. There, editors decide 
whether to approve and/or edit 
the content before permitting the 
University chapter to publish it 
locally.

Estes first got involved with 

Spoon when it began at Michigan 
in 2013. She was a sophomore 
looking 
to 
dabble 
in 
the 

intersection of writing and foodie 
culture.

“It was small then, maybe 15 

or 20 of us on the editorial side,” 
Estes said. Now Michigan’s Spoon 
Chapter has upwards of 90 official 
members.

In keeping with the communal 

and collaborative nature of Spoon, 
Estes hopes to develop leadership 
in the organization while still 
respecting the autonomy and 
creative integrity of contributors.

“Regularly I have an internal 

battle of making sure everyone 
is doing what they’re doing, but 
not totally feeling like their boss,” 
Estes said. “I want them to feel 
comfortable asking me questions. 
(At Spoon) you should make of it 
what you want — no idea is a bad 
idea.”

The members meet Mondays 

in a large group, then split off 
into smaller groups to discuss 
the different aspects of the 
organization.

Spoon often takes cues from 

seasonal trends or holidays to 
stay relevant. This can include 
anything from reviewing a new 
restaurant opening up on campus 
to 
planning 
an 
aphrodisiac-

fueled meal to woo a prospective 
Valentine. 
They’ve 
published 

everything 
from 
“Which 

Mediocre Halloween Candy Are 
You?” to “The Stages of Being 
Hangry, as Told by the Grinch.”

Food at Spoon University can 

even extend to health and wellness 
issues. An article recently written 
at Emerson College’s chapter 
discussed the recent introduction 
of more body-positive Barbie 
dolls. Spoon at Indiana University 
recently published an article 
about lead poisoning in regard to 
the Flint water crisis, tying in the 
science of nutrition to an issue 
that is normally targeted in other 
news context.

I sat in on an events group 

that was planning a cookie 
grams Valentine’s Day event and 
exploring options of partnering 
with Insomnia Cookies. Much of 
Spoon’s success has depended on 
partnering with local restaurants 
or gaining sponsorship from 
companies such as GrubHub or 
KIND.

The group has also started 

to 
investigate 
options 
for 

partnership with other student 
organizations on campus that 
incorporate foodie culture into 
their goals and missions — for 
example, they hope to collaborate 
with student group Baking for 
BRCA, a group that sells baked 
goods in order to fund BRCA gene 
research. BRCA mutations can 
increase the risk of certain types 
of cancer. 

Where the editorial group met, 

members bounced ideas off each 
other, engaging in a collaborative 
process to come up with possible 
articles. 
With 
thousands 
of 

articles floating around in the 
Spooniverse, the team seeks to be 
specific, relevant and accessible.

This is where the localized 

aspect 
of 
Spoon 
becomes 

important — members pitch ideas 
such as an article about foods 
that may be scientifically proven 
to increase happiness during 
the dull winter months, or even 
an article sprouted out of the 
odd realization that Patagonia, 
a camping store, sells food. The 
peek into the Spoon meeting 
highlighted why exactly the 
startup runs and succeeds the 
way it does. The environment 
is dynamic and fast-paced — 
members have their laptops open 
to various previously published 
Spoon 
articles, 
food 
blogs 

and master spreadsheets that 
categorize different articles in 
the works.

Estes gave me a sneak peek 

of an upcoming article that 
compares 
different 
foods 
to 

various classes at the University. 
“Of course Comm 101 is avocado 
toast!” she laughed.

Because Spoon’s content runs 

the gamut of anything from 
recipes, to Buzzfeed-style quizzes 
and 
listicles, 
or 
restaurant 

reviews or more health- and 
wellness-based content, it seeks 
to create an accessible and 
inclusive 
environment. 
The 

Internet community that allows 
for connection through the world 
of food may just be an update 
to centuries of people coming 
together over a meal for the 
purpose of debate, intimacy and 

celebration.

Spoon hinges heavily on a 

DIY model — writers can also be 
photographers, event planners 
and social media managers and 
the process of publishing articles 
mainly relies on brainstorming. 
The digital interface has also 
allowed Spoon writers to draw 
on pop culture, like “10 Stages of 
the Yom Kippur Fast, as Told by 
Amy Schumer”, which garnered 
a lot of attention and ended up on 
Buzzfeed. The ability to include 
multimedia 
aspects 
such 
as 

videos, animated gifs or quizzes 
creates a logical avenue for Spoon 
to work with popular websites 
like Buzzfeed that provide fun, 
easy-to-digest content aimed at 
millennials.

Because 
it 
is 
a 
digital 

publication, Spoon also takes 
its social media very seriously. 
I spoke to the social media 
managers 
both 
at 
Michigan 

and at American University in 
Washington, D.C.

Steve Baboun is the creative 

director of Spoon at American 
University, a successful chapter 
that just turned one-year-old. I 
asked him for tips to take great 
food photos.

“Lighting is important, so you 

need good natural light,” Baboun 
said. “You need to get up close and 
personal with your food and not 
be afraid to manhandle it. Filters 
are important, but not over-
filtering it — just playing around 
with contrast and brightness. We 
use a special application called 
VSCO.”

Estes warned against the 

dangers of flash in trying to 
get the perfect food photo, 
which is important to boosting 
Instagram 
traffic 
— 
the 

Michigan Spoon’s Instagram 
has just passed the 3,000 
follower mark.

“Post pictures of things you 

know people are going to love, 
like Aventura Patatas Bravas 
or Totoro Tower,” Estes said. 
“Other than that, just have 
really clean photos of food. 
Never use flash in food photos.”

LSA senior Carly Margolin 

is 
the 
University’s 
Spoon’s 

social 
media 
director. 
She 

echoed Estes’s sentiment about 
the importance of posting fan 
favorites of food to build a “base 
following” and then including 
new and different photographed 
culinary adventures.

With their own office and 

close 
to 
3,000 
Instagram 

followers, the Spoon team at 
American has big goals for the 
future.

“We want to be established as 

the number one foodie group on 
campus,” Baboun said.

American’s Spoon chapter 

has 
benefitted 
from 
D.C.’s 

cosmopolitan 
environment, 

which allows them to plan 
events with many restaurants 
and publish articles such as 
the 
GrubHub-sponsored 
“21 

Delivery Spots Near American’s 
Campus for When You’re Sick of 
the Dining Hall.”

I spoke over Skype with 

Louise Gallacher, community 
manager and co-founder of 
Spoon at the University of 
Edinburgh in Scotland. She 
studies business management 
and heard about Spoon through 
Facebook. The chapter is very 
new, having started just a few 
weeks ago with a small team of 
10 writers.

“I think the beauty of Spoon 

is that it’s all conversationally 
written,” Gallacher said. “It’s 
not like you have to be formal or 
you have to be really confident. 
I think that’s what made me get 
involved 
personally: 
Anyone 

can do it. Anyone can at least 
have a shot.”

This accessibility seems key. 

Readers and contributors are 
invited seamlessly into a foodie 
culture. Even the page for the 
general Spoon recipe article 
index answers hungry college 
students’ questions before they 
even ask them, with category 
options such as “I’m hungover,” 
“I’m tryna be healthy” or “I’m 
a noob” to choose from. The 
content is specific and instant 
enough to satisfy any college 
student’s palate, self-identified 
foodie or otherwise.

Upon walking into Ypsilanti 

Community High School and 
seeing 
Adam 
Collins, 
you’d 

probably think he was a student. 
Even in his second year as band 
director at the school, he still 
gets mistaken for a high schooler. 
At approximately 5 feet 7 inches 
tall, with clean-cut blonde hair 
and a very boyishly mousey yet-
undeniably good-looking face, 
wearing a maroon pullover and 
khakis, Collins doesn’t really 
look like he belongs at the head 
of a classroom.

But when he stands on his 

platform, baton in hand, ready 
to conduct his students, it’s 
undeniable that he does, indeed, 
belong exactly there.

***
At 
approximately 
8 
a.m., 

Collins stands in front of his 
first-hour symphony band class 
and tells them that they sound 
like they are trying to run a mile 
after eating a bunch of Krispy 
Kreme doughnuts.

“Sound like you’re trying to 

run a mile after eating a salad,” 
he pleads with them half-
jokingly.

Analogies are a special talent 

for Collins, as his students 
seem to understand exactly 
what to do whenever he uses 
them, whether they’re about 
doughnuts 
or 
something 
as 

simple as pronouncing sounds to 
make. Earlier in the class, he told 
them to play an “ah” sound to 
elongate their sound, something 
I had never witnessed before in 
non-vocal performance.

Sitting in the back left of 

Collins’ classroom, I’m right 
next to the tuba player. There 
are only three, two of whom 
seem to be putting in a good deal 
of effort, and one of whom seems 
to be pretending to play, as half 
the time he gets his instrument 
up to his mouth several beats 
late.

However, that’s not really 

what’s remarkable about this 
third 
tuba 
player. 
What’s 

worth mentioning is that his 
instrument has a giant dent in 
it. From several feet away, it 
looks like I could probably fit my 
entire fist in it.

According to Collins, only 

about 150 of more than 600 
instruments 
in 
the 
school 

district work. And due to the 
socioeconomic status of many 
of the families in Ypsilanti — 75 
percent are on free or reduced-
price lunch plans, which means 
that, as a family of four, their 
combined annual income is less 
than $33,000 — most students 
can’t afford to rent their own 
instruments.

“I’m making a little more than 

that on my own, and I feel like 
I’m struggling,” Collins said. 
“To quadruple the responsibility 
of that and actually take away 
some of the money I’m making is 
insane to me.”

When the district got a 

quote for how much it would 
take to get the instruments up 
to working condition it was 
$34,000, which is at least $1,000 
more than the annual salary for 
that typical family of four. Over 
the past year, Collins said they 
sent in about $10,000 worth of 
repairs — though he wasn’t sure 
where exactly that money came 
from — but it still wasn’t enough. 
For the first six weeks of school, 
his sixth graders didn’t have any 
instruments at all.

“It was kind of a daily 

improvisation of what we were 
going to do that day,” Collins 
said. “Like, ‘Oh we don’t have 
instruments again today; let’s 
work on rhythm.’ That’s actually 
caused some issues now: because 
they were so accustomed to that, 
they’re still getting used to daily 
procedures and rules.”

Consequently, 
Collins 
has 

learned how to do a lot of repairs 
himself, even though his budget 
for this year was only $350, 
which is “$350 more than I had 
last year.”

To combat this, Collins spends 

a lot of his free time fundraising: 
He’s 
currently 
working 
on 

writing a letter to businesses 
to ask for money. He set up a 
website to fund donations for 
things like instrument repairs 
and sponsorship for students’ 
trips to Boston (while the 
district doesn’t currently have 
the money for this, Collins said 
he has committed to the trip), 
and he has organized other 

fundraisers like selling reeds, 
discount cards and cheesecake.

“Cheesecake is a big one,” he 

said. “A lot of people really like 
cheesecake.”

***
It’s been fated that Collins 

would become a teacher since 
before he was even born. His 
parents met at Eastern Michigan 
University’s music school — 
the same school he would later 
graduate from — when his mom 
accompanied 
a 
performance 

done by his dad. He grew up 
in a musical household and 
described himself as the band 
geek of his high school. Though 
he said he always knew he 
wanted to teach music, this idea 
really became cemented for him 
during his sophomore year of 
college.

On a skiing trip during Spring 

Break, Collins fell headfirst into 
a patch of ice. He wasn’t wearing 
a helmet.

He suffered a broken vertebrae 

and a traumatic head injury that 
was so severe he had to be put 
into a medically-induced coma 
in order to stop his brain from 
swelling. When he woke up, 
his control of the right side of 
his body was minimal, and he 
couldn’t remember the previous 
nine days.

“What mainly got me through 

that was music,” he said. “My 
parents told me that I was 
humming before I was talking 
after the injury.”

While it took him only about 

six months to physically recover, 
Collins said it took him three to 
four years to reach mental and 
emotional stability again.

“I had to relearn everything,” 

he said. “My left hand would 
go straight up and down and 
my right hand would go in 
a circle, so I spent like two 
weeks just working on this (up 
and down) motion,” he said. 
“Because of that, I have a good 
understanding of how to start 
from step one. I mean, it sucked. 
It was awful. But in the long 
run, I feel like it’s actually made 
me a better teacher because it 
gives me some compassion and 
empathy for students who are 
going through other things.”

Some of those things, Collins 

said, are pretty heavy.

“I have students who watched 

their dad get murdered,” he said. 
“I have one student who doesn’t 
have parents. He’s being raised 
by his brother, and he’s one of the 
best kids. To see these kids come 
in every day from that chaos that 
is their life, it’s just absolutely 
incredible.”

It’s obvious Collins cares 

for these kids, and he does 
everything in his power to make 
sure they get a valuable learning 
experience. When he was in 
college, he told himself his 
teaching philosophy would be 
to have his students start from a 
place of passion, but he quickly 
realized that not everyone has 
passion for music. Instead, now 
he tries to find any passion his 
students might have and connect 
that to what they’re playing.

“We did a piece at the 

beginning of the year, and I 
compared it to ‘The Notebook,’ 
” Collins said with emphatic 
arm gestures. “The scene in 
‘The Notebook’ where Allie 
and Noah are on the rowboat 
and it’s raining and Allie’s like, 
‘Why didn’t you write me?’ and 
Noah’s like, ‘I wrote you a letter 
every day for a year.’ It’s almost 
self-sabotage because they’re 
making fun of me for the fact 
that I know ‘The Notebook’ so 
well, but at the same time, we go 
to play this again and they have 
that image in their minds.”

And every once in a while, 

for a student or two, that really 
clicks. Collins had a student last 
year, David, who Collins said 
was rather unsure of himself. 
Throughout the year, though, 
David came in to work with and 
help Collins. He became more 
invested in music, and now he’s 
majoring in music education at 

EMU.

“At the beginning of this year, 

there was a woman who came 
up to me who turned out to be 
(David’s) aunt, and she came up 
to me and gave me a giant hug,” 
Collins said. “She said, ‘At the 
beginning of last year, David 
didn’t have any idea where he 
was going. He didn’t have any 
direction, and I wanted to let 
you know that because of the 
work you did with him and 
the direction you gave him, he 
has a purpose now.’ And like, 
what!? I don’t know how to 
react to that. Being told that I 
basically 
changed 
someone’s 

life, that’s heavy. It’s almost 
nerve-wracking to know that I 
have that potential, for good and 
bad. I could ruin somebody’s life. 
That’s terrifying.”

***
Toward the end of class, 

Collins brings up the YCHS trip 
to Boston. He asks students who 
can afford to go on the trip for 
$0. Everyone raises his or her 
hand. He tells them to drop their 
hands once he reaches a number 
that they don’t think they can 
afford.

$50: A few hands go down, but 

most remain.

$100: A few more go down, 

but still a lot in the air.

$200: Quite a few drop out.
$300: Only about 10 hands 

remain in the air.

He goes down to $250, and 

about 15 more hands shoot up 
in the air; he’s trying to find the 
highest number he can charge 
where at least 35 students can 
come, as that’s the minimum. 
It looks like the number will 
probably hover around $250, 
even though it costs about 
$600 per student for the trip, 
plus 
another 
$10,000 
for 

transportation.

“It’s really challenging to 

balance opportunities with their 
current socioeconomic status,” 
Collins said.

But you can tell these kids 

really want to go. All the kids 
in Ypsi are excited (except for 
maybe dented-tuba kid), even 
when it’s just money talk.

“There are many times that I 

just can’t have my full ensemble 
(in class), so I have to do it after 
school,” Collins said. “I do that 
mainly for their benefit. It’s a 
lot of extra time, but at the end 
of the day, they’re excited about 
it, and the culture is changing. 
They’re getting excited about 
playing music; they want to go 
out of their way to get better.”

These kids practice up to 

twice a week after school, and 
Collins wants to reward that 
hard work with this Boston trip. 
They will get to take a master 
class with members of the Boston 
Symphony and see the symphony 
perform, among other smaller 
events like a tour of Harvard.

“I feel like the reward is 

relative to the effort that they put 
in, and to say ‘You put this much 
effort in, but we’re just gonna go 
to festival’ — I don’t feel like that 
is representative of how much 
effort they’ve put into it,” he said.

But even more than that, 

Collins wants to inspire these 
kids. He wants to push them out 
of their comfort zones, and to 
change their lives for the better, 
even though he’s terrified of 
ruining one.

“The big one I think is really 

that master class because they 
get to see what you can do with 
what you have … to see where 
you can end up if you really apply 
yourself in music,” he said.

He wants to teach them how 

to funnel their emotions into 
music, how to make the best of 
the situations they’re in.

“This trip to Boston we’re 

taking, most of them can’t afford 
it,” Collins said. “But they just 
take that and they say ‘OK, so 
what are we going to do next?’ ”

So what are they going to 

do 
next? 
They’re 
going 
to 

fight. They’re going to stuff 
envelopes with letters to send 
to businesses, they’re going to 
apply for grants, they’re going to 
sell those cheesecakes.

What are they going to do 

next?

Well, they’re going to go to 

Boston.

To donate to YCHS for their 

trip to Boston, click the link in 
the story above or go to http://
ychsbands.org/how-you-can-
help/ and click “donate.”

ARTIST
PROFILE

IN

It’s undeniable 

that he does 
belong there.

COVER STORY

