IST alumnus builds a brand as Pittsburgh food stuff influencer

As a meals influencer, Goodstein has sampled almost everything from pizza and pierogis, sandwiches and steaks, beer and bourbon, and even a beef jerky bouquet. He also demonstrates his very own culinary skills, sharing recommendations and tricks by means of recipes he follows or creates in his individual kitchen area that regularly include domestically sourced substances.

“Over the a long time I’ve picked up a handful of capabilities in the kitchen, and I have picked up skills of how to consume much more so than how to cook issues,” he reported.

The light-hearted, exciting persona that Goodstein exemplifies carries all over his on-line existence, setting up with his blog’s identify: “Alex Eats Way too Significantly.”

“I desired some thing that could stand out, but also that would be sustainable if I at any time moved absent from Pittsburgh,” he said. “I settled on ‘Alex Eats Also Much’ since it is funny and memorable. When I tell individuals my Instagram manage, they get started laughing. And men and women know who I am since of it.”

Building a model

Though Goodstein in the beginning introduced his Instagram as a dedicated system to share photos of meals he’d loved (which, in accordance to Goodstein, was suggested by his friends who were being irritated by the quantity of foodstuff pictures in his particular account’s feed), “Alex Eats Much too Much” has grown into a brand name. Nowadays, Goodstein is a very well-regarded presence in the Pittsburgh eating scene, obtaining invites to taste and endorse foods from new eating places, updated menus or exclusive activities.

“It’s grow to be a 50/50 blend of making an attempt some issues for the initial time in dining places that I have hardly ever had the possibility to go to or cooking a little something at property and striving out a new recipe,” said Goodstein. “But it is also been a whole lot of identifying when new locations open or letting other persons know when excellent food situations are happening. It is grown significantly into a split of a model.”

Goodstein remembers the to start with time that his Instagram became much more than a area for him to basically doc his meals ordeals.

“A little over a 12 months into doing this, I acquired a message from a PR firm inviting me to arrive to an occasion and try the food,” Goodstein explained. “My 1st considered was ‘of class I’ll go.’ But my other assumed was ‘Am I really common more than enough to be carrying out this?’ That was the to start with genuine turning issue for me.”

Then, a 12 months later, Goodstein seemed at his calendar and created a astonishing discovery: he experienced been invited to advertise a restaurant’s menu improve or show up at a new restaurant’s opening almost every night time in a single week.

“I came to the realization that I no extended required to acknowledge each invitation or try out every single one piece of food items that I’m questioned to, but I could actually imagine about how I wanted to regulate my brand name a tiny little bit alternatively than just striving all the things and posting all the things,” he reported.

Though how to develop into a thriving food influencer is not part of the curriculum at the College or university of IST, Goodstein claimed that his IST basis has right impacted his blog’s advancement — primarily in the enhancement of his internet site.

“At IST I realized about solution lifecycle and human-computer interaction,” he mentioned. “It’s contemplating about aesthetics, what persons want to interact with and what people want to see, and how to build a website that is purposeful. Every single time I make a transform or insert attributes to my internet site, I glance at it from a perspective that I created at IST.”

Goodstein’s IST training has performed a significant job in his entire-time profession at PNC, in which he has worked considering the fact that he graduated from Penn Condition. He began in a small business programs analyst situation in advance of transitioning to solution ownership.

“The IST system organized me for equally career tracks,” he explained. “In my to start with job, I necessary to comprehend how to combine methods, writing needs, project lifecycles, and how to work with databases. Having that core expertise of how to recognize what somebody is asking for and being equipped to express it to a developer was very important.”

He ongoing, “Later in my vocation, acquiring the track record awareness to fully grasp how people want to interact with software package and how a design ought to do the job puts me in a fantastic spot as a products proprietor. I’m ready to realize not only how I want it to glimpse and function, but also what is technically feasible.”

Creating a connection by way of foodstuff

Goodstein will consider on a new challenge when he shares his meals influence with the Penn Point out local community through the Penn Point out Cooking Classic, a 4-7 days cooking function collection this spring sponsored by the Penn State higher education and campus alumni societies. At 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 2, on Zoom, Goodstein will deliver Southern appetizers to daily life via his presentation of “A Minimal Some thing on the Aspect.” It will be Goodstein’s 1st encounter giving a stay cooking instruction, and he was asked to showcase a delicacies with which he has very little encounter.

“It will be incredibly fascinating for me because I’ve by no means lived in the South and Southern cooking is not a thing I am an professional on at all,” he reported. “I’ve been expending a large amount of time exploring unique dishes, training them, and coming up with variations on them to make them my individual.”

But, he explained, it will give him the prospect to not only have fun even though perfecting some new abilities in the kitchen, but also reengage with his alma mater in a meaningful way.

Mentioned Goodstein, “This offers me an prospect to build a relationship with Penn Condition and IST and to emphasize that alumni are everywhere you go, undertaking different points and striving new ordeals. It will be fascinating to look at and understand about what other Penn State graduates have been accomplishing, when discovering about new foodstuff as effectively.”