How air-fryer influencers helped the appliance heat up

Sales of air fryers boomed during the pandemic, and today, frozen food brands are developing products specifically for the device while social media influencers outdo themselves finding more to cook with it. This is Part 2 of a series.

In August 2020, Jake Grigg, an Aussie known to his 1.9 million TikTok followers as Air Fryer Guy, posted a video to the platform that begins with him unwrapping a Subway sandwich and, as is his custom, singing the recipe.

Grigg rolls the sandwich in flour, dips it in egg, coats it with bread crumbs, and pops it into an air fryer. It comes out of the oven resembling a giant egg roll, and there’s an audible crunch as he slices it in half.

Commenters were split on whether it’s appalling or appealing. “I need a Gordon Ramsay reaction video to this,” wrote user Get the Rocks, while StaleMovesMcGee proclaimed, “You are a god.”

But Grigg, who in other videos makes Milk Duds pizza and a chicken breast stuffed with mac-and-cheese in his air fryer, is less interested in making appetizing food than entertaining content.

“I just try to make buzz meals that they’ll be like, ‘Oh, wow, you can do that? That’s wild,’” Grigg told Retail Brew.

Grigg and other social media influencers have helped fuel interest in air fryers, with US consumers spending $958 million on air fryers in 2022, up from $633 million in 2019, according to data from Circana.

“Sometimes social media just adds fuel to a fire that’s already burning,” Joe Derochowski, VP and home industry advisor at Circana, told Retail Brew. Air fryers’ “household penetration was picking up pretty quickly. And then [influencers] jumped in and really accelerated it to increase the usage.”

Brands including Ho Mai Foods and Quorn have sponsored Grigg’s videos, and he published a cookbook, Pimp Your Air Fryer, in 2022.

Grigg is among a growing number of social media users who rode the air fryer to fame, and who are striking deals with companies that want to reach their followers.

Bigger fish to fry: Jared Bobo, who lives in Chicago and goes by Air Fryer Papi on Instagram and TikTok, makes popular videos of such savory dishes as bang bang shrimp po’boy, and an entire cajun chicken; and desserts including strawberry cheesecake and brownies.

Bobo, who’s been making videos as Air Fryer Papi since 2021, has 249,000 followers on Instagram and ~286,000 on TikTok. He’d done marketing, including social media marketing, for restaurants in Chicago, but said the work dried up early in the pandemic.

Bobo told Retail Brew he had an air fryer, “so I just decided to double down and figure out: How can I use this appliance to generate a lot of buzz and make a brand out of it?”

Air Fryer Papi content earns him about $200,000 annually, owing in part to an influencer agency that has represented him since 2022, he said.

Among the brands that have paid him to feature their products are Grown in Idaho, a Lamb Weston brand of frozen french fries, and Philadelphia cream cheese (a cheesecake ingredient).

“Food is my passion,” Bobo said. “Exposing it to the world is an interest as well, and getting information out to other people, so those things just kind of came together naturally.”

Game on: Along with taking up precious counterspace in the real world, at least one air fryer has found its way into Minecraft.

In December, TikTok user @diegoaygo, who records recipe videos inside the game, posted a video showing how to make french fries.

Diego, a 21-year-old college student in Florida who does not share his last name on social media and asked us not to either, shows potatoes being planted, harvested, chopped, and then placed in an air fryer.

But not just any air fryer. It’s a Dash Tasti-Crisp model because Diego had contacted the brand about sponsoring his videos, and the brand agreed to pay him to promote the appliance.

Diego hired a designer to make a 3D model of the appliance and a coder to program the modification into the game. For that video, which was viewed more than 156,000 times, and another featuring a Dash mini pumpkin waffle maker, which received more than 59,000 view., Diego told us Dash paid him a “pretty good amount of money” but declined to be specific, except to say it was under $10,000.

“More companies hopefully would see this really creative idea,” he told us. “There is definitely more potential to make a lot more money because influencers charge a lot.”

Next time: In our final installment, we’ll talk to food brands that are developing new products for air fryers, as well as adding air-fryer cooking instructions to existing products.