This year, the Greater Kansas City Restaurant Association decided to start a new tradition recognizing the work of local food influencers who feature and promote the city’s restaurants.
Christened the Influencer of the Year Award, the association asked the public to nominate their favorite influencers. More than 100 individuals were nominated. A committee then selected five finalists from the eligible nominees and voting was opened to the public. To be eligible, a nominee had to be unaffiliated with advertising or news outlets, focused on restaurants and creating content for at least six months. Then the public was asked to vote.
Meet all five finalists: Rebecca Burkhart, Brenda Cortes, Adriana Davalos, Emma Ezzell and Glen Robinson.
Adriana Davalos
@kclifestylegirl
67.9K Instagram followers
Adriana Davalos says her goal as an influencer is to help Kansas Citians live their best life. With a start in Los Angeles and three lifestyle television shows on her resume, Davalos brought her media chops to KC a couple years ago. She says her work is less about being a personality and more about telling a story. “When I go to restaurants, it’s not about me going to the restaurant,” Davalos says. “It’s about me covering the actual restaurant itself and telling its story and telling about the dishes and what’s so great about it.”
Davalos says she loves working with restaurants and local businesses, but she also pays attention to what her followers want and are interacting with. “We love the Chiefs, so I’m always trying to follow up,” says Davalos, who is able to support herself as a full-time influencer. “I also know that my followers really like Taylor Swift, so I try to keep up with what’s going on with her. I just try to stay on what’s relevant and what’s trending and what I know my followers like and want to see.”
Davalos is proud that she is able to support herself and work as an influencer full-time, but even more so, she thrives on helping the people of Kansas City.
“I get to do what I love for a living, but I really do get to make an impact on Kansas City, its people and its businesses,” says Davalos, who started a GoFundMe for one of her followers needing shelter during January’s snowstorms and freezing temperatures. “I created a fundraiser for this woman and I raised over $1,000 for her in less than 24 hours.”
Brenda Cortes
@bbcortess
23.8K Instagram followers and 22.1K TikTok followers
Brenda Cortes did the work of an influencer before she ever had a following. Growing up in Marshall, Missouri, and going to school in Columbia, her family and friends often made trips to Kansas City for groceries, Costco runs and nice dinners. After moving to KC for a job, she was eager to really explore the city and learn about everything it had to offer. “I made these little itineraries each weekend for myself and for my friends who would visit for long weekends from Columbia,” Cortes says.
Cortes’ jump into social media took time and effort (including a brief and adorable stint trying to make her reluctant dog internet famous). After a few false starts, a post she made about Sinkers Lounge during a date at the Power & Light district went semi-viral. “People were coming up to me at work saying, ‘We saw your video!’” Cortes says. Now, she is all over town (and the state), introducing her followers to food and fun.
Cortes loves to travel and hopes to expand her social media presence to include more of it. Through her work showcasing Kansas City restaurants and sites, she wants to help her followers save money and see more of the world by showcasing travel hacks and credit card tricks. “I know people love to travel,” Cortes says. “It’s a big part of my life, so I definitely want to highlight more of my adventures.”
Emma Ezzell
@kansascityplaces.em
65.5K Instagram followers and 52.4K TikTok followers
Since 2020, Emma Ezzell has been showcasing KC’s hidden gems, local favorites and new spots throughout the greater Kansas City area with videos on TikTok and Instagram Reels. Heavily focused on food, Ezzell interacts with her followers through different styles of posts, including top ten lists. “I like to do the lists, like my top ten burgers, barbeque or summertime patios, to give people options visually that they might want to try out,” Ezzel says.
Before her time as an influencer, Ezzel would research cities on social media and Google when traveling to find the not-so-famous spots and local favorites. “I was always a big foodie when traveling,” Ezzel says.”I thought it would be cool to have a page designated for that in Kansas City where people in town or visiting for a Chiefs game could find things to do and places to eat.”
Ezzell loves the connections she has made by working as an influencer. Meeting different people, whether it’s creators or business and restaurant owners, Ezzell has made many friends along the way, she says. “I’m hearing their stories of how they started and their struggles and the positive impact some of our videos in the Kansas City community have had [on their businesses]—it’s just really cool to hear,” she says.
Glenn Robinson
@theepitomekc
10.6K Instagram followers and 11.5K TikTok followers
Glenn Robinson begins his Hood Dude Food Reviews with a casual, “Hey man,” inviting the viewer to sit down as a friend for a conversation. The Northeast Kansas City native, who has been reviewing restaurants since 2017, has grown a following with the strength of his personality and his focus on honesty. “I’m very connected to all the restaurants,” he says. “I like to go and talk to people and connect with the staff.”
Robinson’s social media presence started as a joke. For fun, he would do food reviews of random places like gas stations. Around 2020, a good friend named Corn finally convinced Robinson to take it a little more seriously. “He was like, ‘Hey bro, I know you were joking, but this [could be] serious,’” Robinson says. “We never got to put any [videos] out because he passed away due to Covid. So in 2023, I decided this is what I want to do. My boy told me I should [create videos], so I’m gonna really tap in and push.” It was then that Robinson really started building his brand and identity.
Robinson sought out underrepresented places, small shops quietly making great food below the internet radar, and he found a following for his content. “I really try to build the community around me up,” says Robinson. “I try to expose people to places that aren’t usually covered. Yeah, I go to the popular places too, but I’m in a lot of the mom and pop shops, the places that may not have Instagram. That’s how this business got started for me. It just makes me feel like I have a purpose to connect people. It makes me feel great. This is amazing.”
Rebecca Burkhart
@through.becs.specs
25.7K Instagram followers
Rebecca Burkhart, the influencer behind the travel blog and Instagram and TikTok accounts “Through Bec’s Specs” started creating travel content in 2018. Inspired by family road trips growing up and the chance to study abroad in Prague during college, Burkhart has turned her passion for travel into a successful social media brand. Following her motto, “Things usually work out sometimes,” Burkhart strives to remove the barriers to travel for her followers and to minimize the anxieties that keep people in their comfort zones.
Burkhart works full time as an integration architect in a position that often requires her to travel. Her work and her passion for exploring new places led her to visit 20 countries and 47 states by the time she was 27. Burkhart has built an impressive following memorializing her travel experiences online. When Covid hit and travel slowed down, Burkhart began to focus more on exploring Kansas City.
Now, Burkhart’s feed on Instagram seems pretty evenly split between showcasing KC and documenting her adventures abroad. The voice she uses online leans encouraging and inspirational, asking her followers to push farther and live a life of adventure worth sharing.
Food influencers.
