Erwan Heussaff rebrands YouTube channel to cater to more content creators
Restaurateur and content creator Erwan Heussaff has decided to rebrand his eponymous YouTube channel to "FEATR" to cater to more content creators.
In a vlog posted on April 6 titled "I'm Leaving YouTube," Erwan explained the challenges that were brought by the COVID-19 pandemic to his production house, The Fat Kid Inside, which employs 14 people.
In early 2020, Erwan flew to Australia where his wife, actress Anne Curtis, gave birth to their first child, Dahlia Amelié.
"You see, The Fat Kid Inside studios, obviously, isn't just me. It's a group of talented individuals who are about 14 people now in the team. And those 14 people need their salaries, obviously," Erwan explained in the vlog.
"For a couple of months in 2020, work completely stopped and that was when brands didn't want to post online because people are being very sensitive, obviously, we didn't have any commercial production shoots, I was also stuck in Australia.
"And so for months, we weren't really having any revenue coming in but all the employees of The Fat Kid Inside studios still had to get paid.
"So, I basically was put in a situation and a position where I had to double down on the content that I was producing on Facebook and on YouTube to hopefully generate revenue to be able to cover all those costs."
Aside from figuring out how to be a father to Dahlia Amelié, Erwan became a one-man team in Australia: producing and shooting content using the ingredients he himself bought from the grocery store.
"It wasn't easy. It was like going back 10 years in time, basically, and me having to do everything by myself again, except for editing. But I had to shoot, go to the groceries, clean up, and do all this stuff that took so much time, which meant that I was limited to shooting one to two videos a week.
"And working seven days a week in lockdown, and 14 hours a day. It was just a very tiring time but also the most magical time of my life because I became a dad and I have a beautiful wife and I have a beautiful daughter."
Erwan added that the revenue he gets from both Facebook and YouTube is not enough to sustain the company.
"The AdSense revenue that I make on both platforms, I barely be able to pay all 14 people that work [for] The Fat Kid Inside studios, let alone the overheads that I have with the rent of our cooking studio," he said.
Because of this, Erwan decided to step back to focus on the business side of The Fat Kid Inside.
"So that's why it's so important for me to double down and really focus and concentrate on the business side of things, and really working with great brands and collaborating with them to create high-quality online content.
"I really want to be able to take the time to select the shows that I host and I'm part of in front of the camera, so I really get to put out really good content. And for us to be able to do that, I need to focus on the business but I also need to focus on producing other shows with other hosts and other people.
"And that is why, starting today, we are doing some huge changes online. We are no longer Erwan Heussaff, we are now gonna be called FEATR."
But don't be sad because Erwan promised to create a new, secondary channel, Erwan Heussaff BTS.
"I'll be opening an Erwan Heussaff BTS channel, so [a] secondary channel where I can post all the random stuff from tech to gear to just my daily life or whatever, if peopl6e are interested, " he promised.
"Basically, anything that I haven't been able to post on the main channel simply because it had nothing to do with food."
Watch his vlog below: