Hello! Thanks so much for visiting my website. I’m Nicky, a Johannesburg-based photographer, content producer, product developer/producer and curator behind Delicious Monster. DM has gone through a lot of changes over the past few years, especially since March 2020 (thanks to a certain Pandemic), and has evolved from a blog into a business.
My goal for Delicious Monster has always been to establish it as a brand with multiple portfolios, keeping food & lifestyle firmly at its core. I want to collaborate with like-minded brands, creating authentic content which can be shared with our respective audiences.
Creating genuine content is something I take very seriously, so I will never work with a brand that doesn’t share the same values as me.
Early Days
I began blogging in 2015 when I moved to Shanghai and started a blog called Lotuses+Lanehouses, where I shared stories about expat life, as well as recipes and a few travel guides.
In late 2017 I left my job as Director of Content at cooking app SideChef, and decided to start freelancing full-time. It was a scary transition for me because I was also going through a lot of personal changes in my then relationship, and my time living in China was coming to an end. This was the ultimate reason why I decided to rebrand to Delicious Monster and allow it to become something far more general and not tied specifically to living in China.
People often ask me why I called my blog and business Delicious Monster. For starters, I’ve always loved the plant (way before they became so popular), and to be honest it took me a day to settle on it. A snap decision made on a whim which stuck.
‘Delicious’ makes reference to food and the pleasures of life, while ‘Monster’ refers to everything else. Monsters are meant to be scary, but life is scary. Life is also exhilarating and adventurous. Life is what happens when you’re facing the monsters, and learning to co-exist with them. Life isn’t plain-sailing, it’s not meant to be continuously blissful, but it’s also not meant to be hard all the time.
We ebb and flow between the good and bad, and that is what makes this all one big Delicious Monster.
New Beginnings
I moved to London in 2018, where I remained for a few months. In early Feb of 2019 I returned to South Africa single, out of work and living with my parents at 35 years old. It was then that I decided to put my life back together again and do my absolute best to turn Delicious Monster into something special and something that was mine.
I began putting myself out there again and landed a few contracts doing social media content production & management for various clients, slowly beginning to grow DM again after neglecting it for so many months.
I’d always dreamt of being able to combine my content creation, recipe development and photography into one, as well as also wanting to start an online shop. Little did I know that at the beginning of 2020, I was a couple of months away from being thrown into the deep end and would need to do just that in a minimal amount of time.
Twenty Plenty of Growth Opportunities
All of my contracts were terminated during the first two weeks of lockdown. I found myself without any paid work but once I’d gotten over the initial shock and disappointment, I needed to act quickly and figure out a way I’d keep Delicious Monster alive.
Obviously, many more people needed to cook for themselves thanks to being stuck at home, so I decided to produce and self-publish my first recipe ebook, The Isolated Kitchen. I needed to also be able to sell it online, so I started my shop and Delicious Monster grew from there.
Onwards and upwards!
Delicious Monster has gone from strength to strength and taken me in many directions since 2020. I continue to develop my own recipes and create content out of that, but I’ve also started working with a lot more brands and have grown my client base exponentially.