'Village Food Factory': Meet Gopinath, who made his father a celebrity

Gopinath has created a YouTube food channel that today has over 1.78 million subscribers from across the world

A  family that eats together, stays together. A YouTuber from Tiruppur, a town near Coimbatore in western Tamil Nadu, has taken this age-old wisdom a step further by getting his family to also cook and film together. In the process, he has created a YouTube food channel that today has over 1.78 million subscribers from across the world and gets some 6,000 new visitors every day.

Village Food Factory — the channel — is the brainchild of A Gopinath, a 27-year-old from Salem who gave up a job at Infosys to chase a dream that was planted in his head when he was in Class VII. Back then, his teacher had asked him this question: “How many people in the village know your father?” Today, he can turn around and say, “Hundreds of thousands.” For, at the centre of all his videos is his father — 60-year-old Arumugam.

Every episode is shot on his father preparing mouth-watering dishes out in the open — with fields, the river or the waterfall in the background. Often, these are non-vegetarian delicacies prepared not just for the family but in quantities that can feed tens of people.

Each culinary episode ends with Arumugam tasting the dish or giving it away to the homeless. While Arumugam is the master chef in all these videos, Gopinath's younger brother, Manikandan, is also seen sometimes assisting his father. His mother and wife, too, make an occasional appearance to help with the recipes.

There was a time when Gopinath thought if he had to become famous, he needed to enter the film industry. Somewhere along the way, however, this desire got pushed back and after completing a diploma in engineering, Gopinath joined Infosys in Bengaluru. But after barely three days there, he returned to Tiruppur, determined to pursue his interest in films.

He joined a local cable channel for a salary of Rs 2,500, against the Rs 15,000 he was getting at Infosys. Here, he learnt to edit videos and also met Raja Rajan, a nameologist with contacts in the film world.

When Rajan moved to Chennai, Gopinath joined him. Here, he became familiar with YouTube and social media platforms where he could upload videos.

He also toyed with the idea of making short films, but soon realised that too many of those were already being uploaded every day. His quest for a subject to film led him to food videos on YouTube. These, he realised, got a lot of traction. Food was the one thing that he and his family had always passionate about.

It wasn’t long before Village Food Factory was born. The channel, which has been up and running for over two years now, was an instant success. Here, his father, a painter-turned-cook, also offers handy tips on, say, how to clean a crab or cook a stingray.

The rural chef bowled the audience over with his ability to cook dishes in massive quantities. The videos on a whole goat curry and one made with 300 eggs went viral. Gopinath now makes several times more than what he earned at Infosys. The channel has so far received over 318 million views.

In the last two years, Gopinath has created 167 videos. His recent post, which was uploaded on August 27, got nearly 390,000 views in less than 24 hours. Gopinath and his family of five used to live in a small rented house. Today, they own a comfortable flat.

Gopinath now wants to host a mega feast for 1,000 subscribers of his channel — as a mark of gratitude and for their belief that food can bind people the way few things can.