HORECA community on Facebook

According to socialtimes.hu, the number of Hungarian Facebook users will grow by 6,000-7,000 every day in 2011. However, there are few professional community pages. Bűvös szakács is present with an expanded version of the blog and already has more than 500 ‘friends’.

A young chef (from Gundel) called Gábor Merczi is active on the Internet and already has enough professional experience to make his opinion matter. He started the Magyar Szakácsok Facebook page early November with the goal of creating an independent forum where professional chefs can exchange opinions. Things started to happen slowly, interestingly enough the community started to grow when somebody started another page with almost the similar name (Magyar Szakács). Magyar Szakácsok has about 800 friends and we forecast a rapid expansion…unless another page by Gábor Merczi, séfasztal.hu will become the number one! This page aims at urging chefs to think and work collectively, to make them learn from each other. Soon a website of the same name will also be launched with ‘reports, news and photos giving a behind-the-scenes look at the world of kitchens.’ Returning to the topic of Magyar Szakács: they presented their plans chaotically with contradictory details and have an unclear background, still the page’s novelty style made many chefs (even big names) join, who were hungry for a good community experience. Since the page’s start all it did was asking for information and did not ‘give’ anything – it is not surprising that after 200 the number of friends stopped to grow.