Lena Ahn, an occasional Northview substitute and mother to a Northview alumnus, dabbles in food blogging with her foodstagram, ATL Best Bites.

Suhani Mahajan, Staff Writer

Lena Ahn, the creator of the food blog ATL Best Bites, is one of the Johns Creek community’s own social media influencers, garnering over 13,000 followers on Instagram in the past three years. She started her foodstagram account in 2014 but really started to focus on the blog three years later, in 2017.

Ahn has always had a passion for food. She likes documenting visits to her favorite places to get a bite, as well as discovering new ones. Her food blog became a way she could share her passion with the world by allowing her to photograph the food she ate and post it on social media.

“My friends had always asked for recommendations about restaurants, so I took their encouragement to start my Instagram account to share my love for food and to offer recommendations to Atlantans,” Ahn said.

Ahn posts about food as ATL Best Bites on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. She has managed to gain a large following by utilizing various techniques -- like consistently posting new content, using the right hashtags, and taking and editing impressive photos. 

When she started ATL Best Bites, Ahn wanted to post in a way that would entice her followers to order the same dishes as her. Improving the way she puts out content on social media and her blog helps her to achieve this goal. Because of this, Ahn’s reputation tends to precede her. Sometimes, restaurants will offer her free meals in exchange for posts on her blog. Ahn also does collaborations with public relations firms from time to time. 

“I do not want my account to be a critique of the restaurant or food,” Ahn said. “I want to highlight delicious dishes that I think are the best bites in the Atlanta area.”

With the current shelter-in-place Governor Brian Kemp has ordered for the state of Georgia to comply with, restaurants are no longer allowed to have clients dine-in. This affects Ahn because she used to review the restaurants she dined in the restaurant itself. 

To keep her blog running, she has started to post pictures of her own home-cooked meals and uses some old pictures from her archives. Ahn sympathizes with small businesses, which are devastated by the shelter-in-place, and tries to use her platform to help as best as she can.

“Currently, I have been posting to help restaurants that are in need of business and donations,” Ahn said. “I try to support some local restaurants by using DoorDash or Uber Eats to have food delivered or picking up takeout from a restaurant.”

The current situation is new to all, and although Ahn cannot run her blog as she used to, she is coming up with new ideas that she is eager to implement when life returns to normal. For the time being, though, she is spending her quarantine with her family, cooking, and watching lots of Netflix. Amid all of this, Ahn has not forgotten about her blog.

“I love to continue to put out content that people want to see and read,” Ahn said.