Our ranking of restaurant chefs by social media success immediately brings to mind two questions: Who is DenverChefDude, and how does he have anytime left to cook?
The anonymous Twitter-head posts at the rate of one tweet every three minutes. That kind of finger work landed him at Number 5 on our list, behind such Twitter (and culinary) standouts as Gordon Ramsay, Rick Bayless and Tom Colicchio, and ahead of such TV stars as Mario Batali and Cat Cora.
We suspect that DenverChefDude, who turned down our requests to identify himself or speak with us, is using some kind of automated system.
Which underscores the social media popularity of Gordon Ramsay and Rick Bayless. Ramsay didn’t tweet once in the 24 hours we used to gauge his activity, and Bayless, despite his reputation as the Ashton Kutcher of foodservice social media, posted a mere five times.
One note about Bayless’ numbers: We used this occasion to adjust his score, since a reader noted that the chef-owner of Topolobampo and Frontera Grill does have a public Facebook page, contrary to our initial conclusion. His nearly 15,000 fans were added to the list.
If you’re a restaurant chef and would like to see how you’d stack up against the social media leaders in your field, use our online calculator to generate your social media index.
Twitter followers | @mentions | Tweets | Total Twitter score | Facebook fans | Wall postings | Total Facebook score | Social media index | |
| Gordon Ramsay | 212,296 | 242 | 0 | 214,716 | 234,115 | 26 | 234,375 | 449,091 |
| Rick Bayless | 102,035 | 90 | 5 | 120,515 | 14,497 | 0 | 14,497 | 135,012 |
| Tom Colicchio | 89,745 | 19 | 10 | 89,945 | 1,854 | 0 | 1,854 | 91,799 |
| Michael Symon | 23,009 | 13 | 15 | 23,154 | 34,088 | 11 | 34,198 | 57,352 |
| DenverChefDude | 47,107 | 19 | 569 | 47,866 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 47,886 |
| Mario Batali | 16,626 | 17 | 2 | 16,798 | 24,342 | 0 | 24,342 | 41,140 |
| Grant Achatz | 21,274 | 1 | 0 | 21,284 | 4,834 | 0 | 4,834 | 26,118 |
| Thomas Keller | 25,811 | 14 | 0 | 25,951 | 48 | 2 | 68 | 26,019 |
| Wolfgang Puck | 5,938 | 3 | 1 | 5,969 | 18,447 | 2 | 18,467 | 24,436 |
| Cat Cora | 16,017 | 1 | 0 | 16,027 | 6,910 | 0 | 6,910 | 22,937 |
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