As a food influencer, Goodstein has sampled everything from pizza and pierogis, sandwiches and steaks, beer and bourbon, and even a beef jerky bouquet. He also demonstrates his own culinary skills, sharing tips and tricks through recipes he follows or creates in his own kitchen that frequently incorporate locally sourced ingredients.
“Over the years I’ve picked up a few skills in the kitchen, and I've picked up skills of how to eat more so than how to cook things,” he said.
The light-hearted, fun persona that Goodstein exemplifies carries throughout his online presence, starting with his blog’s name: “Alex Eats Too Much.”
“I wanted something that could stand out, but also that would be sustainable if I ever moved away from Pittsburgh,” he said. “I settled on ‘Alex Eats Too Much’ because it’s funny and memorable. When I tell people my Instagram handle, they start laughing. And people know who I am because of it.”
Building a brand
While Goodstein initially launched his Instagram as a dedicated platform to share photos of meals he’d enjoyed (which, according to Goodstein, was suggested by his friends who were annoyed by the number of food pictures in his personal account’s feed), “Alex Eats Too Much” has grown into a brand. Today, Goodstein is a well-known presence in the Pittsburgh dining scene, receiving invitations to taste and promote meals from new restaurants, updated menus or special events.
“It’s become a 50/50 mix of trying some things for the first time in restaurants that I’ve never had the chance to go to or cooking something at home and trying out a new recipe,” said Goodstein. “But it’s also been a lot of discovering when new places open or letting other people know when great food events are happening. It’s grown significantly into a split of a brand.”
Goodstein remembers the first time that his Instagram became more than a place for him to simply document his food experiences.
“A little over a year into doing this, I got a message from a PR firm inviting me to come to an event and try the food,” Goodstein said. “My first thought was ‘of course I’ll go.’ But my other thought was ‘Am I really popular enough to be doing this?’ That was the first real turning point for me.”
Then, a year later, Goodstein looked at his calendar and made a surprising discovery: he had been invited to promote a restaurant’s menu change or attend a new restaurant’s opening almost every night in a single week.
“I came to the realization that I no longer needed to accept every invitation or try every single piece of food that I’m asked to, but I could actually think about how I wanted to control my brand a little bit rather than just trying everything and posting everything,” he said.
While how to become a successful food influencer isn’t part of the curriculum at the College of IST, Goodstein said that his IST foundation has directly impacted his blog’s growth — especially in the development of his website.
“At IST I learned about product lifecycle and human-computer interaction,” he said. “It’s thinking about aesthetics, what people want to interact with and what people want to see, and how to build a website that is functional. Every time I make a change or add features to my website, I look at it from a perspective that I developed at IST.”
Goodstein’s IST education has played a significant role in his full-time career at PNC, where he has worked since he graduated from Penn State. He started in a business systems analyst position before transitioning to product ownership.
“The IST program prepared me for both career tracks,” he said. “In my first role, I needed to understand how to integrate systems, writing requirements, project lifecycles, and how to work with databases. Having that core knowledge of how to understand what somebody is asking for and being able to convey it to a developer was crucial.”
He continued, “Later in my career, having the background knowledge to understand how people want to interact with software and how a design should work puts me in a great spot as a product owner. I’m able to understand not only how I want it to look and work, but also what is technically feasible.”
Creating a connection through food
Goodstein will take on a new challenge when he shares his food influence with the Penn State community during the Penn State Cooking Classic, a four-week cooking event series this spring sponsored by the Penn State college and campus alumni societies. At 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 2, on Zoom, Goodstein will bring Southern appetizers to life through his presentation of “A Little Something on the Side.” It will be Goodstein’s first experience giving a live cooking instruction, and he was asked to showcase a cuisine with which he has little experience.
“It will be very interesting for me because I’ve never lived in the South and Southern cooking is not something I am an expert on at all,” he said. “I’ve been spending a lot of time exploring different dishes, practicing them, and coming up with variations on them to make them my own.”
But, he said, it will give him the chance to not only have fun while perfecting some new skills in the kitchen, but also reengage with his alma mater in a meaningful way.
Said Goodstein, “This gives me an opportunity to build a connection with Penn State and IST and to highlight that alumni are everywhere, doing different things and trying new experiences. It will be exciting to watch and learn about what other Penn State graduates have been doing, while learning about new foods as well.”