UTD alum Anisha Holla is transforming the fates of local restaurants across the DFW metroplex through her app FoodiFy, a subscription marketing service that matches food influencers with local eateries.
With nearly 170,000 followers on Instagram and nearly 40,000 on TikTok, Holla kindled a successful business model out of her hobby of food reviewing. After years working for the Dallas Observer as a food writer, Holla launched FoodiFy in 2023 — and was awarded the Mitchell Family Foundation award from the Texas Business Hall of Fame just one year later.
Holla has been a self-proclaimed foodie from before her time at UTD, and creating videos on restaurants and food reviews was a passion for her during her years in college. Filming closeups of her plates, servers presenting dishes and behind-the-scenes shots of the kitchen, Holla narrates the story of why each food spot is special. These quick videos on her Instagram and TikTok brought her thousands of followers looking for the best food in DFW.
Alongside her online personality, Holla was pursuing a medical career throughout her time at university, focusing on medical scribing, mental health services and getting her bachelor’s in neuroscience. But along the way, her goals changed.
“I studied abroad in Spain and that really just showed me how much there was to the world,” Holla said, comparing it to an unadventurous future in medical school. While interning at the White House on the Archer Fellowship in D.C., one of her mentors told her, “You’ve always been so focused on chasing what you want to be when really, you should be chasing who you want to be.” She said those were the words that changed her perspective.
With that new outlook and a seed of $1,000 of her own money, Holla started her company from scratch.
“My parents were like, ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’… My professors were like ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’… Even people at my workplace were like, ‘Are you sure you want to leave this six-figure salary to go do your own thing that might not make you any money?’” Holla said.
Even with others uncertain, Holla had confidence. Restaurants in the area reached out regarding her videos. While she made food reviews videos as a hobby, they would lead to a significant increase in sales for the local businesses she visited.
“The [restaurant] owner called me up and he said, ‘Because of your video, we are still alive today and we wouldn’t have been otherwise,’” Holla said. “So those kinds of stories were really rewarding to hear. And that’s why I kind of realized that who I wanted to be is that person that’s helping those small businesses, you know, changing their trajectory.”
These were the moments that spurred her toward developing FoodiFy, she said — the ability to use her power as an influencer to uplift the local community. With both creators and restaurants interested, Holla saw her initial investment and the impact she made as an individual reviewer multiplied, bringing FoodiFy to nearly a million dollars in revenue.
“[A restaurant owner] called me over the phone and he was literally crying,” Holla said. She re-narrated what she was told over that call: “‘I did not know social media could do all this to my business. I’m just so grateful for Instagram and TikTok and all these other technologies I didn’t even know existed before.’”
According to Holla, FoodiFy is designed to give shop owners access to a demographic they wouldn’t have reached on their own, either because of a lack of following or unfamiliarity with technology. Creators join and get paid for filming a video at a restaurant that they have been matched with because of the influencer’s location, audience and budget. Creators receive a free meal, income and regular content. Shop owners pay for publicity in tiers based on how popular of an influencer they want reviewing them, receiving a spike in customers in the days and weeks following a video review.
And while accolades are nothing uncommon in Holla’s resume, what stands out in her story was what she described as a shift away from stereotypes set by her community. A frequently repeated message in the Indian community, Holla said, is a push toward white-collar professions like law, engineering and medicine. Holla had a passion for medicine, where she was initially headed, but said her desire to create a lifestyle built around her love for food and community nudged her onto a path that would have typically been frowned upon. But her progress in this endeavor and continual self-made success has solidified that her choice was not a risk she took but came from trust in her abilities and an inclination to live her life on her own terms.
“I feel like I held myself to that career name of a doctor so much that I was scared to try anything else,” Holla said. “But I realized that who I wanted to be was someone who was helping these small businesses because I started as an influencer myself.”
Holla’s Instagram is filled with diverse food options catering to a diverse population, including meals from her own Indian community. She said she not only wants to directly provide each spot with publicity but also incorporate local eateries into the very process of developing her company.
“When I was still at UTD, I would just drive to like five, six restaurants and I would just sit down with the owners and ask, ‘What can I help you with?’ Holla said. “‘What problems do you have? How much would you pay for a matchmaking platform like this? Would you even buy this?’”
While Holla has plans to expand her company to major hubs like Boston, Chicago, Atlanta and New York City, she holds onto her roots. She continues to create food review content as an independent influencer, exploring regional restaurants, like Asian-Mexican fusion in Plano or an over 50-year-old pizzeria in Fort Worth, as a local.
“I feel like if I was to be able to make so much impact as an influencer, imagine the scale of impact that could come from a platform that connects all these different influencers to the restaurants that need the attention the most,” Holla said.