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Mike Gillis, aka Mike G, is an Indianapolis wizard of marketing, food, and branding. One could say he is most known for his endeavor of food influencing and blogging, but some would argue it’s his clothing brand, We Don’t Run From Adversity (WDRFA). Others still would say it is his knack for throwing parties, and restaurant owners might say it is his generous attitude toward sharing places to go in the city.
No matter how you know him, it is apparent that he is a cultural influence in the city and we wanted to know exactly what he’s up to and how he got here. In other words, where is Mike G? First and foremost, Gillis is a businessman. He attended the IU Kelley School of Business where he studied marketing. That education eventually led him to running the social account, @wheresmikeg, on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter. At first he simply wanted to share what he loved, but he figured if he was making other people money he should be making some too.
In addition to appealing to his over twenty five thousand followers, he also runs marketing for Hangtime Indy, a streetwear store in the city. He is the founder of WDRFA. He has partnered with multiple restaurants in the city to help them bring in more customers, and he partnered with Daniel’s Vineyard in January 2021 to help bring a more diverse audience to the vineyard by creating two wines, a red blend called Reflections and a white called Sherrce. He says these are the main things that he does, and other things trickle off those. Originally from Northwest Indiana, Gillis decided to stay in Indy after college to keep promoting all this city has to offer.
In honor of the release of The Food Issue, this month’s PATTERN digital magazine will be full of food. What better way to start than with Mike G?
Cory Cathcart: When did you first realize that food influencing could be a job?
Mike Gillis: First, I was just sharing my life. Once people started hitting me up and telling me that they went to a restaurant I posted, my business mind was like, “I gotta be able to make some money off of this.” I was making the restaurants money… Why couldn’t I get a check too? I started writing for Visit Indy doing different food blog posts for them. It was like a stamp that I needed to be able to talk to restaurant owners and was a good look from the public side to say that I’m writing for a publication. I wrote for the Current as well up in Carmel and Fishers. After that the influencing took off.
CC: How did you decide on the name @wheresmikeg?
MG: A spring break study abroad trip my senior year in college. There were twenty or thirty of us and they kept taking group pictures. They told me that everybody kept saying “Where’s Mike?” I don’t know where I was, but I was never in the pictures. I went on a social media hiatus my senior year, and I redownloaded it on that spring break trip. I was trying to think of a name for my account, and I was like it could be @wheresmike but that seemed basic. So I put a G on the end. It came from people looking for me. Not really rebranding myself, but just coming back on social media. Once I started doing all this food and lifestyle stuff, I felt like it went hand-in-hand.
CC: Did you learn anything that eventually led you to content creation in school?
MG: Well, it wasn’t a thing then. Instagram didn’t come out until 2010. When I first got to college Vine, Twitter, and Facebook were at the forefront of everything. When Instagram was first produced it was only available to iPhone users. I didn’t even have an iPhone then. I had an iPod Touch, which kids would probably not even know about today. I would send out my pictures to my iPod touch so I could post stuff to Instagram. So content creation wasn’t even a thing. I did try to take a photography class. It was super hard. I dropped it. But I did study marketing, so I think that was at the forefront of what I’m still doing.
CC: It feels like you were one of the first people in the city to start doing food influencing. When did you start?
MG: I started on a trip to Spain in Spring 2015. The bigger thing back then was that people from news stations, radio stations, the traditional people in media, were the ones who were invited to events like soft openings. My ex-girlfriend at the time worked for a publication, so I used to go to the events with her. I was exposed to it. But now, roles have changed because depending on the restaurant’s goals, they might be trying to reach a much younger demographic, so they can reach that by bringing influencers in as opposed to just the news.
CC: What inspired you to become a food influencer? Was it the food, photography, or sharing the stories?
MG: Definitely not the photography. [Laughs] The food for sure, but more about sharing the story—especially for minorities in Indianapolis. I was experiencing the things I was sharing in my real life, but then I would always hear people say there’s nothing to do or nowhere to go. I would see people always going to Olive Garden and Red Lobster. People didn’t know about the other places. Things aren’t really marketed to those minority communities—especially at that time. I feel like things are different now, because everybody’s sharing more. But when I first started, if you didn’t know about something, there was no way for you to really know because people aren’t reading the Indy Star. People aren’t reading all these different publications to learn about new and local places. For me it was just about giving more access to people in regard to things to do in the city and sharing about the food and sharing my life as I experienced it.
CC: What is a restaurant that no longer exists in Indy that you wish you could bring back?
MG: Bourbon Street Distillery. Their food was good, it was good prices, and I feel like it was a cool vibe. A lot of people didn’t know about it. I feel like in the day and age of social media, they would have probably really thrived because things were really good. It was an accepting environment, people just came as they were.
CC: What made you stay in Indy?
MG: I was fresh out of college and I was fortunate enough to be living my life and experiencing these things that people traditionally complain about. People’s complaints fueled me to keep going to discover more. As I discovered more, I found that within 465 there are so many either locally owned or Midwest small chain restaurant groups that do a really good job at supporting local farms and using fresh ingredients. Big chain restaurants can’t do that. I can’t say that they’re bad places—they provide a lot of jobs and different things for people, but they have to be consistent across fifty states if that’s how big they are. For me, I kind of just fell in love with trying new things here. As I began to share more, I noticed that there’s still a lot of opportunity to get the word out to more people. They don’t always know everything that’s going on or the changes that are happening. I’m fortunate enough to be in some of those meetings and have conversations with some of those decision makers. It’s been about continuously showing people that there are things to do.
CC: Tell me more about how you ended up with two wines of your own.
MG: I’m partnered with Daniel’s vineyard to create the wines, so it’s my blend of their wines from their grapes that they already have. I have a white and a red blend. They come out seasonally once a year a piece, so limited runs. We’ve been doing that since January 2021.
CC: What made you want to do that? Is it another part of making an impact and collaboration?
MG: Yeah, that’s one of the main things. As you mentioned, a lot more people are getting into influence and into blogging. For me, I’m a businessman first before all that shit. So it’s always about, “How can I differentiate things and how can I do things better than I’ve done it before?” Daniel’s had reached out and they wanted me to host a private dinner and do some other things, because their goal at the time was to expose more of a diverse group of people to the vineyard. And I told them that with my influence that it will be advantageous, if we want to expose people based on their goals, to let me have my own wine. We went back and forth for some months, and they decided to take a chance and I’m grateful for that, because we’ve been able to have a great business relationship for the last two years.
During the pandemic, I helped restaurants for free. I didn’t charge them anything to expose the restaurants that were still open. A lot were struggling. They didn’t have employees, or didn’t want employees working. They might have had special menus. Daniel’s was one of those places. But that idea of my own thing sparked from working with Commissary, because the owner there, Brandon Burdine, wanted to spike sales and see what we could do to work together. We came up with a latte that I helped create. We sold like six hundred of them in a month. That got six hundred people to a location. I also worked with Chef Tia and I made some fries. I think we sold like three hundred of those in a weekend. I worked with King Dough and we came up with a special drink and a special pizza and sold a nice amount there. So Daniel’s had that same idea, but since I had already done that I wanted to try and create something that is a true product—that could be sustainable and stay on the menu.
CC: So do the wines and the parties that you throw coordinate? Do you have them at Daniel’s Vineyard?
MG: Yeah, at the vineyard. Everything tying back into the goal. That was super organic. I started off doing Sunday Fundays, which was 2021, and that just came from Daniel’s saying, “We over-produced the wine. Let’s get some people out here to try it early if you want to have an event.” I travel a lot and go to different places, and in every city but Indianapolis it seems like Sunday Funday is a thing. I was just capitalizing on that being a buzzword other places. This year, going into spring and summer, I changed it to Sunset Sunday. One, because I changed the time so you’d be able to see the sunset over you know the vineyard. It’s always beautiful out there. And then two, it’ll be a much bigger thing. It’ll feel more like a wine festival as opposed to a party. We have a few of those coming this year.
CC: As an influencer, you are shifting the narrative of Indy. How do you feel like you’ve changed the cultural landscape? Because you have played a very important part.
MG: For me, I’m fortunate enough to have had all the life experiences I’ve had and to grow up around Black and Hispanic people—like Mexican, Puerto Rican people, and African Americans. Then I went to college and I was around predominantly white people. For me, it’s been a blessing to learn how to navigate and converse with all different kinds of people. I’m unbiased to anything. I always told myself I would make money on social media when it was coming out. I didn’t know how, I definitely didn’t think it was food, but food is one of those things that we all have to have. And if we can afford it, it’s nice to eat exactly what we want as well.
So I think that I’ve been able to either motivate or inspire people to try different things. I think that I’ve been a very integral part in exposing young people, millennials, and a lot of Black people, especially in Indianapolis, to things and showing them what’s possible in regard to utilizing social media as a tool to share. For me to be able to have a wine and sell thousands of bottles, and for me to be able to work with a restaurant and they tell me that three hundred people came in within a week or a month’s time after I posted something—I think that’s the real tangible evidence of the influence that I really have. I think right now lines are getting skewed between true influence and views. You got people on TikTok that could get a million views for something, but it doesn’t mean that even one person went to go check a place out. I’d never get that many views, but I do have restaurant owners who are calling or texting me and just saying thank you. The things that I do have a more organic feel. It doesn’t feel like I’m trying to sell anybody anything. I’ve always been very cognizant of that. A commercial comes on TV, we all look the other way. I never want it to feel like that, especially when I’m working with people. I always try to be as honest as possible.
