Famous Potatoes is a steakhouse located at 26 Buchanan Street, Wuse 2, Abuja. With a striking red, white and black interior and exterior, the place creates the right ambience to kick back with friends and have a good time.

I was invited to a Blogger Meet & Greet with Bam Bam, an ex-housemate from the widely watched Big Brother Naija. It was to hold at Famous Potatoes, a restaurant in Wuse 2, Abuja. After much deliberation, I decided to throw on some clothes and go out for once.

I didn’t think it would be cool to wait all the way until August or whenever for The Blogger Point brunch. I didn’t regret my decision one bit!

Guest Speakers

Apart from BamBam, the major theme was branding yourself as a blogger. Thus, three quite prominent bloggers were invited to speak – Alma Ngur of The Style Cheapskate, Kuyet Bamai, and Sola Fagbemi. They all dropped some nuggets of wisdom from their unique journeys. Here are some snippets from my notes:

ALMA NGUR – Standing out in the Nigerian Blogosphere

+ Be sure you have passion for blogging

+ Don’t go in for the money! You won’t start rolling in money after your first 24 hours – it’s a process. 

+ Spread your tentacles – don’t be too rigid, respond to the needs of your audience!

+ Be open to free, filtered collaborations – This means that you should once in a while do a collaboration for free. Got a brand asking you for a collab? Analyse what benefit you could get out of it and do it for free. This doesn’t mean you should just do free work/collaborate with just any brand though – filter the people you want to work with!

KUYET BAMAI – Using Little to Build a Brand

+ Cut out whatever will not benefit your brand

+ While ‘slaying’ don’t forget to be yourself. It’s alright to want to look presentable but you shouldn’t have to alter yourself just to do that.

SOLA FAGBEMI – The 3 C’s

+ Create: Create content your audience needs, understand your audience and make sure you’re creating content that solves problems, add values.

+ Collaborate: When collaborating, be sure to set ground rules in order to avoid major issues. She spoke on how she collaborated with someone and didn’t really brief them on her standards, leading to questions being raised further down the line – she was even asked to take down one of her Youtube videos!

+ Consistency: Be consistent, but also reflect on your growth and ask yourself if you need a new strategy.

BAM BAM SPEAKS ON HER EXPERIENCE

Eventually BamBam showed up, and she led us through a talk on how she got into acting and Big Brother Naija, telling us all the internal conflicts she had and crazy decisions she had to make to get to where she was today. It was a good talk, but It would have been better if she’d talked with the other bloggers. The timing was a bit later on after the guest speakers had finished, and several people had already left.

I don’t watch Big Brother Naija religiously, so I saw her as just another person. I loved her outfit and aura, and took a few things out of her talk too. She mentioned having laser focus on what you want, and having things fall into place when you do that. She used her Big Brother Naija audition experience as an example, saying that the last time she didn’t make it because her mind was on so many things at the time.

PHOTO SPOT ALERT

I liked both the interior and exterior of Famous Potatoes, from the spot outside which was shaded and had crystals hanging down from the roof, to the art work hanging just at the entrance to the indoor restaurant area. Inside, there were more touches of red and black, with framed photos all over the black walls.

It was a nice spot, and I loved the vibes – I just wish the lighting was better overall. If you’re a blogger looking for your next photoshoot spot, you can consider Famous Potatoes as one of them!

That being said, it was a fun day out at Famous Potatoes with Bunie and the other bloggers. I enjoyed getting to put a face to most of the blogs I’ve been reading religiously for the past year now. Though I wish there was more food, I liked the shrimp spring roll we were given. Considering Famous Potatoes is a restaurant, it would have been good to explore the menu in order to give our readers an insight into the food situation – but it’s alright! I’m sure some of us will be going back soon.

Here are some photos I took of some blogger faves, with a few new faces!