It’s said that too many cooks spoil the broth. But what if the cooks are small, and so are the ingredients? 

Broadcasters and producers are betting on tiny food as a winning formula for young viewers, with new shows such as The Big Tiny Food Face-Off and The Tiny Chef Show scaling the kid cooking trend down to micro-size. 

Face-Off, from Sony Pictures Television’s B17 Entertainment, launched on BuzzFeed’s Tasty YouTube channel (which has 21 million subscribers) in July. Over the course of six 20-minute episodes, tween and teen contestants created miniature-sized dishes, competing to see who could pack the most flavor into them. 

Daniel Haack, Kids & Family creative lead at YouTube Original Content, says it’s inspirational for young viewers to see scaled-down cooking in action.

“A lot of hobbies require expensive tools and materials, but with tiny food, you’re typically only using small amounts of ingredients,” he says. “So a kid may be able to play around more freely, and have some trial-and-error, without worrying as much about impacting a family’s food budget.”

The tiny approach also adds tension to the competition format, Haack notes. On one hand, the judges (creators/hosts Matt Stonie and Inga Lam) have to carefully base their decisions on small bites. The kids, meanwhile, also have to be significantly more precise with their processes, such as measurements and heating. 

“Tiny food brings an element of fantasy and play to cooking, while also requiring so much creativity and inventiveness,” he says. “It allows kids to express themselves, but also to experiment and learn how to problem-solve.”

Laura Miller, Shibusawa professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Missouri St. Louis, theorizes that tiny food likely has its roots in the “Kawaii” aesthetic of cuteness that originated among women and girls in Japan. She also notes that traditional Japanese arts such as Bonsai and Netsuke are similarly shaped around a love of miniature things.

In fact, Kawaii played a prominent role in Face-Off, serving as the theme for one of its episodes. “We really wanted to celebrate the long history of tiny food cooking and give viewers some awareness of its cultural context,” Haack notes. 

Mapping out other possible origins of tiny food, Miller also points to the art of “Dekoden”—decorating accessories that styled up cellphones in the ’90s. Food-based ornaments like tiny cakes and candies were so visually appealing that they became a specialized genre of Dekoden, she notes. 

People eventually began creating these accessories themselves using polymer clay and resin. And eventually, the idea of making edible versions of tiny food became appealing in order to demonstrate both expertise and creativity without giving up functionality or cuteness, Miller explains. 

From there, it stands to reason that the internet has played a major role in boosting mini-food’s popularity and accessibility. “As the miniature fake and edible food fad escalated, Japanese fans posted videos and photographs to social media,” says Miller. This went on to capture the attention of companies in the West. 

While tiny food has been around for a long time, platforms like YouTube have really helped bring it to a wider audience over the last few years, adds Haack. He notes that kids have found their way to tiny food through a variety of entry points—while some of the young contestants on Face-Off got involved through their interest in cooking, others discovered tiny food through a passion for DIY and crafting. 

The internet is also where the Tiny Chef brand first gained popularity back in 2018. In a dedicated, eponymous Instagram account and other channels, pint-sized puppet Tiny Chef (a.k.a. Cheffy) is seen engaging in various activities, from playing his tiny banjo, to baking an apple pie in a bottle cap. Today, Tiny Chef has more than 620,000 followers on Instagram and upwards of 3.4 million followers on TikTok.  

The mix of quaint-looking visuals and Cheffy’s amusing personality has attracted fans of all ages (including actor Kristen Bell, who is now an executive producer on the Nickelodeon series), setting the stage for a franchise that includes consumer products—and now a major-network TV series.

The Tiny Chef Show (pictured) premiered on Nick in September, produced by Imagine Kids+Family, Nickelodeon Animation and IP owner Tiny Chef Productions. With TV personality RuPaul as a voice announcer, the series features Cheffy whipping up tiny plant-based dishes, interacting with celebrity guests and learning lessons along the way. (For example, one episode sees him overcome his loss of confidence after breaking his favorite spatula.)

Rachel Larsen, a co-creator and executive producer with Adam Reid and Ozlem Akturk, echoes Haack’s emphasis on fantasy as a key element in this nascent genre. 

“It’s one thing to play with dolls and dollhouses, where everything is plastic. But when you cook tiny, you can actually consume [what you create],” says Larsen. “There’s something interactive about it—it puts you into that tiny world.”

Larsen agrees that the tiny trend owes some of its success to its compatibility with bite-sized video formats (pun intended). “I think social media has done a great job of [giving a platform to] things that didn’t necessarily have a home in longer formats,” she says. 

It’s also worth noting the large-sized effort that went into the small-sized sets and props on both projects.

For The Tiny Chef Show, production designer Jason Kolowski prepared soundstages inspired by the tree-stump home featured in Cheffy’s social media backdrop. The intricately designed sets are equipped with small culinary accessories such as pots, pans, spatulas, jars, plants, a miniature burner and more. Tiny Chef, who is always seen in his signature apron and hat, occasionally also rocks a tiny pair of spectacles.

Meanwhile, in addition to the miniature utensils and furniture featured in Face-Off, the winner also receives a tiny golden trophy. And each episode ends with footage of a small hamster enjoying the prepared meals—something that really helped capture the “whimsical” feeling of tiny food cooking, according to Haack.

“Our partners at B17 did a great job in thinking about set design, camera angles and perspective to properly capture the small scale, while still making the show itself feel big and exciting,” he says.

And that’s no small feat. 

This story originally appeared in Kidscreen’s October/November 2022 magazine.