What Willy Cooked Up Next
On a recent windy Saturday evening, content creator and chef What Willy Cook — real name Will Hughes — is shouting obscenities at a bunch of twentysomethings. To be fair, they’re trying to break into a charity party he’s throwing at an east London brewery. “Do you hate charity?” he shouts at the chancers trying to sneak through the door. “Buy a ticket or get the fuck out.”
He’s a little drunk, he admits. But it’s the same irreverence that has helped Hughes, who is in his late 20s, amass an Instagram following of over 720,000 over the past four years. His first video, posted in 2020, was an in-jokey edit of him whizzing up a bourbon (whiskey) bourbon (biscuit) milkshake. People liked it, and since then he’s presented shows for Mob Kitchen, Deliveroo and, astonishingly, Major League Baseball; signed to the food talent agency Juiced; launched a delivery-only burger brand Saucy Buns; and designed clothes with brands like END and Percival. His newest business venture, Pleasant Homeware, is a collection of crockery.
As if being your own brand online isn’t hard enough, why’d you decide to start another one? Traditionally, people get big and then they’re not relevant — they fade into obscurity. So, I probably shouldn’t rely entirely on my personality because if that all goes tits up, then I won’t be making money.
How did you land on the idea of making homeware? I met this guy called Dom [Santry] who wanted to start a business with me. He wanted to do the logistics, and I do the creative stuff. He asked, “What do you want to do, make hot sauce?” I was like, “I’m not fucking Ed Sheeran. Why don’t we make nice crockery?” So, we went out to a factory in Portugal, and I had this idea of doing plates in weird colours with ripples on them. The initial response was shit. Everyone was like, what the fuck are these?
Why? People were like, the pricing is way off. That’s probably because, you know, we’re trying tolaunch it off the back of me, who just goes, “[Here’s] a tin of chickpeas I got for 32p”. Maybe the people that follow me aren’t the target audience, but I hope they will be. For the second drop, we lowered the prices, and made things for less money and with lower margins.
Do you think you’ll always be making videos? My dream as a kid was to be doing something on TV. But there’s not a lot of money in it; all the money is on social media. Maybe I’ll be making content until I’m 60 to pay the bills. But I don’t fucking know. You’ve got to take each thing as it comes, haven’t you?