Matt Adlard – The Former Topless Baker

Matt Adlard is a 29-year-old self-taught baker and pastry chef who made a name for himself using social media. He is known primarily on Instagram, creating reels of delicate and aesthetic pleasing treats and desserts. Although Instagram was not his original platform.

In his early 20s, Matt began his career as a food vlogger, turned baking vlogger on YouTube. He marketed himself as ‘The Topless Baker’ appearing in his YouTube videos and blog wearing an apron over his bare chest or plainly showing his abs. Quickly his videos went viral. He became a social media star, with 300K plus subscribers to his YouTube channel, and over 100 how-to-bake videos. 

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A post shared by Matt Adlard (@mattadlard)

He began working with The Food Network, and hosted their online digital series ‘Made for Two with the Topless Baker’. His success on the digital series led him to appear as a celebrity judge on the Foot Network’s Christmas Cookie Challenge, Chopped Sweets and the Food Network Challenge. The Topless Baker was gaining more and more notoriety and success over four years, even appearing on MTV’s digital series ‘Cooking in the crib with Snookie and Joey’.

But suddenly, Matt stopped posting videos. Months had gone by without an upload on YouTube, until finally he posted the video entitled ‘Goodbye Topless Baker + Why I disappeared from YouTube’

In this video, Matt went into detail of how the pressure of constant uploading had begun to drain his creativity. He was uploading for the views and succumbing to internet trends. He wasn’t happy with his recipes or the videos themselves. As seen in the title, he was also saying goodbye to the Topless persona. 

Matt became very sensitive about his body and wanted to become a serious baker. He mentions in the video being embarrassed about going to events and having to take off his shirt backstage in front of other professional chefs. In the time he took away from constant uploads, he focused his time into rebranding.

Matt renamed all his social media profiles to ‘Mattadlard’. He created a new logo, new uniform and began to create smaller videos on Instagram where he found his creativity once again. He appeared as himself and not The Topless Baker. 

He admits that in this process, he lost a lot of followers. That fans were still commenting on his videos on posts to take his shirt off and why he was no longer showing his abs. But Matt committed to change and focused on what made him happier, and in doing so, opened up a new virtual baking school – Bake It Better. 

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A post shared by Matt Adlard (@mattadlard)

Matt’s YouTube channel is more or less abandoned now, with the last post dating 26.11.19. He now creates content for Instagram, making reels of his recipes and posts updates on his Insta story everyday. 

Matt Adlard is a good example of how to adapt on social media. Rather than churning out the content that got him views but overall drained his passion, Matt took a radical step and made the changes that worked for him. In the end, Matt has a new following, a new image and product he is proud of. That’s more valuable than a passionless channel with a million followers.