Moderator of Denver's Popular Food Subreddit Takes a Stand Against Hate

"I want to be very clear that I want this platform to be a place that uplifts people," says Dan Richard (Reddit username u/nerdwithme), the moderator of r/denverfood, a Subreddit that has grown to over 70,000 members, got 16.7 million views in 2024, and is consistently in the country's top five city-based food Subreddits, alongside New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles.

On January 30, a post in r/denverfood asking people to name pro-Trump and pro-MAGA restaurants in the metro area sparked a discussion that made Richard rethink the intention behind the online space he founded in 2012. Then he posted this response: "This Subreddit will not support the ideologies of Trump or his supporters. You're welcome to disagree."

While he received many messages of gratitude and encouragement in the hours and days that followed, some people did disagree. Some even sent death threats. "The first one said, 'I'll deport you with a 9mm,'" he recalls. "It's scary."

But he's not backing down. "I have this firm belief that people should be able to live the way they live, free of harassment, free of harm, free of violence, across the board," Richard says. "As a white, fortysomething queer man, I get to walk in a lot of spaces that other people don't. I get to put that mask on or take it off whenever I want. It's a deep privilege I have that a lot of other people don't. So I don't like that a forum like Reddit can be used to say, okay, we're gonna take a neutral stance."

When he saw hate speech emerge in the comments of r/denverfood, "I felt empowered to say, look, this is the paradox of intolerance," he explains. "I will not platform voices that speak for this political ideology. You've got other places to do it. I'm just not gonna allow it. And I think that's my privilege as the owner of that platform and my defense behind that is, if you tolerate intolerance, eventually there's just going to be intolerance. It will overwhelm the conversation."

Now, he's implementing new guidelines to ensure that r/denverfood is an online space that is free from hate. "For a long time, it was like, this is just discussion. But as time has gone on, especially now — the way this is affecting people in my life, in my career, in my communities, my loved ones — the time for taking neutral stances has passed. Real violence, real harm is here, or it's coming at a degree none of us are prepared for," Richard says. "I have a small platform that's mine, that I can control, and I want to use it to create as much good as possible. ... We're not going to platform hate."

Building a community

"The height of my culinary experience moving from Virginia Beach, Virginia, was going to an Applebee's or a Golden Corral," says Richards, who has a career in ecommerce and does comedy on the side. When he was in his late twenties, he met a romantic partner who was from Denver, and he soon moved to the Mile High.

"They were a foodie," he recalls. "They introduced me to sushi and Indian food and Ethiopian food — up until that point, I'd never been to a major city and experienced a culinary food scene."

Richard had been a Reddit user for several years and originally decided to create r/denverfood in 2012 as a place to share his own food reviews of places in his new home. "Come to find out, I'm a bad writer," he jokes.

The platform started small and grew slowly for a long time. "We were getting a couple thousand people a year," Richard says. Then came the pandemic, and "during quarantine, I had this idea of, maybe I'll grow this thing," he recalls. "Maybe this will be a place where people can discuss food and the changing environment, the changing industry. I started to hear that industry people read this thing and I thought, maybe this can be a place where restaurants can talk about what's going on and receive direct honest feedback."

Richard began overhauling r/denverfood, making some SEO tweaks, doing regular updates and putting more intention behind the space. "We went from about 15,000 subscribers to about 30,000 subscribers in the span of about two years," he shares.

In 2023 alone, the number of subscribers doubled and views jumped from 20,000 to 100,000 a month, again prompting Richard to look at the site with more intention. "What I don't want the Subreddit to be is this homogeneous review aggregator, there are already sites like that," he notes. "Go to Yelp, go to Google reviews."

Instead, he's tried to encourage discussions on deeper topics and to make r/denverfood a place where hospitality employees can share their perspectives.

"From an entertainment aspect, it's fun when someone in the industry gets on there and shares a little bit of drama, spills a little bit of tea," Richard says. "I don't think there's a place where industry people can share the good and bad of what they're experiencing as an employee of a business. When those things show up, I let them exist — within the confines of some very strict rules."

Some posts can be hard to manage, he adds: "One of the things I've discovered is that there's this pattern. When people have an opinion, they like sharing it, they like collaboration. But when someone is personally attacked — their character, not their actions, is attacked — it's a mess."

There was a time, Richard says, when he'd get dozens of notifications about comments being flagged for harassment and other bad behavior. "Through all that manual moderation, I got exhausted," he admits. So he began using Reddit's auto-moderation tools which "increased my bandwidth to empower more impactful conversation."

But as the election cycle ramped up in 2024, he saw another shift.

Food is political

When Trump won his first presidential election in 2016, "I started to see a lot of racist ideology [in comments on r/denverfood], but the Subreddit wasn't as active then," Richard recalls. At the time, it was easy for him to manually remove those posts and ban the user if needed.

Last year, the uptick in racism and bigotry returned. "Every time there would be something in the news, [the comments] would parallel that and it never sat well with me," he says.

Throughout 2024, he made quarterly updates to the Subreddit with an even tighter focus on not allowing personal attacks. At the same time, Reddit's moderation tools became more automated and advanced. "Now there's AI-powered sentiment analysis, so I have this harassment filter on. ... What that's allowed me to do is keep the moderation team small" — there's just one other person — "because I want the intention to be quite specifically my intention."

Then came the January post titled, "Pro-Trump and MAGA Restaurants to Avoid?"

"The response was explosive," Richard says. At the time, "it was like, I want to see how this plays out. When the hate speech showed up, that's when I felt empowered to say, 'This is the paradox of intolerance.'"

Some people have pushed back, charging that Richard isn't welcoming diverse voices in r/denverfood. "I am, but I'm not welcoming Trump supporters to come in and talk about their ideologies because they oppress people," he affirms. "I don't think you can run something like the r/denverfood Subreddit and not acknowledge that the people who make your food come from a vast background, and it's not just race — it's sexuality, it's identity, it's ability, it's the spectrum."

Despite the negative feedback and death threats from a "vocal minority," Richard says that "at its core, I just don't want to give a platform for hate and I don't mind being a little loud about it. ... If you have a platform, you have 70,000 eyeballs, maybe something you say helps somebody and that should be enough of a reason to do it. I'm feeling scared because every day there's some new horror  — being just a person, I have my own fears and worries, and worrying that someone's gonna show up to my door with a gun because I helped one person scares the shit out of me."

Some have responded by saying that Richard should just make r/denverfood "about food," he shares. But "r/denverfood isn't just a place to talk about where to eat. It's a place to celebrate and uplift the people, cultures and ingredients that shape Denver's food scene. Food is personal. Food is political. Every meal represents the hands that made it, the traditions behind it, and the systems that sustain it."

 

Looking toward the future

The evolution of r/denverfood continues. "This is a space for industry workers and diners to share experiences, perspectives and stories," Richard says. "It's not just about what's on the plate, it's about the people and culture that bring it to life."

In 2025, "I would hope to see more posts that talk about the politics of food," he adds. "I think it's a disservice to the culture behind food that we don't talk about the people who cook for us." He would like to see more educational posts and work with more industry experts to share resources so the space can become "a vector for advocacy," as well.

He also believes the Subreddit could be a valuable free tool for restaurant owners to reach diners directly. "To local owners who want to tell their stores or want to stake a stance or want support, I have your back," he says. "The Subreddit has your back. ... I'd love to see the industry come on and talk about what they need, whatever that may be. How can we use this platform to empower the Denver food scene, bring in more business to people's restaurants, and talk about the stories of what's affecting restaurateurs?"

While the death threats have been frightening, Richard's commitment is unwavering. "One of the reasons I'm so passionate about creating this is that I grew up in a relatively poor, blue-collar household in the South and all of my best memories are around food — family around the table, cooking and eating together," he says. "Now, as an adult, my partner and I champion this idea that we just want bigger tables. So in our own capacities, we gather friends, we cook for them, we take people places, we celebrate through the lens of food. It's deeply important to us.

"If I'm going to care about something," he concludes, "this feels important to care about."