Yahoo Finance Workers quit as Aussie restaurant inundated after going viral on TikTok: 'Blessing and a curse'
The owner of Wing Shack, has opened up about the downsides to overnight success.
An Aussie restaurant owner has opened up about the "blessing and curse" of going viral on TikTok. Joel Jacobson runs the Wing Shack in Blacktown, Sydney and he already has an established base of loyal customers who enjoy his southern fried chicken.
But there have been two standout moments in the last few years that saw his sales double and queues of customers out the door for weeks. While this type of success is something many small businesses are desperate for, Jacobson told Yahoo Finance there can be an unexpected downside.
"Kitchen was struggling. Staff were stressed. Wait times were blowing out. We're like, 'What going on?' And we started asking questions to customers, and they told us, 'Oh, you got a video on Tiktok'," he said.
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A woman made a simple video highlighting Wing Shack's Nashville tenders and it racked up hundreds of thousands of views. There was an almost instant pickup in customers after the video went viral and Jacobson said it was absolute bedlam.
"That's when we first learned how unpredictable TikTok was, and how no one truly knows how their algorithm works," he said.
The next moment came earlier this year when food TikToker Tom, who has more than 10 million followers, asked a random person on the street where he should eat and was told to go to Wing Shack.
He posted a 25-second video of him eating some chicken and it's since been viewed 1.2 million times.
That saw customers flock to the Blacktown takeaway shop again.
"We lost some staff because there was too much pressure, too much stress, and it was too difficult when it didn't back off," he told Yahoo Finance. "And that made it even worse, so it was kind of traumatic.
"People don't realise there is such a thing as too busy, like there's only so much a little kitchen can put out."
He said there were a few occasions where they had to shut the restaurant early because the wait times for food had blown out to more than an hour and was far beyond what he thought was acceptable.
It wasn't all negative as Jacobson said the unexpected social media fame has left them with more regular customers now, but it was a tough storm to weather.
The power of social media content creators
There have been countless stories of content creators and influencers trying to blag a free meal by promising a venue "exposure". Some small businesses will accept the offer hoping it translates to more customers, but it's hard to be sure if that ever eventuates.
Tom's manager, Taylor Reilly, admitted to Yahoo Finance they had "no clue" what impact the review videos were having on the restaurants after they were posted.
It was only when Wing Shack reached out to Tom's team and revealed how they were run off the rails for weeks.
Tom recently went to the Philippines and told his followers he would be visiting a shopping mall in Manilla for a casual meet and greet. To his surprise, more than 3,000 people showed up and he looked like a mini-celebrity as he walked through the shopping centre.
"I think this is one of the first times seeing what this [social media] effect looks like...what is the tangible, real-life result of those numbers?" Reilly said.
But it's tough for businesses to harness that same energy and convert it to sales.
Jacobson said he pays a social media manager more than $400 a week to post content on Wing Shack's accounts, but he doesn't know whether that is doing anything to actually attract customers.
"I think that businesses these days, especially in the food space, they think that they need a social media influence, or they think you can't survive without a social media presence," he told Yahoo Finance.
Until he finds out how to game the social media side of things, he said he's sticking to the basics and making sure his local customers are looked after.
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