Second Saturday Shout-out: Keith Lee and Frankensons Pizzeria
For the first Second Saturday Shoutout of 2023, we are honoring Keith Lee, a Tiktok food critic. Keith Lee’s reviewed Frankensons Pizzeria, a Las Vegas-based restaurant that was struggling to bring in customers, and after his glowing review blew up on Tiktok, the restaurant was swarmed with fans.
According to his video, Keith received an email from an employee at Frankensons asking him to review the family restaurant, which just recently opened and wasn’t doing too well due to a low marketing budget. Keith Lee decided to not charge for the video and even went as far as to pay for his own food, despite many other food reviewers charging upwards of $3,000 per video.
Lee uploaded his video on January 2nd, where he detailed the amazing service, kindness from the owner, Frank, and stated that the majority of the food he got was delicious, even going as far to rank the lemon pepper wings a 10/10. In the spirit of objectivity and fairness, Lee noted that he wasn’t a fan of the ranch dressing or french fries, but raved about the variation of chicken wings, pizzas, garlic knots, burgers, and sandwiches.
As of the time of writing this, Lee’s video received 7 million likes, over 63,000 shares, and over 35 millions views. So how did this affect Frank’s struggling business? The business began to boom. Within 24 hours, Frankensons’ Tiktok page gained tens of thousands of followers and had a huge increase in order and in-person customers. Frank noted that he sold more lemon pepper wings in the following two days than he did in four months of business. He also noted that people were coming from all over to support his business, including places like Utah, California, and even Iowa.
The small business, while grateful for the newfound popularity, struggled to keep up with the long lines and many delivery orders and had to temporarily close in order to restock for the increase in demand. Frankensons has since reopened, and still has a long line of people waiting to give it a try.
Frank has expressed his gratitude to Keith Lee and said that the whole exchange “has been life-changing.” Lee deserves this shout-out for shedding light on a small business and amazingly kind owner that didn’t have the funds or ability to get their name out there. Lee refused any payment and said that seeing Keith be thankful and successful was more than enough for him.
To take a business that could barely afford its rent and totally transform and popularize it, all out of the kindness of his own heart, is truly an act of kindness. We at Citriclean hope Keith Lee keeps up the good work by providing small restaurants with exposure, and hope that this act of kindness inspires others to also do some good for the world!
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