Arizona TikTok creator going viral for food reviews full of honesty, humor
PHOENIX (AZFamily) — A new TikTok creator is garnering attention online for his brutally honest food reviews.
Shane McElroy and his girlfriend Alia Mares started the aptly named @Nopaidfoodreviews page at the end of March, and it already has nearly 30,000 followers.
Their goal: provide real, honest and accurate food reviews for restaurants around the state, free from the influence of payment by the restaurants. McElroy said he wants to have a good conscience about what he recommends to his viewers.
McElroy said Mares would give him food recommendations that she saw online, and when he tried them, they did not live up to the hype.
“There’s a lot of times we’d walk in, and the place didn’t even look like it looked on video, and the food definitely didn’t look like it,” he said. “I started realizing with my advertising background, they’re creating prop food, prop setups, and they’re just trying to make it look as great as possible when it’s never as great as possible.”
That’s when they realized a need in Arizona for open, unbiased reviews. So far, his audience loves the transparency.
“We want to make sure we captivate every single audience,” Mares said. “We want to make sure we get the real scenes of the restaurants. We want to make sure we get just honesty and openness from the restaurant.”
“I don’t want to get a camera shoot in there, getting the food at the right angle,” McElroy said. “I want to see what it really looks like if I’m getting served. We don’t give people any heads-up. We pay for all of our own food.”
The couple started posting the reviews for fun, but now it’s taken off. They usually post three videos per day: breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Mares said they’ll focus on “taste” over “trend” and visit some of the best restaurants in the Valley—not necessarily the most popular.
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