The ‘Keith Lee Effect’ helped some D-FW restaurants and hurt others. How’s business now?

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Months after the TikTok food critic came to Dallas-Fort Worth, the restaurants he visited are still making sense of his impact — good and bad.

Sweetly Seasoned food truck is one business TikTok food critic Keith Lee visited and reviewed when he toured the D-FW area earlier this year. The food truck's owner, Kim Viverette, faced intense and fervent backlash online after accusations circulated that she did not distribute the $4,000 tip Lee left for her and the people doing hair outside her food truck that day. Kim said both her mental health and her business have struggled since.

Ahmed Siyaji's Pakistani-Tex-Mex ghost kitchen concept Halal Fusionz went from getting five orders a day to more than 80 a day after TikTok food critic Keith Lee gave his business a positive review in January.Before Lee’s review, Siyaji’s Pakistani-Tex-Mex concept was struggling to get off the ground. He was barely making ends meet and only had about five orders a day.

Nikki Jackson, the owner of Absolutely Edible Cakes and Catering in Rowlett, said she’s hesitant to admit how well her business is doing thanks to Lee — because she can hardly believe it herself. “I said, ‘I know when you came out it appeared as if they were part of my staff, but they were not part of my staff. I don’t even know them. Do you still want me to issue them the money?’”saying he had made it clear how that money was to be distributed and that in his opinion, the food truck had been struggling not only because of marketing but also because of “personal issues.”

“I feel like I was blessed to have come,” she said. “I just feel like it was handled inappropriately. I feel like he should have asked me if they were my staff, or if he wanted to give them the money, he should have done it himself. My mistake was not knowing what was going on around me.” “I’m not sure if it’s completely related, but things were moving along in a forward-moving motion before this happened, and then everything just started to decline,” she said. “Restaurants are very volatile and finicky. One bad week or one bad day can become such a big hiccup for cash flow and return business.”For Evola, Lee’s time in North Texas felt like “a tornado came through, and now you have to clean up after it.

The experience of a restaurant like Terry Black’s, which is not formatted for takeout dining, is lost in such an approach, he added.

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Lee Lee Supermarket sold to California-based company for $2.2 millionJoel Foster is a Multimedia Journalist at KGUN9.
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