Business owner Briana Mendez-Stafford was ringing up as little as $65 in sales per day at her Monroe bakery, Icing Bakehouse.
Then-Metro Detroit photographer and social media personality Seoung Lee walked in the door one day last spring and changed everything.
He posted a video in June about the two-year-old bakery on his social media channels, Chow Down Detroit, and business for her cookies, flavored cinnamon rolls, cupcakes and "brookies" — a brownie-cookie hybrid — started booming. Even weeks later, Mendez-Stafford shared on social media that she moved 300 cinnamon rolls in an hour.
With his signature Detroit Tigers baseball hat, high-tech Meta glasses and distinctive, kind voice, Lee is recognized everywhere, from Downriver bakeries to his local dog park.
More: Q&A: Seoung Lee of Chow Down Detroit
The Lincoln Park native has hundreds of thousands of followers across the major social media platforms, which he's spent more than a decade cultivating. This includes 2.5 million likes on TikTok, more than a quarter million Facebook followers and a couple hundred thousand more on Instagram.
Much of his content is filmed in his car, a Chevy Blazer EV, where he showcases cuisine from mom-and-pop cafes, bakeries and take-out spots.
"I've been photographing everything I've eaten for like 20 years," he said. "I started the Instagram Chow Down Detroit when Instagram first started, like 2012, 2013 or something like that. I just started posting food on there and stuff that I was eating for lunch when I was working at a job at an ad agency. I just started posting on there, and it just kind of blew up just because a lot of people weren't making food accounts on Instagram at the time."
Lee says he doesn't take money from small businesses for his posts. He makes a living as a photographer, and he also has monetized his social media accounts. He gets paid on a sliding scale based on certain metrics like the reach of each post.
"Sometimes I see people posting and saying 'oh he must get paid thousands of dollars for this post.' And I think some people think that too because I don't do negative reviews," Lee told The Detroit News. "And the reason I don't do that is because I don't want to hurt restaurants just based on my opinion. If a restaurant is really bad, I don't post about them. I just keep it to myself. They don't need me to make it worse."
He will do brand partnerships with larger food companies, however, like the Michigan-based brands Jet's and Tubby's. Lee says he tries to make it obvious it's a paid partnership, and no matter what, he wouldn't promote something he didn't honestly like.
On Aug. 26, he'll be doing a "Stuff the Bus" meet-up at the original Jet's in Sterling Heights with fellow online personality Colin McConnell. They've been tapped to help raise cash for school supplies for Utica Community Schools. Donors get a small pizza.
While an independent restaurant could hire Lee as a photographer, they can't pay him to visit and make a TikTok video for them. Still, plenty of influencers will take the jobs he turns down.
Nick Ritts owns several area restaurants, including Terry's Terrace, Tom's Oyster Bar, Ale Mary's and others. He says he's been using influencers and social media as a tool to reach customers before many other restaurants were.
"We were one of the pioneers in this. We were one of the first to hit up influencers," he said, adding that he's not looking to team up with people who have a million followers, but more "micro influencers" who may have 10,000 followers. "I have a business in Miami, and I spent a ton of time down there, and it all kind of hit down there first. I was using them down there before anybody thought about doing it up here. And that was years ago."
Ritts believes the influencer game has "peaked" and is on the downswing. The restaurateur says a business needs to have a special item to really break through. His area restaurants have attracted business with lobster roll flights, soft-serve margaritas and massive burritos.
Ritts says he's picky about which influencers he teams up with. He'd love to work with Lee.
"A lot of them are a waste of time. They all want money. It used to be a game where they just wanted to come in and eat for free, but now you gotta pay them," he said, adding that Metro Detroit influencers, on average, ask for $100-$500 for a visit.
Ritts says Lee, however, is "the real deal."
"I've reached out to him before because I love his work and he's just like, 'no, I go where I want,'" said Ritts. "The guy's a bit of a saint in the fact that he's always like, 'who's struggling, who's failing and has good food?' He's, like, saving restaurants. I think the world of him. I'd love to have him come into any of my places, but his reasons are real. There's not a number you can pay him."
Lee says he's very selective about what places he features, and tries to stick to smaller businesses that don't have an advertising budget, are off the beaten path or are really struggling.
Jennifer Sherbrook of sugar-free and gluten-free bakery A Better Batch said Lee visited them at "the perfect time."
"We were struggling, and summer is always a challenge for a bakery," she said, adding that business was so bad she was often not paying herself so she could be sure other employees like her daughter, Jordyn Sherbrook, got a check. "I always made sure she got paid first; I got paid last."
Lee visited them earlier this summer, causing the keto, diabetic-friendly and celiac-safe bakery to have products fly off the shelves. He returned earlier this month for a follow-up visit to see how things were going, and the hype machine revved up again.
"She's still getting customers and a line out the door. It's really cool, like really cool, to see that," Lee said. He credits Sherbrook with coining the phrase the "Chow Down Effect" for the influx of business that happens after one of his posts.
"Our business has tripled since he's been here," said Sherbrook, who started her bakery as a pop-up in 2019 and moved to a brick-and-mortar a few years later. "It's amazing."
"Between the first and second visit I thought, OK, it's going to settle down and settle into a new normal, basically. But then the second visit came, and it kicked back up, way up," said the small business owner, adding that Lee has "a calm, kind spirit."
"It's been lovely," said Sherbrook. "He has influenced so many people in such a positive way."
Along with Icing Bakehouse and A Better Batch Bakery, some other small culinary operations that have experienced the Chow Down Effect recently include Mexican restaurant El Zarape in Riverview and longstanding bakery Sweet 220 in Livonia.
For the maximum effect and an honest showcase of a business, Lee says he arrives unannounced.
"I don't tell them that I'm coming, and after I record, I ask permission if I can put them in my video. Then I post about it," he said. "I don't always think that it's going to go viral, you know, but if it does, that's really great."
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Social media personality is Metro Detroit's angel influencer