一段诡异而迷人的TikTok视频开始说：“不要看她，她要向我们推销蓝莓和草莓覆盖松饼了。”一辆汽车缓慢驶过一家餐厅旁，在门口站着一名佩戴着精致细边眼镜、深色镜片的女人，手里拿着装满食物的盘子。
在车辆经过的同时，那位女人突然出现在后座上，将菜肴递给乘客，并询问：“你们想要什么？”视频中弥漫了一种奇特愉悦的能量，使得人们难以移开目光。或许，是音乐里的合成音效，或许是她那仿佛直视灵魂的眼神；这种在线上引发共鸣的特质使视频在8月初发布后的TikTok平台上的播放量超过980万次。
这一成功为餐厅Judy’s Family Cafe与负责人Judith Wang带来了病毒式的传播效应。在这之前，在伊利诺伊州加尔斯堡的这家全日早餐店，每月业务仅维持在稳定水平。但现在，顾客们经常从其他州如纽约等地驱车而来享用美食，并希望能见见她。 Yelp上的最新评论中，不少人提到了她在社交媒体上的内容：“我们为了看到她的搞笑视频特地开了两小时的车过来。”
29岁的餐厅服务员Victor Dantas和老板Judith Wang合作创作这些视频；Dantas经常在其中扮演配角，并估计自从他们在7月开始制作视频以来，周末客流量几乎翻了一倍。
来自墨西哥到加拿大的众多餐馆老板们正将低预算喜剧短片作为社交媒体营销策略使用。这类视频常具有古怪和手工制作的感觉，如同金冠餐厅布朗克斯店的“复古摄影工作室”式拍摄，与精明营销活动截然不同；它们像是中学小组项目，而非黄金时间广告。还带有一丝怀旧情绪：这类视频往往回溯至过时的广告形式，例如过去的电视广告。
这种不完美正是其魅力所在，如同布里斯托尔餐厅“Urban Tandoor”模仿“油脂”的经典音乐剧片段，配以假发和皮夹克；“你得快点调整，因为我需要一个男人”变成了“你得吃快一点，因为我需要一块馕”。整场表演无调、不协调且充满欢乐。（去年夏天发布的《油脂》视频仍在更新中，餐厅还会发布类似的视频内容，例如今年8月的Charli XCX模仿视频。是的，还有很多假发。）
餐饮社交媒体策略师Tiffany Morgan表示，在2024年的这种形式的创意并不是新鲜事，但随着餐厅试图通过让员工和店主成为亮点来打破在线噪音，它们正变得越来越流行。
“以前人们会问：‘我们应该只展示食物吗？或者只是展示饮料？客户想要看到什么？’”Morgan说，“很难让人们关注一个企业。他们通常喜欢追随真人，所以这就是通过幽默和欢笑吸引人的方式。”
她的一位餐厅客户，洛杉矶的Ayara Thai餐厅就运用了这一策略，如夏季为纪念奥运制作的视频中，在“跳水”动作与炸鸡掉入酱料中剪辑片段并合二为一。这种剪辑方式在一段时间内一直很受欢迎，在Morgan看来，这受到了新泽西酒吧类似的启发。
这种剪辑风格在全球观众间都有吸引力：即使人们不懂餐厅员工的语言，但滑稽幽默是普遍的。
Morgan建议她的客户选择页面的“年龄”，几乎就像一个人在世界上的存在。对Ayara Thai来说，这个页面“更像是35岁的千禧一代”，这是由管理这家餐厅的两姐妹所决定的中点年龄。
当然，在社交媒体上成名只取决于你的最后一部热门视频。
因此，Wang和Dantas为Judith Wang制作了带有她口头禅“你要什么？”的商品，并表示他们正策划更多社交媒体活动来保持关注度。具体计划是什么？他们并未泄露即将发布的视频内容，但笑着说：“会有一辆摩托车参与其中。”
请关注纽约时报烹饪栏目在Instagram、Facebook、YouTube、TikTok和Pinterest上的动态；获取定期的新手制作建议、烹饪技巧及购物指导信息。
新闻来源：www.nytimes.com
原文地址：On TikTok, Your Local Restaurant Is Doing Sketch Comedy
新闻日期：2024-09-25
原文摘要：
“Do not look at her, she’s going to try to sell us pancakes,” the TikTok video begins ominously. A car drives slowly past a restaurant where a woman wearing tiny, wire-rimmed glasses with dark lenses stands outside holding plates of pancakes covered in blueberries and strawberries. As the car rolls past the woman, she suddenly, seamlessly, appears in the back seat offering up the dishes to the passengers. “What are you looking for?” she asks. There’s a pleasantly bizarre energy to the video that makes it hard to look away. Perhaps it’s the synth beats of the music, or the way the woman appears to stare beyond the camera and directly into your soul, but something resonated online. The video has been viewed more than 9.8 million times on TikTok since it was posted in early August and helped rocket the woman, Judy Wang, and her restaurant, Judy’s Family Cafe in Galesburg, Ill., to viral success. Before the restaurant’s social media moment, Ms. Wang, 38, said in an interview that business at the five-year-old cafe, which serves all-day breakfast, was just OK. Now, she regularly sees customers coming in from out of state — some as far as New York — for a meal and to meet her. On Yelp, many recent reviews reference her social media content: “We drove two hours to visit after we saw her HILARIOUS videos.” Victor Dantas, a 29-year-old waiter at the restaurant, helps Ms. Wang with creating the videos. He often guest stars alongside his boss and estimated their customer count on weekends has doubled since they started making videos in July. Ms. Wang is just one of many restaurateurs from Mexico to Canada turning to low-budget comedy videos as a social media advertising tactic. The videos often have a slightly wacky, homemade quality to them, like this mall photo studio inspired shoot starring employees at a Golden Corral in the Bronx, which feels antithetical to that of a slick marketing campaign. It’s less prime time commercial and more high school group project. There’s a nostalgia factor, too. Many of these videos feel like a throwback to outdated forms of advertising, like the television spots of decades past. That imperfection is the appeal, like a clip from the Bristol, England, restaurant Urban Tandoor parodying the final musical number from “Grease” complete with wigs and leather jackets. “You better shape up, cause I need a man,” becomes “You better eat up and I need a naan.” The entire performance is atonal, off beat and delightful. (The “Grease” video was posted last summer, but the restaurant continues to post similar content, like a Charli XCX parody from this August. Yes, there are more wigs.) Tiffany Morgan, a social media strategist for restaurants, said this brand of content is not necessarily novel in 2024 but is becoming more popular as restaurants try to break through online noise by turning employees and owners into talent. “Before now restaurants would ask, ‘Do we just show our food? Do we just show our drinks? What do people want to see?’” Ms. Morgan said. “It’s so hard to get people to follow a business. People typically want to follow other people, so it’s reaching that human element and doing that through humor and laughter,” Ms. Morgan added. One of her restaurant clients, Ayara Thai in Los Angeles, has been using this strategy with videos like one from this summer where, in honor of the Olympics, they spliced a clip of a diver jumping into a pool with a video of a piece of fried chicken landing in a dipping sauce. This style of match cut editing has been popular for some time on the app, Ms. Morgan added, noting her team was inspired by a similar video from a brewpub in New Jersey. There is cross-cultural appeal for this style of editing, too. A viewer might not necessarily speak the language of a given restaurant’s staff, but slapstick humor can be universal. “I always advise my clients that you need to pick an age for your page, almost as like a human being in the world,” Ms. Morgan explained. For Ayara Thai, that’s a “35-year-old millennial,” she said, an age chosen as the midpoint between the two sisters who run the restaurant. Of course, social media fame is only as good as your last viral video. Ms. Wang and Mr. Dantas of Judy’s said they have started selling merchandise emblazoned with Ms. Wang’s catchphrase, “What are you looking for?” They’ve also got plans to keep the attention going online. How, exactly? The duo didn’t want to spoil an upcoming video, which they posted Tuesday, but Mr. Dantas, laughing, offered up a hint. “There’s going to be a motorcycle involved.” Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice.
