The owners of Queensland pubs the Carriers Arms Hotel in Maryborough and Hervey Bay’s Beach House Hotel knew they were onto a winner when they welcomed a TikTok star in last weekend.
Known for crushing pub and club food challenges around Australia, social media influencer and personal trainer Jimmy Judge has over 260K followers on TikTok and more than 240K on Instagram, as well as a substantial number on YouTube.
Sharing the experience on Facebook, the star was given fifteen minutes to eat the Carriers Arms Hotel’s ‘Carriers Burger Challenge’, a five-patty burger with a massive side of chips. He knocked over the challenge in just eight minutes and twenty-seven seconds.
The following day he visited The Beach House Hotel.
Judge, who filmed entering the pub and interviewed the chef before tucking in, tackled a one kilo rump as well as an enormous serve of chips and salad, knocking it over in twelve minutes and forty-five seconds, well inside the allotted thirty minutes.
Not stopping there, he came back the following day to try the Beach House’s 1.3 kilo honey barbecue chicken parmigiana, salad and chips – but unfortunately fell just shy of doing it in the allotted twenty minutes.
Across all platforms, Judge amassed thousands of views and likes in just three days.
Josh Hollands, executive chef of the Beach House knew after some research that Judge would likely succeed in the challenges, telling the Courier Mail that it was “literally [his] job”.
The staff were impressed with how polite, gracious and down-to-earth Judge was, and thanked him for bringing in not just the locals but people from further afield.
Now, after Judge’s success, the pubs say more people are having a go at their food challenges.
While the challenges were originally intended just as a Father’s Day special, with the attention garnered they now need to consider keeping the big meals on a little longer.
The success highlights the value social media influencers can bring, showing how their reach and engaging content can boost visibility, attract new customers, and create lasting buzz around local pubs.
