Best Ever Food Review Show: From Waiter to 12M Subscribers

Channel: Best Ever Food Review Show   Who: Sonny Side (Will Sonbuchner), American host and filmmaker   Subscribers: 12.2M (as of 28 October 2026)   Niche: travel food and street food

In a 10-year anniversary video, Sonny Side described Best Ever Food Review Show as the journey from "fat, broke, and lost" to running "the most followed, most viewed travel food show on YouTube." The host in the red bandanna grew up in St. Cloud, Minnesota, flunked out of three colleges and moved to Asia with about $2,000. As of 28 October 2026 his channel has 12.2 million subscribers and more than 1,000 videos.

Canned fruit and three strikes

Sonny, born Will Sonbuchner, did not grow up eating adventurously. "We only had canned fruit growing up. I didn't eat a fresh peach until I was in my 20s," he told the Star Tribune in 2020. After graduating from Sauk Rapids-Rice High School he struggled to find his footing. He flunked out of three colleges, tried radio and took dead-end jobs, including a stint as an Applebee's server. "Over time, I got three strikes and I was out," he said. "The last one came when I forgot to put in a dessert order from a very large man."

At 24 he moved to Asia with roughly $2,000 to his name. "The best thing St. Cloud did for me is offer a lack of diversity that made me curious enough to want to leave it," he said. "I needed to do something really different and change my course."

Eight years in Korea

He spent about eight years in South Korea, first teaching English, private tutoring and kindergarten classes, then learning film production. That led to video work for what the Star Tribune called "second-tier K-pop stars," plus music videos and corporate work including videos for Red Bull. He had joined YouTube with the same channel on 23 September 2010, and an early comedy video, "You Need to Get Off Facebook," got about 4 million views. Looking back, he called that period his rock bottom. "I was overworked. I was underpaid. I didn't really know what my future was."

The first food episode went up on 14 December 2015. "Back then it probably got 200 at most," he said. His first eight episodes reviewed Western junk food in Korea, and almost nobody watched. So he pivoted to the format that made the show. Inspired by Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods, he went looking for the strangest foods in Asia, starting with chicken intestines in the Philippines. "I knew that foods that were strange, that were bizarre, they had a story already built in," he said. "And the story is why are people eating this?"

$1,000 a month in Vietnam

The move that changed everything came through a cheap flight to Ho Chi Minh City. A company there offered him $1,000 a month, a room and a camera operator in exchange for one video a week. He made a second video each week for his own channel. "Keep in mind, I've not made any money at this point," he said. He chose Vietnam partly because it was affordable and surrounded by other affordable countries with food worth filming.

His first big hit was a Jollibee secret-menu review in the Philippines, which he said got about 4 million views on Facebook and around a million on YouTube. Around then he settled on the red bandanna. "It's all about branding," he said. "Without the bandanna, I'm just another white guy."

The money came last

"Before this Jollibee video, I wasn't really making any money. At most, I was breaking even," he said. "I didn't even turn on monetization until over a year into making videos because my focus wasn't on the money." About two years in he hired a camera operator, a producer and an editor he still works with. In 2020 the show won the People's Voice award for Viral Video at the Webby Awards. The team has since grown to about 20 to 22 people, and a second channel shot on an iPhone, More Best Ever Food Review Show, had 3.59 million subscribers by his 10-year video in December 2025.

Growth had a cost. He said the team once posted about 150 videos in a single year, and he burned out. He cut the main channel from two videos a week to one. "Instead of making the most videos possible, I want us to make the best videos possible."

What other creators can take from it

Even at millions of subscribers, Best Ever Food Review Show has not relied on YouTube ads alone. In 2020 the Star Tribune reported that Sonny encourages viewers to join a paid online club with behind-the-scenes footage and monthly Q&As. His video descriptions still ask fans for "regular support" on Patreon, which he says "enables us to keep content authentic & uninterrupted." The lesson for smaller travel and food creators is to give your most loyal viewers a direct way to pay for more of what you make, long before the ad money adds up.

You can set that up in minutes. On Yaff you can sell behind-the-scenes posts, photo dumps, travel videos and food guides behind monthly tiers, take tips, and talk to supporters in group chats and DMs. Starter is free with a 5% platform fee, and payouts go to your bank daily via Stripe. Start your free Yaff page and publish your first post, see pricing, or read how to fund your expedition or adventure with memberships and add Yaff to your YouTube channel.

More origin stories: From English Teacher to 7.5M Subscribers: Drew Binsky, From Accountant to 2M Subscribers: The Lost LeBlanc Story, From Project 30 to 10M Subscribers: The Yes Theory Story, From Oil Rigs to 2M Subscribers: Sailing La Vagabonde and From Crashed Audi to 7 Million Subscribers: The Mat Armstrong Story.

Watch Best Ever Food Review Show on YouTube