Tiktok influencer impacts local businesses

A local social media influencer has been helping local restaurants get more customers thanks to his unique videos.

Leo Sanchez, better known as thepovfoodie online, visits local restaurants, cafes, food trucks and more while sharing his thoughts on the food and the atmosphere. He films these videos for his combined 50,000 followers using glasses that have cameras in the lens leading to a more authentic and immersive video.

“My first video that I posted on TikTok that went off was the Valley Pizza one on May 13^th so it’s literally been two months,” Sanchez said.

That video has amassed over 314,000 views on TikTok. With this much attention, Sanchez said he has been getting recognized.

“This last month, literally everywhere I have gone, if I go to the store, if I go to a restaurant, if I go a drive-thru, somebody ends up saying ‘You’re from TikTok!’  so, it’s interesting to see that,” Sanchez explained.

Sanchez said that he got some inspiration from another influencer who tried tacos in all 50 states. He said that showing people places they might not have heard of has been his favorite part.

“What I like the most is just being able to showcase local businesses in Las Cruces because they do not get a lot of attention,” Sanchez said. “Everyone has been telling me, even my mom she’s like ‘I didn’t even know they had these places here.’”

Showcasing local businesses has worked. Drew Garcia is the owner of the newly opened New Mexico Snow shaved ice shop near downtown. He recalls Sanchez coming to the store and calls him a “really positive guy.”

“He came up, he was talking to our workers, placing an order and we’d recommended what he should try. He’s a really good guy really happy guy,” Garcia recalled.

Leo’s video on the shaved ice shop got over 112,000 views on TikTok alone. Garcia said that he knew a rush was going to come when Sanchez posted the video, so he had to get him to delay the upload so he could get more supplies.

“I was like ‘Leo, you can’t post, you got to wait man. I will let you know, I ordered all this stuff and I expedited it,’” Garcia said. “When I finally got it in, I was like okay you’re good to post it and then it wiped us out right after he posted that.”

Garcia said that the rush was “crazy” and that the shop was running out of syrups, ice cream and even ice.

Garcia was not alone in receiving this many new customers after one of Sanchez’s videos. Gino Rizzon from Deputy Dawgs on El Paseo said that it more than doubled their customers.

‘We were at 20 tickets and then after he came, we’d been doing 40 plus pretty much everyday so it has been great,” Rizzon said.

As for Sanchez, he plans to launch a merchandise line soon and plans on donating some of that money back to the community.

“50% of the proceeds will be going to give it back to the community in any way,” Sanchez explained. “If somebody is in need or I’m at a restaurant and the server was amazing and I wanted to tip $100 boom, here you go. Those types of things are what I want to eventually end up getting into.”

Sanchez also said he hopes to review more food across the state and get family members like his dad involved in future videos.

As for his favorite places to eat, he recommends trying Tacos and Shell-ah’s as well as Tacos JJ.