Lifestyle
Is the viral cheese pull saving chain restaurants?
Images from Karissa Dumbacher’s TikTok account, @karissaeats, where she makes videos about food. She has over 4.5 million followers on the platform.
@karissaeats via TikTok/Screenshots by NPR
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@karissaeats via TikTok/Screenshots by NPR
Affordable, familiar and reassuring are the features that make American chain restaurants a near-ubiquitous presence throughout the country; it is almost as if they are baked into our roadside culture.
Despite well-documented financial struggles, a tough economy and shifting diet trends, these restaurants withstand time.
This series explores why these places have such strong staying power and how they stay afloat at a time of rapid change.
Go back to read our first two pieces on how these restaurants trigger nostalgia and how these places stay afloat in a tough economy.
The magical cheese pull.
It’s a viral social media trend and a powerful marketing tool, where diners post videos of themselves slowly pulling apart gooey strings of cheese from a steaming hot slice of pizza or deep-fried mozzarella sticks.
A good one brings in millions of views and, increasingly, helps lure diners off their phones and into seats.
Sara Rafael, 23, flew from Ireland to New York City in November. She and her mother had a list of must-stop eats, including Olive Garden, The Cheesecake Factory, Raising Cane’s — all of which were discovered on TikTok, Rafael tells NPR.
The platform’s food videos – including those trendy cheese pulls – she says, “always make the food look so appetizing.” So, most of her dining itinerary consisted of mid-tier American chains straight from the recommendations of strangers online.
This is a critical moment for restaurants, says Stephen Zagor, a restaurant industry expert, consultant and adjunct professor at Columbia Business School.
With many American diners spending less and eating at home more, restaurants, especially older chains, risk fading into what he calls “the wallpaper.”
Zagor says that every restaurant needs to “have a viral moment” either in their menu or inside the restaurant in order to survive now.
But, he admits, the tradeoff is “a certain loss of authenticity.”
Chili’s cheese pull moment
Few restaurants, particularly chains, have ridden the viral cheese pull wave as well as Tex-Mex national chain, Chili’s.
Its Triple Dipper – a mix-and-match trio of appetizers and sauces – has become popular online thanks to the thick, stretchy fried mozzarella sticks. The company tells NPR it sold 41 million Triple Dippers in fiscal year 2025.
And that’s been a boon to the company’s bottom line. The Triple Dipper accounted for approximately 10% of sales in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024. A year later, that figure rose to 15% of sales, according to data Chili’s shared with NPR.
Chili’s Chief Marketing Officer George Felix says the sales numbers reflect “a massive gain in a short amount of time” for a company the size of Chili’s. “Essentially 100% of that can be attributed to social media,” he says.
Once it became clear just how popular the menu item was, the company’s culinary team leaned into the fandom and innovated on the fried mozzarella sticks by developing Nashville Hot and Honey-Chipotle flavors, Felix says.
For a 50-year-old chain restaurant that had been suffering from the “wallpaper” effect, Zagor says, this was a huge boost in helping the restaurant stage a stunning comeback.
“I think it speaks to the fact that Chili’s is back in the culture,” Felix says, Chili’s chief marketing officer.
In a crowded market, content, and cheese pulls, are king
Content creators like Karissa Dumbacher, who focuses on food posts as @karissaeats, has made a host of videos about Chili’s, including one listed as a paid partnership that’s received 2 million likes documenting none other than the iconic cheese pull.
She’s found the recipe to success for making a video pop on social media.
“The first three to five seconds of the video has to pull you in visually,” she explains. “People are gonna stick around to see if it’s worth it, and that’s what you want. That’s why so many people go for the cheese pull.”
Dumbacher has posted consistently since first beginning her TikTok journey during a COVID quarantine in Beijing. Almost daily she posts “everything I ate” videos from her home, fast food chains, casual chains and high-end, gourmet restaurants in the U.S. and abroad.
Her recording style has garnered her a legion of more than 4.5 million followers on TikTok alone.
Even though viewers have a chance to virtually travel the world and eat alongside her at luxury restaurants, Dumbacher says she still finds that her videos from classic chain restaurants like the Cheesecake Factory do “really, really well.”
And while Dumbacher has found success eating at casual sit-down establishments, the restaurants themselves benefit as well from the extra air time.
“Most people that are posting these viral videos aren’t getting paid by the restaurants, and it’s creating a bunch of traffic. So it’s huge,” she says. “That’s why there’s so much money going into TikTok, YouTube, Instagram ads these days, as opposed to ads on TV or billboards.”
Michael Lindquist, senior vice president of social for the media company, BarkleyOKRP, says social media “is now what I would consider a key business driver” and “an infinite feedback loop” for businesses.
Lindquist works in the company’s social content studio that works with brands like Red Lobster, Marco’s Pizza and others.
“It really does start and end on social media,” he says. “So you’re starting to see even broadcast and TV campaigns that take more of their cues from social [media] behavior, and comments and the way that we interact with one another.”
But Zagor, the restaurant industry expert, says virality can only get restaurants so far.
“You would like all businesses to be organic, because people love it, and they come back because the food is great,” Zagor says. “Not because you saw this incredible dessert, and [say], ‘Wow, I need to have that.’”
Zagor teaches college students and is struck by their focus on documenting the meal for social media instead of eating. He says he asks his students how many of them take pictures of their food:
“Everyone raises their hand. And then I say, ‘How many of you take more pictures of your food than you do of your family and friends?’ And they all raise their hands.”
For Zagor, that’s concerning. So much of the human experience now, including eating at a restaurant, is focused on capturing the perfect, photographable moment rather than an organic, enjoyable, social experience.
“And something’s just weird about that.”
Can you say no to a friend’s wedding?
Getty Images/Getty images
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Getty Images/Getty images
Are we spending too much on other people’s weddings?
Going to a friend’s weddings can be so fun and meaningful… but it can also really hurt your wallet. A survey by LendingTree found that 31% of people who had been to a wedding in the past five years had accrued debt to attend. So what’s driving up the cost of weddings for guests? And what makes it so hard to say no to these expenses?
Brittany breaks it down with Allyson Rees, senior analyst at trend forecasting firm WGSN, and Annie Joy Williams, assistant editor at The Atlantic.
This episode was produced by Liam McBain, with additional support from Corey Antonio Rose. It was edited by Neena Pathak. Our Supervising Producer is Cher Vincent. Our Executive Producer is Barton Girdwood. Our VP of Programming is Yolanda Sangweni.
After the eight-day-long fire in a 500,000-square-foot Boyle Heights warehouse, eastern Los Angeles residents are contending with putrid smells, soot and potentially hazardous airborne chemicals after heavy plumes of smoke spread throughout the city. But those who grow food in nearby neighborhoods may also be wondering: How will the fires affect the plants and produce in my garden?
The Boyle Heights warehouse, owned by Lineage — a global temperature-controlled storage facility operator — housed 85 million pounds of frozen food and other products. In the days since the fire, local emergency visits for smoke inhalation and throat pain spiked while agencies still scramble to measure the amount of PM 2.5 — harmful fine particles — and heavy metals, like lead and arsenic, in the air.
According to researchers, any toxic airborne chemicals would likely stem from the charred foam insulation, metal exterior, burned solar panels and any lithium batteries that might have been present inside the warehouse.
After a fire, heavy metal particles can spread through ash and smoke over gardens and inhibit growth, said Olukayode Jegede, an agricultural toxicologist and assistant professor at UC Davis. Since the warehouse fire is so recent and cleanup has just begun, Jegede said the precise impact on gardens can’t be measured until comprehensive soil tests are conducted in the area.
While the L.A. city government hasn’t announced plans for soil testing, the Contaminant Level Evaluation and Analysis for Neighborhoods project at USC is offering free contaminant testing for Boyle Heights and East L.A. residents. Residents can collect soil samples and deliver them to Boyle Heights City Hall and other locations for an evaluation of lead, arsenic, chromium and mercury levels.
The good news is produce, plants and roots can still be preserved. According to Jegede, many of the soil tests conducted last year in the Altadena area after the Eaton fire showed that gardens and poultry were not as contaminated as one might expect.
“Quite a number of the soils we tested [in Altadena] were not really contaminated,” Jegede said. “We weren’t seeing many soils with concerning elevated levels of metal, so gardeners should not be too alarmed when these things happen.”
Nevertheless, there are several measures that gardeners can take to keep themselves, their children, plants and produce safe from potentially harmful contaminants stemming from the fire. Researchers, gardening experts and horticulturists offered some guidance on the handling, recultivation and cleanup that can keep you and your garden in good health.
How do I remove ash and contaminants from my garden?
Altadena horticulturist Leigh Adams said Boyle Heights plants and produce already live in a difficult environment, surrounded by industrial warehouses that spread contaminants daily.
“That area has been used industrially for 100 years, and the soil is impacted by many, many, many things,” Adams said. “Low-income neighborhoods and gardens usually don’t have a lot of resistance against dominant manufacturing.”
This means that the contamination of gardens in eastern L.A. won’t be as catastrophic as compared with those in Altadena, a more suburban environment, Adams said. But fallen ash still poses major health risks if ingested or inhaled.
An advisory from University of California Agricultural and Natural Resources last year recommended suiting up in an N95/KN95 mask, long sleeves, pants, close-toed shoes and gloves before attempting to deal with ash in the garden to limit exposure to potentially toxic contaminants. The advisory added that individuals should make sure all of this gear is cleaned thoroughly before bringing it back inside.
Once in the proper gear, Adams recommends removing the top two inches of topsoil from gardens, where the highest concentration of contaminants will settle after a fire. Using a plastic bag to collect the soil and disposing of it in the garbage — not green yard waste bins — will help to reduce the spread of airborne chemicals.
Gardeners with raised beds are advised to remove approximately six inches of soil, because excess ash can raise the pH level and prevent nutrients from soaking into the soil bed.
After this, watering the garden gently but plentifully will help to promote soil health and get rid of most of the ash present on plant leaves and stems. Adams said replacing the top two inches of soil with store-bought mulch or straw will help to contain any remaining ash and prevent it from spreading any further.
Experts say to avoid using leaf blowers if ash is present in the garden because they can send particles airborne. Doing so will increase the likelihood of heavy metal particles, which can carry lung irritants and carcinogens, being spread and inhaled.
A Boyle Heights resident keep a watchful eye on the fire at the 5,000-square-foot commercial building, which stores 85 million pounds of frozen food.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Is it safe for me to eat produce from my garden?
Several studies, including one from the UC Cooperative Extension of Sonoma County, have shown that consuming produce in a fire-affected area poses minimal health risks.
Jegede said most root vegetables like potatoes and carrots, along with any fruit that has an outer layer, can be washed to remove potential contaminants, even if they were covered in ash. Peeling the outer layer of your produce can also help to reduce potential risks, he said.
Lettuce and other leafy foods with multiple layers pose a higher risk of contamination, but with a vigorous wash and peeling the outer layers, even the greens can be saved. The County of Los Angeles Department of Public Health recommends soaking leafy produce and fuzzy fruits like peaches in a 10% white vinegar and 90% water mixture.
Jegede said if the leaves or fruit are too delicate to wash or ash is still visible, it would be best to dispose of the produce.
How can I tell if my soil is contaminated?
After ridding your garden of visible ash, you might wonder how to tell if your plants will still thrive in the soil.
At-home soil tests that measure for alkaline, fertility and pH levels are widely available and can be purchased for $15 to $100 (for more detailed results) online. But Jegede said these tests can’t tell the full story of soil health.
Comprehensive soil testing is “something you can’t do properly at home,” Jegede said. “In labs, we are testing for metals like lithium and zinc, stuff that an at-home test will not show … If it comes to the point that you’re worried about your soil, I would just send it out to a lab.”
Wallace Laboratories in El Segundo, Babcock Laboratories in Riverside, Waypoint Analytical in Anaheim and other labs offer more detailed soil tests that measure heavy metal particles in addition to other fertility factors. Prices at Wallace Laboratories can range from $115 to $295 for a complete compost test.
The soil below two inches should be unharmed, Adams said, so long as new compost is set and plants are watered plentifully, which will promote natural biological cycles.
“What you’re doing is capping the soil, so that moisture stays in there, and instead of being dirt, it’s a living system called soil,” Adams said. “The more carbon we can get into our soil, the better.”
What can I do to help my soil recover?
For the last 12 years, Adams has been working with Metabolic Studio, a Los Angeles-based art and research hub focused on environmentalism, on methods for bioremediation, the practice of using additional fungi, plants and compost to decontaminate ash and break down contaminants.
Adams said straw, mushrooms, corn, rye and sunflowers are great bioremediators that can help to repair damage to soils. She said certain samples she’s worked on with Metabolic Studio have gone from testing at high heavy metal levels to nearly contaminant-free.
But for a more immediate fix, wash your produce, water your plants and have a little patience during ash cleanups. Your garden should look better in no time, Adams and Jegede said.
Inde Navarrette and Michael Johnston in Obsession.
Focus Features
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Focus Features
Two big horror films, Obsession and Backrooms, just smashed all box office expectations. So much of their success has been driven by Gen Z, which is now the biggest moviegoing demographic. But what makes a movie a Gen Z movie? Today we’re bringing you an episode of NPR’s It’s Been a Minute. Host Brittany Luse talks about this trend with Sam Adams and Reanna Cruz.
If you want to hear more about these movies, check out these episodes:
In ‘Obsession,’ love hurts. It really, really, really hurts.
‘Backrooms’ brings YouTube horror to the big screen
Zendaya brings ‘The Drama,’ we bring the spoilers
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