‘It’s make or break.’ Columbus foodie influencers have big impact on restaurants

In Columbus and the surrounding Chattahoochee Valley, foodie influencers have become powerful players in the local dining scene.

Some reviews boost a restaurant’s visibility, leading to lines stretching down the block. Others spark a firestorm with a single post.

While social media is a primary source of restaurant discovery, local business owners learn just how much their online reputation matters — for better or worse.

The Ledger-Enquirer spoke to restaurant owners and foodie influencers about this issue.

‘Defending from bullies’

One negative review led a Phenix City restaurant to receive death threats.

Kalani Sayles, owner of Kalani’s Hawaiian Style Cafe, 711 13th St., said she saw a review reposted on the Columbus GA Foodies Facebook group in April. It was written by Kellie Alexander, known for her food reviews on her Facebook page, One Woman Wolfpack.

The review wasn’t one of the most scathing in this Facebook group. Alexander gave the restaurant a 5/10 rating, saying many of the dishes she tried there were average.

“Didn’t care for the macaroni,” Alexander wrote in the post. “It was just ‘meh’ to me. Didn’t care for the hurricane chicken, nor the garlic shrimp.”

Sayles saw the post the same evening it was posted and responded. In her response, Sayles accused Alexander of intentionally giving her a low score to offset positive reviews of her restaurant.

“People warned me about you, and it wasn’t great,” Sayles wrote. “They rated you a 3/10, and I already knew this would have been the review I was going to get from what they told me. I was told people would ‘hate on me and my business or not share honest feedback because I’m new to the area.”

Sayles told the Ledger-Enquirer she had to defend her business from a “vague” critique.

“I can fix too salty,” she said. “I can fix too sweet. I can fix too bitter, too sour. I cannot fix ‘meh.’ So, if [the food] wasn’t that good, tell me more. What did you not like about it?”

From there, Sayles said, the negative comments started to spiral. Huffman and Sayles responded to a few negative comments, but it quickly snowballed into more controversy. Kehau Huffman, manager at Kalani’s Hawaiian Style Cafe, added their restaurant’s social media pages began to get flooded with death threats.

“We had several [negative comments] from the whole ordeal,” Huffman said. “It created a real bad threat. People said they would shoot us up, stuff like that, like serious threats.”

Sayles said she didn’t go to the police about these threats. She later told the Ledger-Enquirer in a text message that she didn’t believe these users were going to follow through on the threats, although they felt overwhelming to receive.

“It’s the people that probably didn’t know her that chimed into the situation didn’t know what was really going on and thought it was ok to threaten us because we weren’t the same skin color as them or her,” Sayles said in the message.

While they don’t directly blame Alexander’s post for the backlash, Huffman and Sayles said the initial post created a space for people to come together and critique the restaurant. They claimed that some of the commenters hadn’t visited their restaurant.

“She created an environment where people who had never eaten here before had the nerve to comment on the food, taste, experience, and customer service,” Huffman said. “We’re not just defending ourselves from somebody who’s come to eat. We’re defending ourselves from bullies.”

Alexander tells a different story. She told the Ledger-Enquirer that she stopped into Kalani’s after seeing positive reviews and walked away feeling underwhelmed.

“I just said it was meh, which means indifferent,” Alexander said. “It wasn’t good or bad. It was just OK. . . . There was no love lost on my part because I meant no harm to her or her establishment.”

When asked about the escalation from her review, Alexander said she thought Sayles’ response “triggered some people.” She thought her review wasn’t as negative as it was received.

“[People] took [Sayles’ response] as she was bashing me and bashing someone’s opinion when I didn’t say anything derogatory or malicious or anything like that,” Alexander said.

Alexander isn’t a professional food critic. Her main job is working as a dental hygienist. She describes herself as someone documenting her experiences dining alone, trying to encourage others to do the same. She wants to uplift local restaurants, she said, and doesn’t try to harm their business with her reviews.

“I’m not one of these popular reviewers,” Alexander said. “I’m just a country girl from Columbus who likes to go out to eat at local restaurants. I take a picture on my phone. It’s nothing fancy.”

Alexander said this experience taught her that her voice mattered, but it hasn’t made her rethink her approach to reviewing restaurants.

“It had no effect on me,” Alexander said. “It didn’t make me change anything. It made me realize that my voice mattered, but I can’t be responsible for how someone takes a review.”

Sayles and Alexander have reconciled. They had a phone conversation to discuss the controversy and apologize to each other. But the stain of the ordeal remains.

“I can’t stop anybody from saying what they want to say in their reviews and stuff,” Sayles said. “A lot of them should just understand, before they make a post about somebody, they should check with them first.”

Why every word matters

Josh Houghton, the food reviewer and content creator behind Columbus Georgia Eats, said he is aware of the responsibility he has because each of his reviews can shape people’s experiences and decisions about local restaurants.

Houghton, a self-employed digital content creator, started his blog on Instagram during the COVID-19 pandemic to help share news of restaurants that still were open. He thought his platform could help bring customers into struggling restaurants.

Restaurant owners reached out to Houghton, asking him to visit their restaurants. Houghton said his page began to take off from there.

“It basically started sort of by accident, and then I just saw how much it was helping people, and it made me want to double down,” Houghton said.

With 14,000 followers on Instagram and 10,900 followers on Facebook, Columbus, GA Eats has become a famous food reviewer and blogger in the Chattahoochee Valley.

Some Columbus business owners have credited Houghton for helping them go viral. In an earlier interview with the Ledger-Enquirer, Laura Parsons, owner of the Cookie Co., said Houghton was partly behind the overwhelming success of her shop’s opening.

“We’ve known [Houghton] for years through street food Saturdays, and when we had our soft opening, it was invite-only,” Parsons said. “We only had about 30 people that we wanted because we wanted to be able to talk and hang out. He was one of the ones that we had during that time. I think he really started [the craze]. He was like, ‘I don’t want to overwhelm you, but it might get crazy.’ We just didn’t think it would get this crazy.”

Parsons said Houghton’s reviews contributed to the overwhelming success of her shop opening, causing delayed openings and mid-day closures because they sold all their cookies for the day.

With his influence, Houghton said he posts with a lot of caution. He is wary of his audience’s opinions about his reviews because he feels that his reviews are taken as fact instead of his opinion.

“This is something close to my heart,” Houghton said. “The thing I never liked is when you gain so much popularity, people tend to follow you and listen to your opinions. You gain these followers, and they hinge on every word you say.”

Houghton said influence can be a double-edged sword. A positive review directly can translate into good business for restaurants. But negative reviews open restaurant owners to mass hate trains and slow business. Houghton said this impact makes him carefully consider what he writes.

“If an influencer says they don’t like a place, you’ll see all these people start saying, ‘Oh, I don’t like it either. Never go there for dinner.’... To be honest, I don’t think [food influencers] use their platforms responsibly sometimes,” Houghton said.

Columbus is in a “growth phase,” Houghton said, with more local and franchise restaurants opening in the area. But the community is close-knit. A bad review can feel like an attack, he said.

“Things hit more personal,” Houghton said. “Everyone knows each other, so it spreads faster here than it would in Atlanta. Everyone has pretty much been to all of these places. I think that’s why, when we get new restaurants, they get flooded.”

Influencers are important to Columbus’ restaurant scene, Houghton said. Their reach can bring attention to hidden gems and struggling storefronts. Local restaurants and foodie influencers can have a mutually beneficial relationship, he said.

“You can’t have one without the other,” Houghton said. “But I just would hope that, as our foodie communities grow, that they understand the impact they have.”

Moderators of the Columbus, GA Foodies Facebook page did not respond to the Ledger-Enquirer’s requests for comment.

Owner opens up about social media’s impact

Fortunately for Sayles, the online feud worked in her favor. The negative attention brought in curious customers wanting to try the food at the center of contentious conversations. But Lilymae Smith, co-owner of Tous Les Jours, Wasabi Japanese Steakhouse, Red 8 Kitchen, Juicy Seafood, and Red Bowl franchises, wasn’t so lucky.

Two years ago, a customer got a take-out order from Smith’s Juicy Seafood location and decided to reheat his food when he got home. Smith said the customer found a curly piece of hair in their meal.

“Most of the staff in the back have straight hair,” she said. “But he was very adamant that it was our hair, that it was one of the staff.”

Smith said she refunded the customer and replaced his meal, but the reconciliation wasn’t enough. The customer posted about his experience in the Columbus, GA Foodies Facebook group, and the post went viral. Business slowed for about a week afterward, she said.

“The whole community was just coming after us for that one review,” Smith said.

Smith remedied the situation a week after it happened. Following the fallout, she hosted a back-to-school drive, offering free backpacks filled with school supplies to apologize to the community. The event was successful.

“Social media is everything,” Smith said. “It can make or break your business. I’ve seen it happen. And, once a person’s minds are set on that’s what the restaurant is, it’s gonna be hard to change that.”

After that instance, Smith has been careful to not receive a negative review again, wary of a similar experience. But Smith said she has received threats from some disgruntled customers who were unhappy with their service and they will complain on social media.

“People always threaten us by saying, ‘Oh, I’m just gonna post on Facebook,’ Smith said. “I just tell them to go ahead. . . . People take advantage [of social media], and the fact that they can post whatever, and other people don’t have knowledge of the situation. They’ll comment and believe what this person is saying. And then that could lead to slow weeks and slow months.”

While reflecting on her experience, Smith noted online comments quickly can affect public opinion. She urges the community to give local restaurants more grace.

“Don’t just believe what you see online,” Smith said. “Go to the restaurant and see for yourself.”

This story was originally published July 22, 2025 at 5:00 AM.