‘I make six figures because millions of people watch me eat every day – I'm living the dream'

Telegraph

a day ago

The delivery driver assumed that Becca Stock had guests. 'Are you having a party?' he inquired cheerily when he dropped 31 Waitrose sandwiches on her doorstep earlier this spring. A few weeks before – around St Valentine's Day – an elderly lady had stopped Stock in Marks & Spencer. 'Is that all for you?' she gasped, pointing at a trolley piled high with £76 worth of ready meals. Then there was that other time when a cashier looked up at Stock after scanning her shopping and declared: 'Your biscuit tin is going to be overflowing!'
On each of these occasions, Stock tried to explain that she was just doing her job. 'But they just give you a blank face,' the 28-year-old from Gloucester laughs. 'They don't get it at all.' In fairness to these supermarket strangers, Stock's job is not necessarily easy to 'get'. It is possible that in the entire history of the working world, no one's nine to five has ever looked like hers.
On Mondays, for example, she can often be seen eating the entirety of a supermarket's own-brand range. On Tuesdays, you'll catch her pulling apart cookies or doughnuts from independent bakeries. Wednesdays see her comparing food items from different brands: who, exactly, sells the best frozen breaded cod? By Thursday, you shouldn't be surprised to watch Stock order 14 various dishes in a restaurant, and – after a quick digestion break – Sundays are the biggest and busiest days of all. This is when Stock announces, say, the best of Müller's 16 different Corner yogurts, or which of Waitrose's 31 meal-deal sandwiches are the tastiest. (Spoiler: the brie, bacon and chilli relish one.)
They say that the world's first food critic was Alexandre-Balthazar-Laurent Grimod de La Reynière. In the early 19th century, the elite Frenchman evaluated dishes with his 'jury dégustateur ' and published the results in eight volumes of restaurant reviews. Grimod declared that his work 'only seems superficial to those of common minds', arguably paving the way for Jonathan Gold to become in 2007 the first restaurant reviewer to win a Pulitzer Prize. But since then, food reviewing has become less esteemed and more democratic. The internet has changed not just who reviews, but what they're reviewing. Today, almost half a million TikTok followers watch Stock evaluate stock – which is to say, the stuff that lines supermarket shelves.
@beccaeatseverything Where's the raspberry one gone?! And are the bites worth it? Let me know what I should be reviewing next #foodreview #foodcritic #ukfood #foodhaul #krispykreme #doughnut ♬ original sound - Beccaeatseverything
Stock is far from the world's first (or biggest) convenience food critic. In 2016, American teenager John Jurasek went viral after donning a suit to evaluate energy drinks and hamburgers. Since 2020, Yorkshireman Danny Malin has reviewed chips, pizzas, curries and fried chicken on his YouTube channel, Rate My Takeaway. And Keith Lee, a Las Vegas-based TikToker, is undeniably the fast-food reviewer du jour: he currently has a whopping 17 million followers (although he did anger the British ones earlier this year when he gave beans on toast a 1/10).
What sets Stock apart from the competition is the sheer quantity of the product she reviews: everything on the McDonald's breakfast menu, £60 worth of Marks & Spencer own-brand biscuits, and 17 Pot Noodles – all ranked from worst to best. She certainly lives up to her social media handle: @BeccaEatsEverything. 'I can't believe this world, this job, it's just absolute madness,' she says, sitting in her garden on a sunny Friday, her all-black goldendoodle, Benji, lolling nearby. She's just finished ranking eight different flavours of Kettle Chips and is just about to taste-test six doughnuts from Nottingham-based bakers Doughnotts.
It all started – as so many things seem to have done – during the pandemic. Working a commission-based insurance job, struggling with £25,000 of debt, and living pay cheque to pay cheque, Stock mostly subsisted on discounted, yellow-stickered food. But whenever she had a spare bit of cash to splash on something new or fancy, she often found herself disappointed. She took things into her own hands in the summer of 2021, when she had an unexpected £20 left over before pay day. She purchased five different brands of lemonade and filmed herself comparing them; the resulting video got 384 views.
'The reason I started this was to help people like me,' Stock says. Her family initially disapproved, arguing that it was 'silly', and that she should pay off her debt before spending money on food reviews. But Stock's timing was fortunate: with lockdowns keeping people at home, TikTok jumped from three million to 14 million UK users between 2019 and 2021. A review of curry sauces was Stock's first 100,000-view video – then she went viral in 2022 for comparing different hash browns.
Nowadays, her reviews seemingly make an impact on sales: after 2.2 million people had watched her give Tesco cheese hot cross buns an 11/10 in 2024, she made local news headlines and the buns quickly (and possibly not coincidentally) disappeared from shelves.
Stock has now discovered that the worst Tesco sandwich is the tuna and sweetcorn ('bitter and unpleasant') and that the best one is the pulled BBQ beef, which melts in the mouth.
@beccaeatseverything"If that's cheddar then i'm a horse" 🐴 #foodie #foodreview #foodtok #ukfood #honestreview #tesco #mealdeal #sandwich #foodhaul #supermarkethaul #lunch #quickmeal #ranked #rating ♬ original sound - Beccaeatseverything
The worst thing she's ever eaten for a video was a tin (yes, tin) of burgers ('Even my dog was like, 'Nah, thank you'') and the best was a stack of crêpes from a local business.
It's perhaps not a surprise that Krispy Kreme's number-one doughnut is the original glazed, but Stock caused controversy in September 2024 when she gave a Burger King favourite, chilli cheese nuggets, a 1/10. 'I now don't trust your reviews,' wrote one commenter, earning 19,000 likes. Another declared: 'That's not a review that's you [sic] opinion.' It's a fair enough sentiment: after all, what exactly qualifies Stock to arbitrate and adjudicate?
'It's hard for me when people say I'm a snob or [that] I think I'm Gordon Ramsay,' she says. 'I'm thinking from the perspective of a consumer, not thinking, 'I want this to be a five-star Michelin meal.''
Stock began cooking when she was 11 – her parents split up and her mother worked in the evenings, so Stock would make dinner for herself and her brother. After she left school at 16, she worked in various professional kitchens over the years; her first cheffing job was admittedly a microwave-heavy gig in a Hungry Horse, but she made her way up through higher-end chains until she started working in a garden centre café, making soups, curries, quiches and scones from scratch. 'I took pride in the fact that I didn't get stuff sent back to the kitchen.'
Stock had quit her insurance job and was working in this garden centre when her TikTok really took off: 'The deals I was getting in from brands were paying me more than what I earned for my week's wage.'
Like most content creators, Stock is paid per view by TikTok and also earns money by creating adverts for brands (these are clearly marked so viewers don't mistake them for her regular reviews). Stock quit her day job in April 2023 after she got a last-minute brand deal that offered her 'four times what I would have earned for two days' work'.
'I literally just texted my boss and said, 'I ain't coming back to work tomorrow,' at like midnight,' she says.
Stock can now charge up to £2,000 for a single sponsored video. She opts to do around one a week so that her profile doesn't become too ad-heavy. With her earnings now into six figures a year, it's enough to sustain two people: her partner quit his insurance job and now helps her with shopping, editing, accounting and cleaning up.
But can the world trust a reviewer who is also paid to do adverts? Stock says she won't continue with a brand deal if she dislikes the taste of a product, and if she's sent a range of items to feature in an advert, she'll include only the ones that she likes. 'I am not going to sit there and tell people that rubbish is good.' Still, people do accuse her of dishonesty – in particular, after she praised the McDonald's McRib in an advert last September.
@beccaeatseverything AD | Can you guess the exciting new menu item landing in @McDonald's UK today?? The iconic McRib is back 😭 😭 You don't want miss out on this one. Get the McRib before it sells out – I'm looking at you superfans! #McRibReturns #superfan #mcdonalds ♬ original sound - Beccaeatseverything
'People thought, 'Oh, you've just taken the money, you sold out, you're lying,' so it is difficult,' Stock says. One commenter wrote: 'This is absolutely brilliant. You are the first person and only person to say the McRib is any good.' But six months on, Stock is adamant: 'I loved the McRib. A lot of people hated it, even my partner said to me, 'That's horrible,' but I liked it; I don't know why, I just really enjoyed it.'
This sort of distrust is understandable since a scandal has recently rocked the fast-food reviewing world. In April, the self-proclaimed 'UK's Number One Food Reviewer', Matthew Davies-Binge, issued a statement to his 911,000 TikTok followers after a dessert shop owner accused him of being a 'phoney'.
Truro-based Lisa Bennett, 45, invited Davies-Binge to her dessert shop and was shocked when his management said he would visit if she paid him £750. 'I have never, and will never, be paid for a positive score,' Davies-Binge clarified in an online statement. 'The VAST majority of the content I make is completely organic.' He added that if a restaurant invites him and 'looks like a good fit', he charges a fee simply to cover travel and production costs.
'I don't charge,' says Stock as she squats on the floor in her kitchen, holding a doughnut up to her phone camera and ripping into it with her fingers to show her viewers its texture. Stock used to accept gifts from companies but stopped because she felt it made her reviews seem inauthentic. 'I'd much rather just place an order, I'd rather buy it,' she says. A year ago, she'd spend around £300 a month to make her videos; she now spends around £2,000 a month on food.
Distrust isn't the only downside of this dreamy-sounding job, however. Believe it or not, Stock has a gluten and dairy intolerance so, she says, 'I will never plan a sandwich haul the day before I'm about to travel because I just know it would end badly.' She says she also sometimes gets 'food fatigue' and – because she feels obliged to polish off the hot food she orders – often feels 'greasy and horrible' afterwards.
'Last year, I was filming Domino's, then Subway, then KFC, and I did notice that it was affecting my health,' she says. She now spreads out fast-food reviews and makes sure to eat a balanced, salad-heavy diet in between.
@beccaeatseverything Well this was an interesting haul 👀 🍕 My review of the new Dominos Pizza range 17/2/24 #food #foodie #foodreview #ukfoodreview #foodtok #pizza #dominospizza #carbonara #lasagne #cremeegg ♬ original sound - Beccaeatseverything
'If you look back at my first videos, I did look a lot slimmer,' Stock says, but she says, despite internet rumours, she's gained only 6lb in her time as a food reviewer. Negative comments about her weight and appearance naturally do affect her, but Stock says her relationship helps her keep a positive mindset. Like any internet star, she also has to navigate the occasional creepy message: 'Do you want to be my sugar baby?', 'Could you do a voice message telling me goodnight?'
Perhaps the biggest thing Stock gets hate for, however, is food waste. 'I'm not completely blameless when it comes to waste, I don't throw away zero,' she says – but she notes she couldn't throw out as much rubbish as viewers think she does, because her binmen would refuse to take it all away.
In fact, she mitigates waste by donating leftovers via the app Olio, which connects people with nearby strangers and businesses giving away free stuff. 'People think people won't take open food, but they will,' she says – she's given away sandwich halves, and she has a trick where she cuts a single slice out of a frozen pizza so she can donate the rest, uncooked.
'Because I've worked in kitchens, I make sure that my hands are clean, I make sure it's not contaminated with anything else.'
Now, Stock has regulars: a lady who grabs food for the community kids' clubs she runs, and a local mother and her children.
With her three lights set up on tripods and a fluffy microphone strapped to her black-and-white stripy top, Stock begins filming her doughnut review (she has been known to test 15 in one go). 'This week, I'm trying Doughnotts to see if any of their food can score a 10/10!' she cries enthusiastically to her phone, which is clad in a case featuring Garfield daydreaming about pie, lasagne and ice cream. There's a glass of water, some powder foundation and a hairbrush just off-screen – she freshens herself up between shots.
A bright-pink doughnut covered in sprinkles is up first. Stock takes two bites and chews thoughtfully in silence for more than 20 seconds. 'They've got the dough pretty much perfect on these,' she says. 'The bit that I am not really enjoying is this icing – there's a lot of it on there.' She rates it a 7/10 – nothing can earn a Stock seven unless she believes she'd personally buy it again. Over the course of the next 16 minutes, she tries five more doughnuts: the best is red velvet (9/10) and the worst is a cheap-tasting chocolate (that scores just five).
@beccaeatseverything My honest review of @Doughnotts These were paid for with my own money and I have no affiliation with the business #foodreview #foodie #foodcritic #ukfood #doughnut #smallbusiness ♬ original sound - Beccaeatseverything
For how long is a career such as Stock's really sustainable? The former New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells quit in July 2024 after a routine doctor's appointment. 'My scores were bad across the board; my cholesterol, blood sugar and hypertension were worse than I'd expected even in my doomiest moments. The terms prediabetes, fatty liver disease and metabolic syndrome were thrown around,' he wrote.
TikTokers don't just have to worry about their own health, though; they also have to worry about the health of the platform, which Donald Trump is threatening to ban in the United States.
Besides which, isn't internet fame inherently fleeting? In late April, a TikToker known as Jelly Bean Sweets spoke about diversifying her content after gaining 2.2 million followers for her 'mukbangs' (videos in which creators eat large quantities of food). 'You're only relevant in one type of thing for so long,' she says, 'I want this to be a long-term career.'
'I really do take every day as it comes,' says Stock. 'As much as I like to think about the future, I don't like to have too big expectations.' Her 'absolute dream' is to expand into more restaurant reviews, meet Gordon Ramsay and perhaps one day be a MasterChef judge. 'Just having more of a presence outside of TikTok,' she surmises. 'Because as much as you can be huge on TikTok, you could walk down the street and people would be like, 'I don't know who the hell you are.''
Strangers in the supermarket still confront Stock – but more and more of them recognise her, too. The manager of the Tesco up the road has told her that staff start chatting on their headsets when Stock appears: 'Ooh, the TikTok girl's in again!' Becca hasn't yet eaten everything – the number of novelty products and new releases will hopefully keep her in work for years to come.
'I have the opinion that if this is the last day I do this, then I'm happy that I got to do it,' she says. 'Most people don't get to achieve their dreams, and I really have.'