Will Sonbuchner

Will Sonbuchner is a popular food YouTuber.

He has more than 10M subscribers on his YouTube channel, ‘Best Ever Food Review Show.’

Introduction-

William Sonbuchner was born on 22 August 1984 in St. Cloud, Minnesota, United States.

He grew up in Minnesota in a poor dysfunctional family.

Will has a couple of elder brothers and both of them are highly qualified.

One of his brothers holds a PhD and another one holds a law degree.

Education-

Will did his schooling from Sauk Rapids-Rice High School in Minnesota.

Even though his siblings were highly qualified, he wasn’t interested in education.

Even though Will attended three colleges, he failed there and couldn’t graduate.

He was nicknamed ‘Sonny’ while in high school.

Will did video production in high school and got into filmmaking and during that time, DSLR cameras were getting introduced.

Career-

Initially, Will worked at 104.7 KCLD radio station.

In 2008, at 24, he applied for a job at a big radio station but got rejected and at that time, he stopped trying for a career in radio because he felt that as podcasts were becoming popular, radio wouldn’t have a bright future.

At that time, Will was working as a server for Applebee’s International, Inc. but got fired.

During that time, he was working at multiple jobs like, he was working at a moving company and at restaurants and at several dead-end jobs.

Inspiration to travel-

While working as a caregiver at night in a St. Cloud assisted-living facility, Will used to watch ‘Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern‘ and ‘Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations‘ shows.

During that time, he was particularly inspired by Andrew Zimmern travelling to Taiwan and eating food unusual to him.

Thanks to Andrew, Will got attracted towards Asia and got inspired to get out of his comfort zone and travel to Asia.

During that time, he was 24 and wanted to travel before he could develop a career.

Moving to South Korea-

After selling all his things and ending his lease, at 24, Will moved to South Korea with $2,000 in his bank account.

Thanks to his connection in South Korea, he secured an accommodation to live.

Initially, Will secured a part-time English tutoring job but it wasn’t profitable as it needed him to travel for long hours to tutor for a few hours.

So, he secured a full-time teaching job at a kindergarten and worked here for many years and apart from this, he also did other gigs and did other teaching jobs.

During that time, Will used to run a teaching blog.

To and fro from South Korea to Japan-

As Will was on a tourist visa which lasted for 90 days in South Korea, he used to leave the country for every 90 days and travel to Tsushima Island of Japan and get stamped there and then, return to South Korea.

He lived likewise in South Korea for eight years.

Will also travelled to Taiwan and the Philippines.

Love for videography-

Will rekindled his passion for videography in South Korea and progressed from being a complete novice to becoming a videographer and a director.

He studied filmmaking and made a solo filmmakers workshop and also did a few YouTube tutorials.

Will started experimenting with the latest filmmaking techniques and also started doing music videos.

In 2012, he worked as an Executive Producer at ‘Giant Company’ in Seoul.

Initially, Will used to secure smaller projects but eventually, he moved up to bigger projects.

After a couple of years, he worked for Red Bull Korea and also worked on a few K-pop music videos.

YouTube-

After working on several projects, Will wanted to produce his own content.

So, he started producing and publishing videos on his YouTube channel.

Even though Will started his YouTube channel, ‘Best Ever Food Review Show,’ on 23 September 2010, he started posting videos on it only from 2015.

Initially, he was torn between two content ideas namely, the year of fear (doing scary stunts) and the best ever food review show (reviewing food) but as his food review videos got more response, he stuck with it.

Moving to Vietnam-

In 2015, Will went on a week-long trip to Vietnam but here, a tour company offered him to work with them on making videos and they offered him a salary and a cameraperson.

He accepted their offer and moved to Vietnam in 2015 and has been living there.

Since the beginning, Will has been taking the help of cameraperson(s) in filming his videos and eventually, he hired a team to help him for his YouTube channels.

He travelled to many countries like Nigeria, Namibia, Myanmar, Cuba, Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia, Iran, Uzbekistan, Oman, United States, Kenya, India, Madagascar, Japan, China, Cambodia, Philippines and Hong Kong to produce food videos.

‘Crazy delicious’-

Will worked with ‘Travel Channel’ for a pilot food show, ‘crazy delicious.’

But during the end of the pilot process, the Travel Channel got acquired by Discovery and as the management changed, his show got shelved.

But the silver lining was that Will got an opportunity to master content production of food and travel content from the highly-skilled professionals.

He also got a chance to interact with and observe skillful cameramen and producers and learn about their equipment and process.

All of this knowledge later helped Will in becoming a successful YouTuber.

A successful YouTuber-

As of December 2023, he has 10.4M subscribers on ‘Best Ever Food Review Show’ and has 2.22M subscribers on ‘More Best Ever Food Review Show’ channel.

And has 408K followers on Instagram and 2.3M followers on the ‘Best Ever Food Review Show’ Facebook page.

His Best Ever Food Review Show channel won the 2020 Webby Award for “People’s Voice: Viral Video of The Year” and also received a Webby Official Honouree for Food & Drink.

Will earns through a variety of sources like advertisements, ‘Super Thanks’ on YouTube, sponsorships, merchandise, and affiliate marketing.

He also accepts donations through Patreon.

He has a website.

He collaborated with Mark Wiens, a popular food YouTuber, with more than 10M subscribers.

His weight loss story-

Since a young age, Will struggled with weight issues.

While working at a job which he hated, he used to stay overnight and used to overeat to prevent sleep and lead an unbalanced life.

Will used to weigh a whopping 300 pounds at his fattest.

Later, he started losing his excessive weight by weightlifting and also, he skips dinner and exercises every night.

Will always carries a bathroom scale with him even while travelling to keep an eye on his weight and weighs himself everyday as he knows that what gets measured can get managed.

Personal life-

Will hasn’t revealed much about his personal life except that his wife is Vietnamese.

He always wears a bandana in his videos because he sweats a lot.

Will’s most favourite dish is grilled cheese, and he hates cucumbers.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Will Sonbuchner?

Share with me in the comment section below.