Joseph Nguyen is the Hangry Pedaler, a food savvy cyclist who highlights eateries across Northwest Arkansas on his Instagram page, which currently has almost 30,000 followers. He recently spoke with Ozarks at Large’s Sophia Nourani about NWA Burger Week, his week-long fundraising event that involves over 30 different restaurants and food trucks. Ngyuen says he started his Instagram account in July of 2019.
Joseph Nguyen: I used to post pictures on my Facebook, my personal Facebook page of food that I ate and all that, and everybody was like, ‘Hey dude, you gotta make a website, put all your pictures there so people could go and check it out’. I didn't want to do a website. And then at the time, Instagram was getting more popular. So I was like, ‘Okay, I'm gonna make an Instagram account’. Just going into it just for fun, posting pictures of food, not really putting much thought into content and stuff, posting it and writing a little blurb about it. And just kind of snowballed and it started to get more attention and businesses reaching out whenever they opened up, wanting me to come and try food and stuff. So yeah, just started off for fun and I've been getting a lot of cool opportunities these past about seven years, almost seven years since I've had it.
It's fun because I get to try these restaurants before they open and they always ask me for feedback. And I do give honest feedback, you know, I don't tell them, ‘Oh, everything's good’. I do tell them, you know, this could have been cooked this way, it might have been better. And then they value my feedback.
Sophia Nourani: I saw that you're a family man as well, you have children. Are you from the Northwest Arkansas area?
Nguyen: I was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. I've been here since 1998, so a long time. I can't claim Dallas anymore.
Nourani: With your family, do you take them along to go try things?
Nguyen: My wife usually goes with me, and then we have an almost one year old son. He'll be one on Sunday, actually. Since he was a month old, we bring him along. And he does well in restaurants. And ever since he started eating solid foods, we feed him pretty much everything that we eat that's safe. We don't give them sushi or anything. So yeah, it's a family affair. We all go and it's on my page. You'll see them, you'll see me posting my son. Sometimes I don't mind posting my son on social media. You know, some people are weird about it, which is perfectly fine, but I post my son like posing with the food and stuff so he's become like part of my account, you know? So it's kind of fun.
Nourani: That's awesome. Tell me about Northwest Arkansas Burger Week. Maybe give me the background of how this got started.
Nguyen: So Northwest Arkansas Burger week. It was just, I love giving back to the community. And then I always wanted to do an event that raised money for a non-profit years ago. I thought about a cycling event, but then COVID happened. So I wanted to do it again. But then like there's all these cycling events every single weekend, cycling is big here. So I wanted to stand out, you know. So I thought of this burger week, I think last year or something, but I just never did anything with it. Maybe it was two years ago, I don't know. Because I know big cities, they have New York Burger Week or like Detroit Burger Week. So I was like, man, we could just do it here. Why not?
I reached out to about 70 restaurants and food trucks thinking that maybe 20 would get back to me and be like, ‘Sure, we'll be on board’. But no. 37 agreed. So I was blown away by the support of the community because when I told them that it was to raise money for a local non-profit, which was the Northwest Arkansas food Bank, everybody was like, ‘Oh yeah, that's awesome. Let's do it.’ So yeah, 37 restaurants, starting Monday, May 3 to Saturday, May 9. Each restaurant will offer a specialty burger at 12 dollars a piece, and that includes the burger only, no sides or anything, which I do encourage people to buy sides and drinks just to support these restaurants, you know? And a dollar from each burger will be donated to the Northwest Arkansas Food Bank.
Nourani: I see the correlation there. But why did you pick the food bank specifically?
Nguyen: Food insecurity is a real problem here, which I did not know. I was researching like different nonprofits that I could donate to and help out, and a lot of people recommended the food bank. So I started digging more into it, and then I met with the director and talked to them… Toured the facility, heard about their mission and how much actual food these pantries help with. And I was just blown away. So I was like, ‘Okay, let's do it. Let's raise money for the food bank.’ We'll start off small. My goal is 5,000 [dollars]. It might seem big to some people, but it's a pretty small amount. But I just wanted to set a real realistic goal for the first year. And then I just want every year to get bigger and bigger. So yeah, food banks and burgers go hand in hand.
Nourani: I also wanted to ask, obviously as an influencer, a lot of your presence exists on the screen and social media. What made you want to take it a step further and bring it out to the community and host in-person events?
Nguyen: I have always helped with events like Soup Sunday or I help with these nonprofit events that make money towards the nonprofit. So I just wanted to do something on my own to get people out there, in person, meeting people, eating burgers. That's my goal, just to get from behind the screen and just meet people at the restaurants and talk to the restaurant owners and stuff, have some fun with it.
Nourani: Awesome. And so people can just basically go to this list of restaurants anytime this week?
Nguyen: Yes.
Nourani: Any more information people should know specifically about the event? Just follow you or find you on social media and go from there?
Nguyen: Yeah. So the social media page and the website will have everything. So on Instagram, it's NWA Burger Week, and then the website is www.nwaburgerweek.com. And on there it will have which restaurants are doing it, the burgers, pictures of the burgers. And so these restaurants, you gotta go when they're open, all the restaurants are open different days. I'm not making them open all seven days from morning to close, they’re just opening at their regular time. And then you just go there whenever they're open and ask for their Burger Week special, they'll keep track of how many Burger Week specials they sell. And then a dollar from every burger will be donated to the food bank. And then they'll do that themselves. There's a donation link that goes directly to the food bank after the campaign ends, and then the businesses will do that themselves.
Be sure to tip your servers. Be patient, just have fun with it. Try something new. I know people that live in Fayetteville don't want to drive to Bentonville or people that live in Bentonville don't want to drive to Fayetteville. I encourage you to get out there and try something new. I'm going to try to…I'm going to eat a burger every day. So seven burgers in seven, seven days. So I'm going to try a bunch of new places that I haven't been to yet. So I'm really looking forward to that.
Nourani: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Joseph. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me.
Nguyen: Yeah. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
