Big guy, big eats, big fun

TOWER- Randy Santel travels the country eating, and he makes good money doing it.
It’s all thanks to YouTube and the following he’s attracted over the years as he eats portions at restaurants that would leave a half dozen normal human beings gasping in pain.
He’s not just looking for your average menu item. He’s looking for the real challenge, the more gluttonous the better.
Something like the Vermilion Club’s Bamboozler, a 24-inch diameter pizza that can cost upwards of $60 and is advertised to feed between six and nine adults. But if you can eat it yourself in less than an hour, it’s on the house.
“That pizza was good!” Santel said. “The crust was thin and there were lots of toppings.” It takes two pounds of dough, three pounds of cheese, plus all the other fixings to make a Bamboozler, but it barely slowed Santel down. Vermilion Club staff reported that not only did he finish the pizza himself, he set a Vermilion Club record for the fastest time, devouring the massive pie, with four separate toppings on each quarter in just shy of 19 minutes. He’s had plenty of practice over the years, since the Bamboozler was his 1,235th eating challenge.
Vermilion Club owner Greg “Arch” Archibald had no clue about the celebrity following of people who try to complete these types of food challenges.
“We had a lot of people show up,” he said. “People were here early. I came in and the place was full and I barely knew anybody.” Santel had contacted the restaurant a few days earlier to let them know he was coming, and did all the publicity through his social media pages.
Archibald said Santel was a great guest. “He put on quite a show. It was a lot of fun.”
“He ate it fast but didn’t shovel it in,” Archibald said. “He would stop for a drink of water and even talk to people while he was eating.”
After finishing up the Bamboozler, Santel relaxed, had a couple of beers, and even ate a few more pieces of other guests’ pizza, trying out different flavors. He also spent time visiting with his fans. A video of the challenge will be up on Santel’s YouTube and Facebook pages sometime in a week or two. He wasn’t able to livestream the event, which he normally does, because of the poor internet coverage in the area.
Archibald estimated that fewer than one in a hundred people who have attempted the Bamboozler challenge complete the task. Archibald himself has never tackled the 24-inch pizza. He said perhaps he could finish the 12-inch pie by himself.
The Bamboozlers are quite popular, although usually intended to feed a group. The pizza shop record was selling 91 of the giant pizzas on one Saturday in the summer.
Big money in eating
Santel isn’t just looking for the free meal when he takes on a food challenge. He is doing it to satiate the demand on his social media, including YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and more, often alongside his partner Katina (Katina eats Kilos) DeJarnett. His most watched video has over 11 million views and counting, and some months the advertising revenue from his online presence can generate over $100,000.
“If we have a good month it goes to paying off the mortgage on our house,” he told a group of students from Vermilion Country School who got the meet the YouTube celebrity in Tower last Monday when he was staying upstairs at the Tower Café.
Tower Café owner Jen McDonough is not a follower of online eating videos, but her husband Bob and sons are all big fans, often watching these types of videos for hours on end, she said. When they saw that Santel was going to be at the Vermilion Club, at first Jen thought that meant she would get a quiet Sunday afternoon at home to get some work done. But soon she realized how important this seemed to her boys, and she decided to tag along. By the time the afternoon was over, the family had made a new friend, Santel was offered a spot to spend the night, and he also agreed to meet with some students to talk about his life and goals on Monday morning before he headed down to Duluth for his next eating challenge.
Santel sat, pedaling at a high intensity, on a spin bike, while speaking to the students. The bike fits in the van he travels in, and he puts in about two hours a day of intense exercise to work off the calories he is consuming, as well as keeping his body as fit as possible while undertaking food challenges, which can involve eating between 4,000 and 10,000 calories in one sitting. Santel is a big guy, at 6’5” tall, and he said he only chooses challenges that look like a lot to eat. His partner Katina, also a competitive food eater, often travels with him is a 5’2” competitive body builder, who started eating challenges as a way to bulk up. While they often travel together, for this swing through northern Minnesota, Santel was on his own.
Ironically, Santel said, many who view their videos are doing it to help them eat more. Folks who have trouble eating for medical reasons, like undergoing cancer treatments, can get more enthused about eating after watching them joyfully consume a humongous meal, he said.
Santel said he doesn’t have any trouble eating normal size portions, but that his exercise regimen means he often does need more calories per day than a normal person.
“When I ride a lot, I get hungry,” he said. Weather-permitting, he does like to do his riding out on the road, but said he really hates getting flat tires.
Santel has traveled to all 50 states and to 40 countries completing eating challenges, and he has five more planned for this summer in Scandinavia and Poland. His goal is to complete food challenges in a total of 50 countries, so he is getting close.
Several of the VCS students were very familiar with Santel’s videos, as well as other food eating YouTube celebrities. While it’s been a great gig for Santel, he said it’s become much more difficult to become established on the existing platforms. “It’s really hard to be a YouTuber now,” he said, at least one that makes money. “Back in 2010 it was entirely different.”
Santel talked about how he trains for these events, and he actually has a bunch of videos on his website, FoodChallenges.com, explaining how to get one’s stomach in shape for eating competitions.
“You need to win before you begin,” he said.
Santel’s journey as a competitive eater led him to what will soon be his new career, as a registered dietician. His first college degree was in construction management, but in 2016 he went back to school and now has just finished the final piece of his master’s degree, a 1,200-hour internship. His next social media calling will be as a nutritionist on YouTube, he said.
Santel talked about his life on the road, where he mostly sleeps in his cargo van to save money.
“I am an Eagle Scout,” he said. “I have a lot of camping experience.”
He said being a YouTube personality isn’t just about how much money you make, because you can’t control the number of views or payment from ads, which can change due to changes in YouTube’s algorithms.
“You can control how much money you spend,” he said.
For all he likes to eat, Santel admitted he wasn’t much of a cook, and eating at home often consists of healthy sandwiches and vegetable omelets.
“I eat what other people cook for me,” he said.
His food tastes are pretty wide ranging. The only thing he steers clear of is exceptionally spicy food, such as the hot pepper challenges. One time he took a challenge to eat 12 wings with Trinidadian Scorpion Sauce, and he ended up spending the evening in the bathroom.
“Those pepper challenge people can be idiots,” he said.
When asked if he ever got food poisoning, Santel related a food challenge he did in Spain, where he was eating a single burger that weighed in at seven pounds.
“The cook staff hadn’t ever made a burger that big,” he said. “The outside was charred and the inside was totally raw.” He said he ate the outside layer, and then sent the inside back to get cooked again.
“I was sick for a few days after that,” he said.
The students were impressed to learn how much work went into creating the YouTube videos, as well as how much training Santel did for each event. After his talk, the Tower Café bought each student one of Santel’s t-shirts, and then Santel signed autographs.
From Tower, Santel was headed to Big Daddy’s in Duluth to consume a meal consisting of 11 half pound burgers, bacon, cheese, and two pounds of fries in less than an hour.
The food challenges Santel does are different from the Major League Eating events, like the Nathan’s Hot Dog Challenge. Fortune Bay Resort Casino has hosted two of these events with top ranked eaters Joey Chestnut, Geoffrey Esper, and Miki Sudo attending. These events focus on seeing who can eat the most of a specific item in a short time period. Santel said those professional eaters sign a contract with the organization and commit to only competing in those sanctioned events.