Restaurants, cafes, and stores sometimes run birthday promotions to make their customers feel special. It’s a small way to celebrate their big day. It also slightly helps retain their loyalty! However, sometimes, other companies’ goodwill can be easy to take advantage of… if someone is ever inclined to do so.
TikToker and digital creator Noah Graham, aka Noah Wille, aka @itsnoahgraham, revealed his “kind of terrible” life hack which meant that he could get free food all year round. His video went so viral that some fast food chains even responded to him in the comments. However, there was a serious reason why Noah initially used the hack in the first place. Scroll down for the full video and the internet’s reaction to it.
Bored Panda has reached out to Noah via email, and we’ll update the article as soon as we hear back from him.
TikTok content creator Noah went viral after revealing how he used to get free food throughout the year
Image credits: itsnoahgraham
“Okay, life hack that’s also kind of terrible. Once upon a time, I made this fake email account that I still use. I get free food or dessert from a restaurant every single day. I made this fake email and I found a list of a bunch of restaurants that offered birthday freebies. So I put them all in here and I put my birthday on each website for a different day of the year.”
Image credits: itsnoahgraham
Image credits: itsnoahgraham
“So I have 365 days of free food. Tomorrow, I have a free meal from Benihana’s. I really hope I’m not the only person who is crazy enough to do this. I’m really that person who went through it and signed up for 365 different restaurants with a different birthday for each one so I could get free [stuff]. Well worth it. It is well worth it.”
Image credits: itsnoahgraham
You can watch Noah’s video in full right over here
@itsnoahgraham Free food year round #fyp #foryou #foryoupage #xyzcba #xyzbca #TodayILearned ♬ original sound – Noah Graham
Noah has 127.3k followers on TikTok and has amassed a jaw-dropping 7.3 million likes across all of his clips. The video about his free food life hacks got nearly 250k likes and was viewed a whopping 1.1 million times.
A representative of the American fast food chain Arby’s even responded to the video, jokingly asking when Noah’s “Arby’s birthday” was.
People were both fascinated and appalled by the content creator’s 45-second-long clip. Some folks thought that his idea was absolutely brilliant. Some even commended him on using a spreadsheet to keep all the data neat and orderly.
A few viewers even noted that this is something that is legitimately useful for people who are dealing with food scarcity. A free meal can be lifesaving when every penny counts and you can barely put food on the table.
However, there is another side to this coin. Other viewers thought that it was unfair to take advantage of promo systems like this. If people were to start doing this en masse, then the restaurants might cancel their birthday policies due to a lack of trust in their customers.
An easy way to get around this life hack is simply to ask for the person’s ID to verify that it is, indeed, their birthday!
Not to mention that many restaurants’ promo policies will probably have changed in the years since Noah filmed the video. Some of them may even have updated theirs after the clip had gone viral.
So it’s very likely that this same life hack wouldn’t work today. And it’s not something that we’d recommend trying if you value fairness and earn enough to put food on the table. However, if you don’t have food security… well, you have to do what you have to do to survive.
However, there are other ways to ensure you get the assistance you need without low-key scamming and spamming fast food restaurants. There are plenty of charities that would be happy to lend a helping hand to anyone in need. However, that means setting your pride aside and accepting what’s offered.
The TikToker previously told BuzzFeed the reason why he’d started applying this food hack in the first place.
“A few years ago when I was in high school, I had started my own nonprofit organization to help the homeless community in central Iowa,” he said back in 2020.
The idea behind the organization was to fundraise money and put together care packages. These would help the homeless out for a few weeks.
However, when Noah eventually moved to Los Angeles, he himself ended up in a situation where he lacked food security. He’d moved to the city without his parents’ support.
Noah wanted to avoid going deeper into debt, so he had to find a way to get food. One day, the idea for the birthday promo life hack simply popped into his head.
“I would say the spreadsheet took me about three weeks to make and sign up for everything, but in the end, the effort has been totally worth it.”
The clip was so popular that even fast food chain Arby’s left a comment
Here’s how some TikTok users reacted when they saw the video
The post Guy Shares How He Got Free Food All Year Round With This Life Hack first appeared on Bored Panda.