The Keith Lee DoorDash Hack on TikTok Is “Vaguely Unethical” but Does It Work?

For the uninitiated, Keith Lee is a major force to be reckoned with on TikTok — at least in the food world. He has become a go-to food critic on the platform, with upwards of 12 million followers.

Given that restaurants big and small want to impress Keith, it won't come as a surprise that a hack on TikTok finds creators pretending to be him to get better service when they order snacks via DoorDash. And while at least one creator admits this approach is "vaguely unethical," the biggest question on our minds is: Does the Keith Lee DoorDash hack work?

With so many followers on TikTok, it's an easy assumption that restaurants want Keith Lee in their corner.

As such, a creator on the social sharing site decided to see what would happen if he changed his name to Keith Lee on DoorDash. A young man who posts using the handle @jacksondean experienced pretty interesting results.

We'll get to whether the hack worked momentarily. First, it's worth noting that both the creator and his friend were fully aware that assuming the name Keith Lee is "vaguely unethical."

It's also worth noting that Keith himself has talked about how he orders food under either his wife or mom's name to avoid receiving favorable treatment.

Indeed in a fascinating TikTok, the influencer found that when he ordered a meal under his name and then an alias — at the exact same time — there was a noticeable difference between the orders.

Ultimately, even Keith has to admit that he could tell the difference between food ordered under his name, and an alias. The creator who changed his name to Keith Lee on DoorDash was also impressed with his order.

So it seems undeniable that the hack works — so much so, that Keith told his millions of followers, "If you want to use my name, I don't mind!"

And indeed, other TikTok users have been doing just that!

Meanwhile, this is far from the first time that Keith has used his name for good — if you consider helping TikTok creators enjoy better munchies a good deed. In January 2023, he helped a struggling Las Vegas restaurant generate new buzz after sharing a positive review online.

Frankensons went from virtually no followers on TikTok to 300,000, and as Keith said about the owner, Frank Steele, "He was telling me he went from making four orders a day to making 400 in less than 12 hours."

The attention the former MMA fighter can bring to an eatery has even been dubbed "the Keith effect."

Ultimately, the creator says, "I’m very thankful to be in a position that I’m in. I have a lot of really, really big things coming up. I’m in a lot of talks and a lot of meetings that I never thought that I would be in.”

Keith has already leveraged his influence to claim a net worth of $1 million.