The topic of conversation is deceptively simple: “Favorite home-cooked meal, boys?”
“I heard your mom makes a mean pizza.” That’s Peyton, talking to Jackson. They’re both 13.
“Yeah, she does make a mean pizza,” Jackson concedes.
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“And she makes a good ramen,” Ryan, who’s 14, chimes in. He’s the one who proposed this topic. When quizzed about what makes Jackson’s mom’s ramen so good, he gets a little bashful. “It’s the–It’s, she cuts it up so it’s like, it’s–”
His fellows are quick to pounce. “Aww,” Jackson coos, egged on by Peyton and the fourth member of the group, 14-year-old Emmett. “Little Ryan needs his ramen cut up!”
It’s the kind of camaradic conversation that would be at home in any middle school. You almost expect to hear silverware tinking, the clack of plastic trays, and a distant school bell signaling class switch. But these are the MD Foodie Boyz, and this is their podcast–which, despite none of them, nor any of their family members, having prior social media experience, is well-produced in a slick-looking soundproof space and uploaded every other week or so to YouTube.
@mdfoodieboyz Celery taste test!! #fyp #viral #celery #mclovin #chubperm ♬ original sound – MDFoodieBoyz
It all started in November 2024, Ryan’s older brother tells us. The boys, who are from Maryland (hence the “MD” in their name) and met as classmates, “thought it would be a fun idea to get together and film a podcast just for jokes,” he says. “Just ’cause that was what seemed interesting to them at the time.”
Their podcast aspirations aren’t very surprising in this day and age. Neither is their decision to post that episode on YouTube. Ryan’s brother says it got around 50 to 100 views–pretty typical of something that doesn’t take off.
“It sat there for a couple months,” he says. By December, the boys were still smitten with the idea of doing a podcast, so Ryan’s brother got together with another of the squad’s older brothers and launched TikTok and Instagram accounts. To fill them, they cut up the previously filmed episode into short-form segments. They weren’t expecting much, but one segment, a heated debate about celery, got 5 million views.
“We just kept posting every day since then,” Ryan’s brother says. The boys’ virality made them a household name among those savvy in the digital video space, and they nabbed interviews with people like Taylor Lorenz and outlets like The Cut. They also caught the eye of Dave Portnoy, who flew out for a collab, and Lil Yachty, who guest-starred on episode 9 of their podcast.
Like we said, no one involved had any experience with social media beyond running their own personal accounts. So they’ve all had to learn fast. For Ryan’s brother, that’s meant figuring out how to film biweekly around the boys’ school schedules, then turn that footage into both long-form episodes and more short segments to be posted across YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Instagram Reels.
For the segments, he ended up using OpusClip, whose flagship product is a video editor that uses artificial intelligence to take creators’ long-form content and cut it down into short-form videos.
Ryan’s brother says they originally found OpusClip because he was looking for a tool that could give them “cool captions” for their short vids. “I wasn’t in the video editing space, so I just Googled, I did some research on the best captions, and they had a free program,” he says. “We continue to use them for our captions currently.”
Why? Because OpusClip’s captions offer “barely any mistakes,” he says. “Every clip, there’s like, maybe one or two mistakes that I have to go in and manually fix. But outside of that, it’s good. It’s customizable, I can make it animate the way I want, and the placement and size I want. It’s super user-friendly and very good at what it does.”
He adds that after the OpusClip team saw the Foodie Boyz using its tools, it reached out to Ryan’s brother asking for any feedback. Were there any fixes he wanted? Any new features he thought could be helpful? Any workflow issues he runs into?
“They notify their team to make any updates they need to,” he says.
OpusClip has told us before that consistent conversation with creators of all sizes is a key part of its development process.
This is that philosophy in action: The MD Foodie Boyz are up-and-coming, make no mistake, and they have caught viral attention. But they’re not MrBeast, and they don’t have an entire professional team backing them. They have their brothers–and, with OpusClip’s tech, that’s enough.
For the foreseeable future, the boys’ production is somewhat limited by school and sports schedules. Ryan’s brother, who’s currently in college for economics, says he probably doesn’t want to do content creation as a career, but he’ll continue managing their socials, and will carry this experience forward into whatever he does end up doing. The boys may end up following in his footsteps, having made a little cash from AdSense and Cameo clips. Or they may end up becoming the next Keith Lees. They’re not sure–and that’s okay. We’re all just taking things one bite at a time.
OpusClip is a Tubefilter partner.
