Shawarma restaurant ad goes so viral, customers are driving hours to try the food

A restaurant in Georgia is proving that delivery — of the comedic variety — is really good for business.

On Nov. 17, Al Zein Shawarma & Grill, a Syrian restaurant in Alpharetta, Georgia that serves shawarma, falafel and other Middle Eastern dishes, went viral after posting an adorably quirky ad on Instagram.

“Everyone always asks me, ‘Ashley, how do you change your tire?’ and I always say ‘I don’t know, and my name isn’t even Ashley — it’s Shania,’” says a woman kneeling at the driver’s side of a car. She gets up, shrugs and walks down the street to reveal the exterior of Al Zein.

As if performing in a well-rehearsed play, the woman then effortlessly grabs two halves of a shawarma from off-screen and holds them up.

“But what I do know is, here at Al Zein, you can get shawarma, fries and sauce all for $9.99. Located in Alpharetta,” she says. A man’s head enters stage right and takes a chomp of the shawarma. “What? Was that supposed to happen?”

The clip is only 20-seconds long, but it’s had a huge impact, garnering 3.2 million views and thousands of supportive comments.

“I love your voice tone , marketing strategy and the whole idea for the campaign,” commented one Instagram user. “This is brilliant.”

“Google says I’m a 1 day and 3 hour drive from here. Seems reasonable! I’ll be there!” added another.

“sold. AND i live in the area. amazing,” wrote someone else.

Bridgestone, the tire company, even commented, “No worries, Shania. You can leave the tire changing to us.”

Multiple users also commented that they plan to make a special trip to try the shawarma, with some planning to drive more than an hour.

Shania Ali, the woman who stars in the ad, says that her first foray into viral fame has been thrilling, especially since she doesn’t actually work at Al Zein. In fact, her very first visit to the shop was the day she filmed the video.

“Seeing the positive reactions? It just made me really happy,” Ali tells TODAY.com. “When I ate the food, it was like, ‘Wow, I really want other people to know about this.’ So I’m glad that that video brought a lot of awareness to it.”

“We get a lot of Shania comments like, ‘Oh my god, her confident, anxious energy is to die for.’ I see that a lot,” Nageeb Alghoul, the director of the viral ad, tells TODAY.com.

As for how this clip was conceived, Alghoul asked Ali and Hatem Murrie — the shawarma biter — to help out by filming content for his client one afternoon. Alghoul and Ali say the viral ad was the first one they filmed — in a single take.

“A lot of people are saying, ‘I live two hours away. I’m driving this weekend,’” Alghoul tells TODAY.com. “And those same people will end up DMing us photos of them going there, leaving us a review. I had someone actually post about flying out from California to Al Zein just to try it out.”

In addition to the long trips some newfound fans are taking, Ali and Alghoul both say that the local love they’ve received is particularly neat.

“I was looking over the numbers last week, and Al Zein has doubled their numbers in one week across seven days, which is phenomenal,” Alghoul says. “We’re helping out a small business, and honestly, that’s that.”

Raghad Tarabichi, co-owner of Al Zein, says they’re thrilled by the overwhelmingly positive response to the ad.

“Seeing people from all over metro Atlanta and the United States excited about our food and culture makes the hard work we put in every day beyond worth it,” Tarabichi tells TODAY.com.

The trio — Ali, Alghoul and Murrie — plan on making more ads together in the future. Ali says, even though she hasn’t yet booked her second official acting job, she’s excited about the possibility of becoming the “Flo from Progressive” of Al Zein.

“This isn’t something that I did ever in my life, so seeing that I could potentially continue doing this with Nageeb is really, really nice,” Ali says. “I developed my friendship with Hatem and Nageeb along the way, too, so I can’t complain about that, either.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com