Australian competitive eater James Webb came to KinderHill Brew Lab in Bryan and tried to eat as many tacos as he could in 20 minutes on Sept. 28. He live streamed the challenge to help promote Raging Bull Street Tacos, or RBST, and practice for an upcoming competitive eating contest.
Major League Eating is the international organization that “oversees all professional eating contests,” according to its website. Webb competes with the league and has worked his way up to No. 5 in the world in competitive eating. He said he had been involved in competitive eating for about two years and enjoyed the competitiveness and travel that came along with it.
“I’m a simple guy,” Webb said. “I like the gym, I like food. I like to travel, especially [to] America, you guys know how to do competitive eating and you guys love antics and fun.”
Webb has dozens of videos of him eating exorbitant amounts of food on his YouTube channel and Instagram account. He explained that he trained every day to “stretch his stomach” to prepare it for personal and professional challenges. Webb said he is competitive and strives to get better every day.
“Not only do I compete, I want to be the best at what I do,” Webb said. “Like I said, I want to eat two [tacos] a minute … If I don’t, I’ll actually be upset.”
Webb’s manager reached out to RBST owner Michael Marks and said Webb wanted to have some fun. Marks agreed and coordinated the set up of the event; he built RBST based on the catering work his aunt did. RBST was founded for the first time in 2019, six months before the COVID-19 pandemic eclipsed the United States.
“I remember when I was my daughter’s age, I would be at events helping [my aunt],” Marks said. “Tacos are my favorite food and it got to the point where people were like, ‘ey, you should sell these tacos.’”
Marks credited part of his success to his aunt’s “famous green sauce.” With business booming in 2019, RBST committed to selling at Chilifest in 2020. However, the event was shut down and vendor fees were not returned. This caused the business to go under. With his passion for RBST and his love for feeding people, Marks bought a trailer from Baltimore in April 2022 and restarted RBST.
“Our first catering with the new set up was a graduation party, and after that, [business] hasn’t stopped,” Marks said. “Within a year and a half, we’ve been able to expand three times already.”
Marks spoke of his ambitious goals for the next steps for RBST.
“The goal is, next summer — maybe a month and a half before the students come back — to have a permanent spot on Northgate,” Marks said.
After watching Webb devour almost five dozen tacos in under 20 minutes, bystander Jackson Newkham said he could not have eaten nearly as many.
“After about 10 hours of working, I could probably do a quarter of that,” Newkham said. “I could probably knock out 20 of [the tacos].”
Having watched Webb the whole time, Newkham said he was shocked.
“That’s a lot of tacos!” Newkham said.
