Spend the Holiday Season Watching Some Entertaining Nashville Food and Drink Content

Unless you’re deep into Hallmark holiday movies, watching meaningless college bowl games or catching up with the zeitgeist by binge-watching some cult series, let’s face it: Your television options pretty much suck over the next few weeks. So let me turn you on to a couple of online viewing options from local food and drink celebrities to burn up some of your free time and internet allocation.

Daddy’s Dogs and TailGate Brewery have both launched new YouTube series that give frank (heh) and effervescent (hah) views into the behind-the-scenes realities of running a food-and-bev business. Sean Porter is the Daddy behind Daddy’s Dogs, and if you’ve ever met him, you know all about his slightly askew sense of humor. A natural performer, Porter is an expert at self-promotion and also makes a pretty impressive dog.

He has recently launched Daddy’s Dogs: The Show on his company’s YouTube Channel, and his version of a reality show has been surprisingly well-produced and unsurprisingly entertaining through the first few episodes. With more than 50 employees in his weenie empire, Porter has no lack of interesting characters as he shares the Daddy’s Dogs creation story and the trials and travails of running a business in current economic conditions.

Episodes run less than 10 minutes apiece, so you can consider them “bite-sized,” and running through the back catalog is a fun way to burn an hour and learn about a real local success story. A friendly warning, if you don’t want to see Porter in just a bathing suit floating alone in a river, you might want to skip the Bonnaroo episode.

Over in Bellevue, TailGate Brewery founder Wesley Keegan pulls no punches in the first episode of his video series where he describes the beer business as “fucking hard!” But he also adds that “as a passion, there’s nothing like it!” Like Daddy’s Dogs, TailGate has grown from a small business into a major employer in town, and Keegan shares his wins and losses along the way. I’ve always admired him as a businessman, and his passion for his product, his customers and his employees is evident in person or on video.

If you’ve got some time to kill between the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl and the RoofClaim.com Boca Raton Bowl, I highly recommend carving out some time to learn more about these local heroes. Happy YouTubing!