A Critical Exploration of Street Food Vendors’ Interactions With Food Vloggers in the Digital Age

Street food is an integral part of a destination’s cultural identity and tourist appeal, yet studies exploring street food vendors’ experiences in response to the presence of food vloggers remain limited. This study aims to explore the subjective experience of street food vendors in responding to interactions with food vloggers who actively document culinary activities through digital media. This study uses a qualitative approach with a phenomenological design. Participants were street food vendors selected through purposive sampling technique based on the experience of receiving reviews from food vloggers, and data were collected through semistructured interviews. The findings reveal that interactions with food vloggers generate ambivalent emotional responses, followed by pragmatic behavioral adaptations amid limited digital literacy. Repeated exposure to food vlogging reshapes vendors’ perceptions of visibility, ethical expectations, and future orientations toward continuity rather than business expansion. These findings complicate overly positive portrayals of food vlogging by demonstrating that digital representation carries moral and economic consequences for informal actors who lack the capacity to shape or contest their online presence. This study contributes to food tourism and digital food culture scholarship by centering street food vendors’ lived experiences and highlighting how structural vulnerability and unequal platform power shape their emotional, ethical, and practical negotiations with food vloggers.