Meet Josh and Rachael

We had the good fortune of connecting with Josh and Rachael and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Josh and Rachael, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
In reality we didn’t start our YouTube channel with the thought of it being a business.

During the COVID shutdowns we found travel channels on YouTube that we really enjoyed watching as we prepared for our trips. It was September 2020 when we made the decision to start vlogging our trip to Las Vegas, with no intention of even being monetized for a couple years. We got lucky and people found us leading to us being monetized in less than 4 months, and it took off from there.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
What sets us apart is that we have a specific way that we do videos in Las Vegas, and do more broad approaches with other cities. In Las Vegas we have found a niche in the high end restaurant review, as well as doing hotel reviews. When we travel to other cities we do our best to plan a fun and unique experience and show as much of the city or country that we are at, even if it is just for a few hours or days.

We simply love to travel and eat the best foods we can find. We want to eat pasta in Italy, drink Sangria in Spain, have crab legs in Alaska, and devour beignets in New Orleans. We want to see the Pantheon in Athens, snorkel with turtles, see Chichen Itza in Mexico, go to the Vatican, and so much more. These are all things we have been able to do over the last 2 years and have so many Bucket List places we intend to go to, and bring our viewers along with us.

We did not get to our current level of success easily. We currently have zero videos that have gone even close to viral, but we have kept plugging away. We are doing what we love and that is the reason why we have continued to create videos 1-2 times per week for nearly 4 years. You can’t succeed on YouTube if you are doing it only for the success, you have love what you are doing. Even when a video doesn’t perform well, we enjoy it because we look at it similar to Home Movies from our childhood – except ours are way better edited 🙂

You have to be open to change, while remaining true to who you are. We take a lot of advice from comments of our viewers, even the negative ones. The viewer is our consumer and while we don’t always do everything they ask we do discuss if we think it would improve our content.

We are just two people out here living our dream life, traveling the world to eat the best food possible, and see as much of the world as we can while we can.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
We actually don’t live in San Diego so this is what our 48 hour itinerary was:

We had a focus on Food and Craft Beers, we also had a concert that brought us to the city.

We stayed at Margaritaville Hotel in the Gaslamp Quarter and loved both the location and the hotel itself.

For a late night dinner we went to La Puerta to get some Carne Asada Fries, tacos and margaritas.

For a night cap we went to West Brew and got a couple Craft Beers.

The next day we ran a 5k in Del Mar

Ate Fish Tacos, Oysters, and Swordfish at Brigantine Seafood and Oyster Bar

Grabbed a beer at Ketch Brewing on our way to USS Midway where spent a few hours looking through the Aircraft Carrier.

Check out the Unconditional Surrender AKA “The Kissing Statue” on our way to dinner at Karina’s Cantina back in the Gaslamp Quarter where we had some carne asada tacos and ceviche.

We took in a concert at Petco Park that evening, but a Padres game would be fun as well.

The next day we grabbed a California Burrito at Werewolf. Then hit up Half Door Brewing Company.

We took an uber over to Ocean Beach to put our feet in the water, and grab another beer at OB Brewery. We had lunch at Mike’s Taco Club – where we got a variety of tacos, carne asada fries and another California Burrito before heading to The Lost Abbey for our final Craft Brewery of the trip and then made it to the airport.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
The first travel channel we ever came across was Bill and Lisa’s Food and Travel on YouTube. They are a wonderful couple who started posting videos back in 2016, but we found them in February of 2020 as we prepared for our first trip as a couple to Las Vegas. They seemed to be a genuinely good hearted couple who loved to travel and eat great food along the way. We binged so many of their videos from the moment we found them. We fashioned our first videos based on what we learned from watching theirs. They were the first “large” channel to comment on our videos and even gave us a couple shoutouts in the early days. We have reached out to them for advice along the way and they have always responded with great recommendations. While we have never actually met them, we feel like we know them.

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@JoshRachael

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshandrachael/

Twitter: https://x.com/JoshAndRachael

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jrfoodandtravels