Rajshahi Indian Restaurant

Submission 46,109

Part of a series on Viral Marketing. [View Related Entries]

About

Rajshahi Indian Restaurant is a north Indian restaurant located in Australia that's known online for its absurd Facebook and Instagram meme pages that buy sponsored ads, which appear in users' feeds. The advertisements and memes reference the restaurant's "butter chicken (butt chicken)" or "shahi naan" among other menu items. They mostly use Wojak templates, as well as ironic Family Guy and Simpsons content. Screenshots of the restaurant's ads surfaced across social media in 2022, sparking curiosity and interest. In November 2022, Meme Insider interviewed Arti from Rajshahi Indian Restaurant.

Background

Rajshahi Indian Restaurant is a family-owned restaurant that was founded in 1985 by the Shyam family, specifically the father Radhaya Shyam. It's located in the town of Wyoming (Gosford), New South Wales, Australia within what's called the "Central Coast" region of the country. According to their Facebook^[1] page, as well as via correspondence with the Know Your Meme team in direct messages, Rajshahi Indian Restaurant was the first North Indian restaurant in the Central Coast region.

Online History

In the 2010s, the restaurant was passed down to the daughter^[3] of the family who'd been working at the restaurant since she was nine years old. In 2019, the daughter started a social media presence for the restaurant on both Instagram^[2] and Facebook. The restaurant's first post was uploaded to Instagram^[4] on April 5th, 2019, being a picture of naan bread. Its first Facebook^[5] post was uploaded on April 12th, 2019, simply being an image of the restaurant's logo (shown below).

In accordance with direct messages between Know Your Meme and the admin of Rajshahi Indian Restaurant accounts, she started making memes for the restaurant in 2019 out of "Humour and out of boredom."

Despite an estimate of 2019, the restaurant's first still-accessible meme was uploaded on April 17th, 2020 to Facebook,^[6] being an exploited image of Peter Griffin nailing a wooden sign. The post was made into a sponsored advertisement by the admin and over the course of two years, it received roughly 1,100 reactions (shown below).

On April 18th, 2020, the admin uploaded a Because Your Mother Loves Roses meme to Facebook^[7] that gave the exact coordinates of the restaurant, earning over 35 reactions in two years (shown below, left). On April 29th, 2020, the admin uploaded her first meme to Instagram^[8] that followed the Vince McMahon Reaction template, earning over 65 likes in two years (shown below, right).

The admin continued to post and make moldy, over-exploited and deep fried memes for the restaurant going into 2021 and 2022. In early 2022, Rajshahi Indian Restaurant started sponsoring its meme content as advertisements on Instagram. The absurd, memetic ads appeared in users' feeds and circled engagement back to the restaurant's page. This started in late January 2022 on both Instagram^[9] and Facebook.^[10]

On April 9th, 2022, the Instagram^[11] page spooked_memes.v4 posted a screenshot of a Rajshahi Indian Restaurant advertisement that was a meme of Quagmire thinking about the restaurant, earning roughly 1,400 likes in three months (shown below, left). On June 27th, 2022, Instagram^[12] page owen_kung reposted an ad that was a withered Yes Chad meme following the Do Men Even Have Feelings? template. Owen_kung's repost received over 17,500 likes in four weeks (shown below, right). Meanwhile, the original Yes Chad Rajshahi Indian Restaurant Instagram^[13] post received roughly 2,200 likes in three weeks when posted on June 22nd, 2022.

Other viral reposts of the Yes Chad advertisement occurred on Facebook,^[14] like one uploaded on July 6th, 2022 by the page Memes With An Overall Lack Of Context, earning roughly 7,700 reactions in nine days. Another viral repost happened on July 3rd, 2022 when Twitter ^[15] user MaskTheMovie tweeted the Yes Chad meme, captioning it, "this sponsored ad for an australian indian restaurant is the only ad i ever want to see for the rest of my life," and earning roughly 102,900 likes in 12 days.

Interview With Know Your Meme

In November 2022, Know Your Meme's magazine Meme Insider conducted an interview with Arti of Rajshahi Indian Restaurant (images shown below).

Following

As of July 15th, 2022, the Rajshahi Indian Restaurant Instagram^[2] page has roughly 7,200 followers. Their Facebook^[1] page has accumulated roughly 5,400 followers.