BELLE — When Kordel Gibson arrived in Belle earlier this month, he was not entirely sure how many people would care.

Gibson, better known to hundreds of thousands of social media users as “ksmilesfoodpeople Gibson” or simply KG, had built a growing following by visiting restaurants and small communities across Missouri. But Belle was different.

Gibson wondered whether a community of its size could generate enough interest to justify spending a weekend filming there.

“I’m like, you know, 1,000 people are gonna look at this,” Gibson said. “Is it really worth it for me to?”

Then the numbers started coming in. Videos from Gibson’s Aug. 1-2 visit to the Belle area generated more than 275,000 views in less than 48 hours. For Gibson, it was a reminder that the size of a community does not necessarily determine the size of its audience.

“It was 1.2 million people last week that looked at my videos,” he said.

During his time in Belle, Gibson visited the World’s Largest Cowbell, River’s Bend Pizzeria & Grill, A Tiger’s Tastee Treat, Bob’s Frozen Custard and The Chocolate Dippery, meeting business owners, employees, residents and young people along the way.

The visit introduced Gibson to Belle. It also introduced Belle to the man behind the camera.

For approximately 15 years, Gibson has worked as a Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper. He currently works with Troop C in Franklin County. For much of that career, when someone recognized Gibson in public, he assumed it was because of the uniform.

That has since changed.

“It used to be ‘that’s the trooper,’” Gibson said. “No one knows I’m a trooper anymore. They think this is my full-time job.”

The transition still catches him off guard.

“The other day, a guy’s like, ‘Hey, I know you,’” Gibson recalled. “In my mind…I’ve been a trooper for 15 years, so I’m used to the, ‘Oh, you know me from being a trooper.’”

Instead, the man told him, “You’re the food guy.”

“It’s kind of like, oh man,” Gibson said.

That second identity began roughly two-and-a-half to three years ago with something far less ambitious than the videos viewers see today.

Gibson started recording food with his cellphone.

There were no interviews with restaurant owners, community tours or attempts to introduce viewers to the people behind a business. He pointed the camera toward whatever he was eating and talked about it.

Gradually, that changed.

Gibson began speaking with business owners and learning how their restaurants came to be. The food remained part of the videos, but the people serving it became increasingly important.

That evolution helps explain why Gibson does not necessarily consider himself a traditional food reviewer. He is not a chef. He does not claim to possess extensive culinary knowledge and said he does not even cook very much. In fact, food is not necessarily the primary reason he continues making the videos.

“I really don’t love food that much,” Gibson said. “I really like helping people.”

As his audience grew, Gibson began noticing that viewers were not simply watching. They were visiting the businesses. They were responding to the owners’ stories. They were traveling to communities they might not otherwise have considered visiting.

That became the part of the process Gibson enjoyed most.

“What I like to do is interview the business owners, talk to them, learn their story, tell people about their story and their food,” Gibson said. “That’s kind of what I like to do.”

It is also one reason communities such as Belle appeal to him.

Gibson has been encouraged to spend more time in St. Louis and other larger markets where the potential audience might seem greater.

“People always say, ‘Hey, you go to St. Louis, you could be bigger,’” Gibson said.

But Gibson is not convinced bigger is necessarily better.

“I like the small towns,” he said. “I live in a small town.”

Small communities also give him access to something essential to the way he makes his videos. The owners.

At an independent restaurant in a rural Missouri community, Gibson can often sit down with the people who started the business, operate it and sometimes even prepare the food themselves. That interaction allows his videos to become about more than what is on his plate.

It allows viewers to meet the people behind it.

Gibson also believes small communities possess something social media can amplify, local pride.

“People have pride in their town,” Gibson said.

A video about one restaurant may attract people interested in that business. A series about several places within a community can cause residents to follow along, share the videos and wait to see which familiar landmark or restaurant appears next.

Belle gave Gibson an opportunity to put that idea into practice.

His visit began with a stop at the World’s Largest Cowbell, owned by Jimmy and Wendy Zumwalt, before he moved through several locally owned restaurants and businesses.

The response reinforced his belief that small communities can attract substantial attention when residents begin sharing what makes their town distinctive.

That reach is something Gibson is still adjusting to himself.

There was a time when 5,000 views seemed enormous.

“You look at the viewership on Facebook and TikTok, and it’s like, man, 5,000 views,” Gibson said. “And then all of a sudden, it’s like, whoa, I got a million views this week.”

The number is still difficult for him to comprehend.

“A million people looked at this?” Gibson said. “Like what? You’re like, wait a minute. A million people actually said watch this video or watch these this week. It’s like holy smokes.”

With that larger audience has come a greater sense of responsibility.

“When it’s 1,000 people watching, you’re like, it’s 1,000 people watching. I could kind of do whatever,” Gibson said. “But when it’s a million people watching, you’re like, ‘Hey, wait a minute. I better get a little more serious.’”

Gibson now makes a deliberate effort to explain what he enjoys about a dish without presenting his personal preference as an expert culinary judgment.

“I don’t have any culinary skills,” Gibson said. “I’m just basically saying what I would say. If the food tastes good, it tastes good.”

He takes a similar approach when he encounters something he personally does not enjoy. Gibson, for example, does not like chocolate. That does not mean he believes a chocolate dessert is poorly prepared.

“Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean somebody else will not like it,” Gibson said. “Obviously, it’s on the menu. Somebody else likes it. Somebody’s buying it.”

He is also reluctant to publicly rank one locally owned business against another. Gibson has seen enough small restaurants to understand what is often at stake for the people behind them.

“These people aren’t getting rich,” Gibson said. “This isn’t the big city. These people are working here. They’re answering the phone. They’re cooking the food. They’re the whole workforce.”

For many of them, he said, the restaurant represents far more than a way to earn a paycheck.

“This is their life,” Gibson said.

That understanding shapes the way he approaches the people he meets and the attention he brings with him. It also shapes the advice he gives small businesses trying to promote themselves online.

Gibson does not believe they need expensive cameras, elaborate videos or a sophisticated social media strategy to begin reaching customers. Sometimes, the simplest post performs better than the content someone spent hours producing.

“I make this big, long, huge video,” Gibson said. “I’m like, ‘this is the greatest video I’ve ever made in my whole entire life.’ Five thousand people look at it, and then, like a picture of me and someone shaking hands, and 50,000 people see it.”

His advice is simple. Post something.

“Don’t get so caught up in thinking like you have to have the greatest stuff,” Gibson said. “If you make food, post it. Take a picture of your food. Little stuff like that, people look at it.”

He also encourages rural businesses to listen to their younger employees. Many of the invitations Gibson receives begin with teenagers or young adults who already follow his videos.

“A lot of the kids are the ones that work at these places,” Gibson said. “So they go tell their boss, ‘Hey, we follow this guy,’ and then their bosses reach out, or a lot of times the kids will say, ‘Hey, I work here. Can you come?’”

Gibson considers those younger social media users the “trendsetters.”

“They got more experience in this technology and this stuff than me,” Gibson said. “They know way more about this stuff than I know about it.”

“It’s what they decide, what’s cool or not,” he added.

For young people interested in creating their own content, Gibson also offers a warning.

“You have got to be careful,” Gibson said of social media. “You don’t know if that profile picture is really them. You don’t know if they’re really affiliated with who they say they are.”

Beyond safety, however, Gibson encourages people not to allow embarrassment or the possibility of rejection to keep them from trying to find their audience.

“Don’t be scared,” Gibson said. “All they can do is say no.”

It is advice that might seem surprising coming from someone who routinely walks into unfamiliar businesses, turns on a camera and begins talking with strangers.

Gibson said he is not nearly as naturally outgoing as viewers may assume.

“I always go to restaurants when I don’t think there’s people in there because I’m kind of uncomfortable talking in front of people,” Gibson said.

People watching his videos frequently tell him the opposite. They see someone who appears comfortable, conversational and willing to talk with almost anyone. That difference between how Gibson sees himself and how others see him has taught him something.

“Sometimes you gotta kind of see people the way people see you,” he said. “A lot of times you don’t see yourself the way people see you.”

Even as Gibson becomes more recognizable, his family helps keep that recognition in perspective.

His children, ages 10 and eight, are not automatically impressed by the number of people watching their father online.

“My kids think it’s cool when their friends think it’s cool,” Gibson said.

If their friends say their dad is cool, the children may be willing to agree.

“Other than that, no,” Gibson said. “You’re just dad.”

His mother is not active on social media and primarily learns about his growing audience through people she meets.

“She just gets that people tell her that they see my stuff,” Gibson said. “She’s kind of just like, ‘Oh yeah, people tell me. I was at the doctor’s office, and somebody said they watch your videos. I seen your son talking about food.’”

Gibson was born in Tallahassee, Fla., attended Georgia Southern University and eventually came to Missouri after a college roommate from Kansas City returned home.

Gibson moved with him and later joined the Missouri State Highway Patrol, which eventually placed him in Union.

For a man who has become known for sampling food across Missouri, his personal favorites remain relatively simple. Pizza is his favorite food.

His favorite meal, however, comes from his mother and is home-cooked fried chicken, yellow rice, cornbread and either cabbage or greens.

Where the videos ultimately lead him is less certain. Only a short time ago, Gibson could not have imagined strangers recognizing him in restaurants or people deciding where to eat because of something he said in a video.

He still considers much of what he does entertainment. Others increasingly consider it a recommendation.

“That’s what’s getting new,” Gibson said. “I think about it as in, like, entertainment. This is just some entertainment for somebody to watch.”

Now, he knows some viewers are taking the next step.

“There are people that are watching this to hear what I have to say about the food,” Gibson said. “‘Oh, KG said this tastes good. I’m gonna go there just for that.’”

His trip to Belle demonstrated just how large that influence can become.

A community that Gibson once wondered if it could attract 1,000 viewers helped produce hundreds of thousands of views within days, placing locally owned businesses and one of Belle’s most unusual landmarks in front of an audience many times larger than the town itself.

Yet Gibson does not describe his future in terms of becoming a national influencer or building a social media empire. His goal remains much closer to the reason he says he began focusing on small businesses in the first place.

“Reach as many people as I can,” Gibson said. “Help as many people as I can.”