A McDonald's worker quit her job and says she now earns up to $10,000 a month making TikToks for Walmart, Heinz, and Kroger
- Less than a year ago, Maddison Peel was making $12 an hour at a Kentucky McDonald's.
- One week after her TikTok of roasting a chicken went viral, she quit.
Just under a year ago, 22-year-old Maddison Peel was working at a McDonald's in Kentucky, where she was paid $12 an hour. Now, she says she makes between $5,000 and $10,000 a month by posting food recipes on TikTok.
Better known by her handle @MaddisonsKitchen, Peel began amassing her following after she posted a TikTok of a roasted chicken to the song "Up" by Cardi B.
One week after the video went viral, she quit her job at McDonald's and started pursuing content creation full-time.
"I know that's probably not responsible," Peel told Insider. "But I saw a promising future with TikTok and had a lot of brands reaching out already from that video."
Today, Peel has over 350,000 followers and 11.8 million likes on the app. Since February, she's worked with 20 to 30 brands including Kroger, Walmart, Weber Grills, and Heinz, she said.
It's a big jump from her job at McDonald's, where Peel started working when she was 15 years old. The fast-food chain was short-staffed when she left, forcing employees to work "three people's jobs for one-person salary," she told Insider.
"Now I'm able to get my own house and I can pay for stuff on my own and not have to worry anymore," she said.
Without a college degree or classical cooking training, Peel belongs to the growing cohort of Gen-Z influencers carving out untraditional careers on TikTok.
"Anything you're passionate about, you can create content on," she said. "People can see it and then it can become a business, even overnight."