How a Baltimore cheesecake company went viral with a Leonardo DiCaprio video

Shawn Zhu posted his latest work to Èdo Cheesecake’s Instagram with a shrug.

“I don’t even think it’s a good video,” he said of the short clip that splices footage of Leonardo DiCaprio from the movie “Inception” with Zhu talking from the driver’s side window of his car.

“Hey, Leo,” he says in the opening shot. “I think I just found a cheesecake you’ll like.” It is, he swears, “not too sweet.”

Maybe it’s the naturalistic lighting, or Zhu’s understated delivery. Maybe it’s the punchline, delivered right after Zhu tells Leo that cheesecake won’t make him fat. “Look at me, am I fat?” Leo nods, solemnly.

But the clip went viral, with more than 24 million views and 1 million likes on Instagram. Viewers said they see Hollywood in Zhu’s future. Even the official account for The Cheesecake Factory (RIP) commented: “absolute cinema... served with cheesecake 🍰.” Zhu said he’s heard from friends in Japan and Korea who’ve come across the video. It was featured on Reddit’s biggest humor page, where it received 57,000 upvotes.

To Zhu, jumping on the “Hey, Leo” trend was an easy way to promote Èdo Cheesecake at a time when he’s been feeling increasingly stretched thin. His former business partner, Gasper Lyu, moved back to China, where Zhu also grew up. Lyu’s departure left Zhu in charge of the bakery they founded while students at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School.

Known for their many varieties of creamy, Basque cheesecake, Èdo has gained a loyal following at area farmers’ markets and shops where they sell their wares. But running the business mostly solo has exhausted Zhu, who also struggles with severe back pain and has trouble with the constant lifting required of working in a kitchen.

Traditional food videos, such as the ones Èdo has made in the past — like a gloved hand squeezing a cheesecake to emphasize its gooey interior — are time-consuming to create, Zhu said. Everything needs to be perfect. He began searching for low-effort ways to promote his brand online instead. He tinkered with a few formats, including interviewing people in the streets of Baltimore in search of a customer who didn’t like the cheesecake. “It worked a little bit,” he said.

Then, he filmed parodies of “The Wire” and “Breaking Bad,” with cheesecake taking the place of drugs. “I barely speak English before I move to the U.S.,” Zhu said. “I learned a lot of my English from TV series.” He filmed the clips at La Chow, in the former Stratford University, where Zhu rents commissary space.

Finally, he stumbled upon a clip from the movie “Inception,” which has been having its moment in the viral sun. A library in Illinois used the video in a funny post. So did one of the Property Brothers. But few appear to have had the reach of Zhu’s version.

The outpouring of praise from commenters has meant a lot to Zhu, who said he doesn’t use social media “at all” aside from work and messaging. “This is the first time I feel the magic of social media,” he said.

Friends have suggested Zhu do more to promote Èdo’s website and online ordering platform in the video itself, but Zhu thinks the lack of logos and slickness is part of what makes the clip work so well. “A lot of big branding doesn’t work because it’s too commercial,” he said.

The viral popularity has translated into an approximately 30% uptick in business, said Rita Yang, marketing specialist for Èdo Cheesecake. (She is currently the company’s only other employee.) A pop-up Zhu operates at Broadway Market stall was sold out less than an hour after it opened Tuesday, though Zhu said they didn’t have many slices to begin with.

But the viral video won’t fundamentally change anything about the business, Zhu said. He’s looking to close the company’s retail operations in order to instead focus on shipping orders within the region. He’s shuttering the pop-up at Broadway Market later this week.

“It’s time for us to pivot our business,” Zhu said. He’s praying for an angel investor to allow the company to scale up.

But hey, Leo: we should clarify. Zhu, who bakes the cheesecakes but doesn’t eat many of them, isn’t actually fat.

“Only my face,” he said.