‘We had never seen a line out the door’: food influencers on social media can transform a restaurant’s fortunes – and businesses are aware of their marketing power

Food critics, move over. If the right influencer posts a video of your food and it goes viral, it can bring a noticeable increase in revenue for your restaurant

While many influencers will draw attention to a place without seeking compensation, others expect to receive free food in return for their social media posts

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Nkechi Ahaiwe runs the Instagram account @eatwhateveryouwant. Food influencers like her have the power to make or break a restaurant with their social media posts. Photo: TNS

Published: 9:15am, 2 Oct 2022

Joel Gonzalez had never seen anything like it in more than 20 years at his family’s restaurant. Around 6pm on March 25, 2021, there was a line stretching out the door of Mariscos Corona, which he runs with his sister in Los Angeles in the United States.

For the next two hours, the siblings did their best to manage the surge of customers all wanting the restaurant’s signature dishes: aguachile-stuffed avocados and surf-and-turf burritos.

“Oh my God, we had such a rush” until closing time, Gonzalez says. “We had never seen a line out the door like that before.”

The next day, a Friday, there was another line – and the onslaught of customers continued through the weekend. The restaurant’s Instagram account gained 5,000 followers. Gonzalez ran out of avocados. Eventually, even his refrigerator was empty. He could not open on Monday.

A surf and turf burrito from Mariscos Corona. Photo: TNS

What Gonzalez did not know, when the crush started, was that Ashley Rodriguez, 29, a food influencer known as @firstdateguide, had posted a TikTok video featuring his dishes – avocados overflowing with seafood, and a giant grilled burrito stuffed with shrimp, carne asada (“grilled meat”) and French fries – earlier in the day.

At one point in the video, which gained 1 million views in a week, Rodriguez poured an entire cup of red salsa onto the burrito, took a big bite and nodded enthusiastically – like a trusted friend telling you about a new restaurant that you simply have to try.