Los influencersespecially those of the TikTok social network, are essential to increase the notoriety of the restaurants. This was revealed by a report by the MHG marketing agency, establishing that 36% of users knew an establishment for the first time after having seen it in a video on this social network, and that 55% of them subsequently visited said restaurant “simply because the food looked appetizing” in the aforementioned video. However, not every person on TikTok with a large following is a influencerand the restaurants are not willing to offer them free meals because if.
Several restaurant businessmen in the US have complained about it in an article published in ‘The New York Post’. “They want a free dinner on Saturday night with four friends. We receive about 200 style requests a year and most of them are fraud.and. one of every three influencers who talks to us fakes their success with followers who are ‘bots’, automatic ‘likes’ and other tactics that make them seem more popular than they really are,” explains Stratis Morfogen, owner of New York restaurants Brooklyn Chop House and Brooklyn Dumpling Shop.
“A true journalist or blogger I wouldn’t ask for a free meal. Imposters grow their own brand based on fraud,” adds Morfogen.
This trend towards fraudulent success in social networks and free meal applications is confirmed by one of the influencers most important gastronomic restaurants in the USA and, therefore, in the world. We refer to Alexa Matthews, @eatingnyc on her verified Instagram profile where she has more than 303,000 followers. “I imagine that many people open accounts on social networks expecting free things in exchange and trying to take advantage of restaurants,” he tells the same American media.
From free food to free merchandising
But the free applications of the false ‘influencers’ go beyond the purely gastronomic. “We get a lot of requests from people who want merchandising free. They tell us that our products are cool and that they love them. We tell them to buy them because we lose money giving them away,” says Sabino Curcio, co-owner of Brooklyn’s Anthony & Son Panini Shoppe.
The appearance of false influencers It is not new and there have been different cases globally. For example, in August 2020 the restaurateurs of Balearic filed a complaint against a false influencer from Instagram that he intended to eat for free in bars and restaurants on the islands, assuring that he would advertise locals on his networks. However, the owners of the contacted establishments discovered that their Instagram profile had 80% of fake and bought followers.
As the newspaper ‘Última Hora’ pointed out, the false influencer would have defrauded 700 locals in his career and would have irregularly obtained an amount of 70.000 eurosmoney that was not declared to the Tax Agency.