Influencers: the king of restaurant communications?

8 out of 10 young French people say they discovered a product thanks to an influencer. Influencers are increasingly shaping young people's consumption habits. While the former have made a name for themselves in the fashion and beauty worlds, many of them also share their daily food lives: what they cook, but also the restaurants they frequent and recommend.

The prescriptive power of influencers and the value they bring to an establishment's communications strategy now seem self-evident. More accessible than food journalists, more authentic than media advertising: have influencers become the new kings of gastronomic press relations? Or are they just an ephemeral, fragile trend? How can we recognize the real thing? How can we work with them? What are the limits of these collaborations? All questions that should not go unanswered after reading our analysis:

1) Who are the influencers?

An individual who has gathered an audience that trusts him or her

An influencer is first and foremost an individual who has gathered an audience of several thousand people on one or more social media sites, and shares his or her day-to-day life, or part of it, with his or her followers. Some influencers focus on a particular theme (beauty, fashion, travel, cooking, sport...) while others diversify to become "lifestyle" influencers. Margot of the blog Youmakefashion, for example, began by sharing her first passion: fashion (nearly 250,000 Instagram followers). Then she launched a second account, this time dedicated to her dietary rebalancing, on which she posts recipes, meals, sports routines as well as travel and restaurants.

Images, videos, articles or even podcasts: influencers express themselves in many different formats. The difference between an "influencer" and an individual active on social media is that the influencer has built up a real audience that follows and listens to him/her for his/her content, trusts him/her and with whom he/she exercises prescriptive power.

Three main categories of influencers

Celebrities : these are the influencers who have already amassed several hundred thousand or even millions of subscribers. Exposing their daily lives on social media is their full-time job, they make a living from it and are generally managed by agencies.Medium influencers: they have several tens or even hundreds of thousands of subscribers. As a rule, they achieve engagement rates of 3 to 10% on their publications.Micro-influencers: with several thousand or tens of thousands of subscribers, they generate high engagement rates and, above all, enjoy strong audience growth. They almost never ask for remuneration, but rather for benefits in kind. Identifying the most promising micro-influencers ensures the best return on investment.

2) What's in it for a restaurant to work with influencers?

Gain notoriety

Hosting influencers is a great way to get the word out about your establishment and its offerings on social media. Today, Internet users consider thatan influencer is 92% more credible than a brand.What's more, their posts are 24 times more likely to generate engagement on social media. By sharing their restaurant experience in "stories", short videos and/or photos with which they introduce their followers to the place, its decoration, the products, the menu and sometimes even behind the scenes in the kitchen, influencers not only ensure high visibility for restaurants , but above all make it easier for them to win the trust of Internet users.Below is an example of a story from the account specializing in Parisian street-food Foodease, which presents the restaurant BMK :

In recent months, Instagram has made it possible to anchor stories on the profile. This means that content that was previously destined to be ephemeral can be preserved, sorted and pinned to the Instagram profile. Some influencers devote "an anchored story" to each establishment, while others classify them by category or location:

Grow the restaurant's audience

Stories, but also posts published by influencers, help to increase the restaurant's audience on social media. Following the influencer party we organized for the 1-month anniversary of Pizzou, the new 100% Made in France pizzeria in Paris, the restaurant tripled its weekly audience:

Increase sales

Influencers have a real power of recommendation. If they like an establishment, they'll promote it to their audiences. Pizzou organized an influencer evening to introduce the establishment, tell its story and let people taste its products and original pizzas. The event took place on a Tuesday, 1 month after the official opening. The following evening, Pizzou recorded its highest sales since opening (including Fridays and weekends), whereas"Wednesday evenings are usually quiet", explains co-founder Vivien.

Creating quality content at low cost

What influencers have in common is that they are very good at photography and/or video. They are capable of producing high-quality content that they broadcast on their social media and that the establishment can then share on its own networks.

3) When should you work with influencers?

Opening a restaurant

To announce the opening of a restaurant, press relations are essential (article to come), but today they only make sense when complemented by "influencer relations". La Felicità, the Big Mamma Group's latest giant, officially opened its doors to the public on May 26, but May 24 and 25 were entirely dedicated to welcoming journalists and influencers to report on the restaurant's opening.

Launching a new product

Influencers can also be used to publicize the launch of a new offer: the Westminster Hotel, for example, used influencers on Instagram to communicate the launch of its new tea-time pastries. The well-established burger chain PNY collaborates with influencers to communicate their new products (often offbeat and funny, like their operation for the 50th anniversary of Mc Donald's Big Mac).

Creation of an exclusive offer in collaboration with the influencer

Influencers can go further than simply tasting and sharing their experience on networks, they can even create a dish, recipe or ephemeral offer in collaboration with the restaurant. In January 2018, Roomies, a young gourmet burger chain, collaborated with Charlotte from The Food Spy blog, for example. Together, they created "the burger of the month". Not only did she come up with the burger recipe, but she also relayed it on her social media , which helped the brand gain exposure and welcome new customers who came to try "the PariswithCharlotte burger".

Ongoing collaborations to maintain the reputation of your establishment

Paris New York Hamburgers and the Big Mamma group regularly invite influencers to share videos and photos of their meals, boosting the online visibility of their establishments.

4) How do you choose the best influencers?

Quantitative indicators

The number of subscribersis the first (and easiest) criterion to look at. The second point to observe is the average rate of engagement generated on publications. By engagement, we mean all forms of interaction that web users have shown with published content: likes, comments, shares, clicks, as well as identifications on social media. Not all of these have the same value: sharing a publication, for example, is a stronger sign of engagement than a simple "like".

Qualitative indicators

It's important to understand exactly what the influencer is talking about, what their editorial line is, and how they communicate with their followers. Inviting a vegan personality to a restaurant that serves meat and cheese, or a celiac to a pizzeria that doesn't offer a gluten-free alternative, seem like big mistakes.The location of the influencer'saudience should also be taken into account: an influencer with 200,000 followers, the majority of whom live in the provinces or abroad, wouldn't be much help to a Parisian establishment.Finally, the quality of the followers is crucial: does the influencer address the target clientele that the establishment is aiming for (age, socio-economic profile, location, interests...)? One of the criteria to be observed is the interaction generated by the influencer's publications: are they numerous and of high quality? If the vast majority of comments under a publication are made up of smileys or short messages (like "cool pics" "great feed"...), it's highly likely that the authors are "robots", and that the influencer doesn't have a real audience but has resorted to subterfuge to acquire new subscribers (article to come).Another important criterion: are there any food photos in the influencer's publication history? It's possible that an influencer has a real audience that follows and trusts him/her, but if he/she isn't used to publishing food content, he/she will at best make a "story" (ephemeral video) and the value created for the restaurateur will therefore be less. For example, Nina from the Callmevoyou account regularly shares food photos of recipes she's made or restaurants she's tried.

5) How do you work with them?

The restaurant must offer real added value to the influencer so that he or she agrees to collaborate with it: discover gourmet, original, generous cuisine or a pretty place, talk about themes that can really interest the influencer's community, or even go a step further by offering to invite one or more of his or her subscribers.

Making contact

Before looking to collaborate with an influencer, it's important tohave identified their tastes, the latest establishments they've tried and liked, as well as what their community seems to appreciate. The "smaller" influencers can be reached by private messages on Instagram, but it's more professional tosend an invitation, press release and/or press kit by email.

Invite "one to one" or invite to an event

The invitation can be personalized. Usually, the influencer is invited to come and discover the restaurant (free of charge) with a +1. Organizing an event, however, can generate much greater media and local impact (e.g. Pizzou, which, as mentioned above, tripled its weekly audience following an influencer evening). You need to be careful to invite together influencers who already know and like each other, and to set up the best format for the evening (seating plans can quickly become a headache and jeopardize the general atmosphere of the evening...).

Financial or in-kind remuneration?

When it comes to restaurant testing, most influencers don't ask to be paid. However, if the restaurateur clearly expects the influencer to do something, such as video editing or a very detailed article with retouched visuals, theinfluencer may ask for financial compensation (after all, all work deserves a salary!).

Offer extra value with competitions

An effective way to collaborate with an influencer is to organize a contest. The influencer invites his or her audience to comment on one of his or her publications, generally by tagging one of his or her friends to take part in the draw (and to follow the restaurant on social media). The benefit is twofold: the influencer offers real added value to his followers by allowing them to win an invitation to the restaurant, while the restaurateur maximizes his visibility.

Using an agency?

The front-of-house team, if it has some affinity with social media, can of course take on the task of inviting influencers from time to time. However, identifying the best influencers, building a relationship with them, organizing dedicated events, judiciously reusing the content produced, measuring the media fallout... all require time that cannot be taken away from the restaurateur's work and the care given to serving his customers. We recommend working with an agency to implement a true influencer strategy, increase brand awareness and maximize sales.

6) What are the limits to influencer marketing?

Authentic or sponsored content?

Some passionate influencers continue to discover new addresses on their own. Others lose credibility and only frequent places that invite or pay them. It's important to identify those who continue to share authentic content, thereby preserving the trust their subscribers place in them.

Beware of "fake" influencers

Some influencers obviously have a large number of subscribers who are... fictitious. It is indeed possible, by using a few (often paid) software programs and robots, to grow your audience with "fake subscribers". An article detailing how to identify them will be published soon...