Influencers have a way of living up to their reputation in their name. Some of them influence thousands or perhaps even millions of people online, but not everybody is on board with their efforts.
This includes a restaurant owner who decided to stop an influencer from collaborating in a way that many others would have enjoyed. He was tired of influencers trying to get a free meal so he responded to them in a lengthy response.
As a restaurant owner, you might think that getting a promotion from an influencer would be ideal. It’s a way to get your brand in front of countless people and all it will cost you is a free meal.
This one restaurant owner in Australia, however, was not feeling the love and he decided to stop those influencers once and for all. In fact, after reading the response, influencers everywhere might think twice before trying to score a free meal again.
It all started when Elle Groves and Annie Knight, who run the Two Teaspoons acount on social media. They had messaged the restaurant to see if they could get a free dinner and in response, they would give the restaurant a review on their social media pages.
They have some 7000 followers so they aren’t exactly the biggest influencers on the Internet. The restaurant, on the other hand, has over 23,000 followers so they may get more assistance in their direction.
A food writer in Australia, John Lethlean posted screenshots of the heated exchange that took place in 2022.
“Hey guys! My friend and I have a food page together – @twoteaspooons – and saw your restaurant and thought it looked amazing!” Groves wrote in the message.
“We would love to come and try it out in exchange for some stories on our personal accounts, and a post and stories on our food page accounts.
“Would you guys be interested in doing this collab? If not, we completely understand. We can’t wait to hear from you XXX”
The restaurant could have simply said no but decided to go in a different direction.
“Hey, Elle apologies for the delay…I’ve been grappling with how much rage to demonstrate/throw in your direction,” he said.
“But it’s even worse when COVID is still very much a thing, affecting small businesses like us devastatingly for two years now.”
They continued: “Maybe give it a year or so and see how the business landscape looks, and see if you can amass enough followers for your ‘collabs’ to actually be of benefit to the venues you approach so naively, instead of them being only of benefit to you.”
Well done!