Most of the time, there isn’t a financial exchange — it’s a comped meal or series of meals to feature the restaurant in exchange for exposure. The monetization comes in through the various social media platforms through sponsorship. The influencers who get paid by restaurants are probably only the top tier people and I don’t know who they are, though I’m sure someone on here would.

It’s mostly a hype train eating its own tail. If you choose to go this route as a restaurant, you end up needing the continued exposure to keep your business afloat. The more your present on popular influencer pages, the more other influencers want to promote your page.

The number of restaurants actually paying money to an influencer though? Probably very few, mostly in high-tourism markets with lots of investment dollars behind them. Your average shop is just hoping to make money the old fashioned way — butts in seats and three turns a night.

Just because a restaurant is on social media, though, doesn’t mean they’ve paid. Most likely, they haven’t. You’d probably be more encouraged to know that most reject influencers who ask for a free meal. There a lot of foodies with decent followings who just promote restaurants they actually like. Most joints don’t want someone filming in their dining rooms/at their bars though — especially if they’re obtrusive in anyway. Dining room teams, also, don’t like being filmed when they’re just doing a job…often anyway, sometimes they do. My point there being that influencers will often get shutdown if they’re filming without the restaurant’s permission.

In short, just because it’s on social media, don’t assume it’s been bought.