It was a packed Saturday night last summer at La Marcha, the airy, modern-rustic Spanish tapas restaurant in Berkeley.
One influencer with a solid, thousands-strong following had asked to stop by and requested a four-top, La Marcha chef/co-owner Sergio Monleón recalled. Monleón knows the importance of catering to dining content creators, so he did what he could to accommodate them. “It's still one of the most crucial parts of restaurant marketing and I don't think you can avoid it,” he said. A table was held, an array of dishes and drinks served — all comped — with the hopes of getting posted about favorably on Instagram.
Days went by without a post. Monleón followed up in the DMs, by his count, five times. No response. The influencer didn’t even tip.
“Influencers rarely ever tip, so we usually have to come out-of-pocket and make sure that we take care of our servers so that they're not out their income as well,” he said.
This experience hasn’t soured him on influencers, but he’s not sure he’d ever invite one for a fully comped meal on a Saturday ever again.
In the past five or so years, influencers have become a vital part of the food and beverage industry. For upstart establishments and beloved institutions alike, influencers can bring new energy and customers, especially among highly coveted Gen Z and millennial diners. At their best, local influencers are a bit like cheerleaders for San Francisco, celebrating restaurants and elevating the flavor of the city.
“They're doing it because they love it and are passionate about showing off the city and showing off these small businesses,” said Julie Richter, a San Francisco-based PR consultant who works with local cultural and nonprofit groups.
That’s the positive side. But as the past few months have shown, a diner with a large — or, sometimes, even a not-so-large — online following can use their algorithmically fueled influence to call out the very establishments they built their audiences on.
Last week, the San Francisco food and media industries dined out on a spectacle of a small-scale influencer named Karla Marcotte, posting a video about an unfriendly encounter with chef Luke Sung that resulted in the closing of Kis Cafe, a recently-opened Hayes Valley wine bar. Marcotte didn’t name Sung in the clip, which received comments of support from the likes of Alex Cooper and Jameela Jamil, and was viewed more than 25 million times as of Thursday morning. The post still had enough reach to take out a local business and eliminate several jobs. Meanwhile, Marcotte’s follower count grew by a few hundred thousand.
The Kis Cafe incident may prove to be the first major flashpoint as the cold war between influencers and restaurants boils over. Conversations with people who work in and around the city’s food industry revealed that nearly everyone is thinking — or worrying — about the power of influencers and how to ensure that power is used for good.
“Influencers rarely ever tip, so we usually have to come out-of-pocket and make sure that we take care of our servers so that they’re not out their income as well.
Sergio Monleón, La Marcha chef-co-owner
Criticism has always been a part of the San Francisco dining scene. Whether from powerful local critics like Michael Bauer or Soleil Ho, or from annual lists compiled by out-of-town organizations like Food & Wine and Esquire, restaurateurs have had to endure pans, cheap shots, and in all fairness, spot-on critiques that helped them improve their menus and service.
That was then. Everyone agrees that restaurateurs working closely with influencers is a novel phenomenon — and a confusing one at that. The chef-influencer fandango lacks a set of shared standards. Unlike traditional restaurant coverage and criticism overseen by news outlets, influencers’ coverage is not always driven by institutional rules or journalistic norms. Are influencers critics, or are they marketers?
“It’s still the Wild West out there,” says Amanda Shepherd, the owner and lead strategist at a marketing firm for hospitality businesses. “There really is no standard way of doing business as an influencer; in journalism, you have a set standard of procedures that you have to follow.” For example, many newsrooms offer some cursory fact-checking; most seek to ensure critics don’t have conflicts of interest; none allow freebies in exchange for coverage.
Meanwhile, influencer etiquette can vary wildly: Plenty work with social media management firms, like Shepherd’s, that serve as middlemen and establish ground rules between poster and food maker, but it is not uncommon for influencers to casually slide into restaurants’ DMs asking for a table and a meal.
Unlike the fly-on-the-wall critics of the past (Ruth Reichl, when she was the restaurant critic for The New York Times, used to don wigs and employ theatrical makeup to dine undercover), influencers make themselves known. The more followers an influencer has, the more leverage they can use to pitch a “collaboration” to dine for free. Their name and follower count serve as their currency.
That’s kind of the implication: Hey, we’re essentially giving you stuff for free. It would behoove you to say something nice.
Amber Richele, local food influencer
There are, of course, exceptions to the rule. Most, if not all, influencers have to disclose whether a meal is comped, lest they violate FTC regulations. Others make it a point to not name and shame restaurants where they had a subpar experience. Some believe that refusing comped meals strengthens their ethos and gives them more freedom to share an honest take.
Local food influencer Amber Richele, for example, says she doesn’t want to lose the trust of her audience, which she built by reviewing hotspots already approved by other influencers. “That's kind of the implication: Hey, we’re essentially giving you stuff for free. It would behoove you to say something nice,” she says.
But part of the frustration from chefs, beyond the whole “free meal” deal, is that influencers are not just reviewing or spotlighting restaurants; their presence and social media posts can fundamentally alter the restaurants they cover. Increasingly, restaurateurs adjust their menus, décor, and attitudes to attract this key demo. Every element of a dining experience, from the food presentation to a chef’s demeanor, can be subject to immediate — and viral — scrutiny.
The Hamburger Project, in many ways, was the opening salvo in the chef-influencer fracas in SF. After Kat Ensign, a noted food influencer in San Francisco circles, posted a middling review of the then-newly opened smashburger joint in December 2024, head chef Geoffrey Lee harangued her for days with “crazy” messages — prompting Ensign to volley back before she blocked him altogether and shared her experience online. Lee, in an interview with Gazetteer at the time, argued that he wanted to fight back against criticism for his “passion project.” But after widespread backlash, Lee resigned from the Hamburger Project and the other restaurants he led.
Even in this case, the alliances remain unclear.
“Some of us were also outraged at the Hamburger Project and would totally take her side,” said a longtime San Francisco restaurateur, who preferred to remain anonymous out of concern of professional repercussions. “It's talked about just as much in that way.”
But even if these restaurant workers are on one influencer’s side, they’re still wary of working with influencers, the restaurateur added.
After all, restaurants have a lot to lose if they get that negative attention on the wrong day. “Everybody has a platform now, and so there's no room to think that we can say whatever we want as a business owner,” says Jamal Blake-Williams, co-founder of Bar Darling, which recently opened in the Marina. “Somebody could be sharing this and you should be cautious.”
Despite the frustrations and potential harms they could bring, most restaurateurs recognize that influencers are important marketers for their businesses. “Our employees will tell me people will come in and say we found you on TikTok, and those are unsolicited ones — influencers just coming in on their own to dine,” says the anonymous restauranteur. “So, it's definitely effective.”
Frequently overlooked in stories of the fraught relations between influencers and restaurants is the reality of operating a restaurant in the Bay Area. This is a business with margins as thin as truffle shavings, thanks to high rent, rising prices for quality ingredients, salaries, and business licenses. Restaurateurs pour themselves (and their savings) into these businesses. They hope that influencers will help market their businesses to the masses; the idea that they could do the opposite would be frustrating if it weren’t so anxiety-inducing.
“A chef and restaurateur is so close to their business, and rightfully so. You're putting your heart and soul into this.
Amanda Shepherd, social media consultant
“We employ so many people,” said Blake-Williams. When someone posts a bad review, “I know they are probably feeling something at the moment that they want to get off their chest, but they can have a negative effect financially and emotionally on a lot more people than they think.”
“A chef and restaurateur is so close to their business, and rightfully so,” said Shepherd, the social media consultant. “You're putting your heart and soul into this.”
Shepherd advises her clients to never, ever look at the negative comments: “Having someone on the outside be able to help you navigate it so that you're not taking it too personally is really important.”
The only course of action, really, is to put your head down and focus on the food, suggested the anonymous restaurateur. And don’t respond to criticism, even if you feel it’s unwarranted. Those who do could face digital wrath: DMs, an onslaught of negative Yelp reviews, and, sometimes, headlines. “Whether or not a negative review makes or breaks a restaurant really depends on how the restaurant handles feedback,” says Richele, the influencer. “And, a lot of times, things get blown up because of the reactions to it.”
Just about everyone who spoke to Gazetteer agreed that the impact that influencers have on the city’s restaurant industry will last for the foreseeable future. Restaurant owners are even having to be careful about the way they support their colleagues in other kitchens who find themselves in the social media crosshairs.
In the immediate aftermath of Kis Cafe’s closure last month, Suppenküche, the beloved German restaurant nearby, posted a message of support on Kis’ door. The response online was swift: TikTokers vowing to avoid Suppenküche, online voices brigading Yelp and Google with one-star reviews.
The restaurant apologized to the one-star reviewers. “We fully support Karla, and do not support this kind of behavior,” the restaurant’s response to a negative Yelp review read. “We are a legacy business [that] loves its community and San Francisco so much.”
Richter, the PR consultant, worries that restaurateurs who ignore the pull of social media are losing a key way to reach diners and an opportunity to control the narrative when a negative post comes along.
As with the mainstreaming of Yelp a decade ago, technology has re-shaped how restaurateurs interact with diners. Influencer marketing is simply another requirement of being a successful modern restaurateur. Basically, you gotta play along or risk being out of the game entirely.
It’s been over a year and counting since La Marcha’s Monleón made an investment in a positive post that he’ll likely never see. It was a write-off, a lesson in what life as a restaurant owner is sometimes like under the influence of influencers. “Everybody's a little bit more on edge,” he said.
